Prof.SaikatMaitra and Prof. Manish Kumar Thakur from the Public Policy and Management Group, IIM Calcutta in conjunction with the Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies and the School of Education, University of Glasgow, organized a Conference on ‘Reimagining the Contemporary in Indian Education’ in the IIM-C premises from April 21-23, 2023 under the ESRC (UK) funded ‘Gendered Journeys’ project. The conference was aimed at comprehending the realities in Indian education in correlation with the New Education Policy (NEP) 2020, and identifying the graded inequalities that lies in the essence of Indian education today. The conference started on 21st April with the keynote lecture by Prof.Gopal Guru, former faculty of JNU and editor of Economic and Political Weekly, with Prof.SrabaniMaitra from the University of Glasgow as the chair. Prof. Guru spoke about the educational asymmetries that need to be addressed on a daily basis. He also talked about the goal-oriented thrust of the NEP 2020 and the hidden ideologies in the narratives of merit and excellence in education that are always gendered and embedded in caste-class paradigms.
The first Academic session started on 22nd April with Prof.Debaditya Bhattacharya from the KaziNazrul University as the discussant. It began with a Presentation by Prof.ShilpiShikhaPhukan who analysed the Vidya Bharti schools in Assam through an ethnographic study and how, through their schooling and curriculum, they modulate certain ideological values into their pupils. The next paper by Prof.GargiGayan from KKHSOU focussed on the role of community in the context of NEP 2020. She talked about the diminishing role of the community in education with privatization, and argued for the need to bring community resources into the school. The last paper of this session was by Judhajit Mukherjee from JNU who spoke on the divides in the classroom between the ‘silent corners’ and the ‘vocal corners’, and the instinctual and immediacy of the teaching experience that will be completely destabilized by a shift to online education.
The second academic session which had Dr.DebaratiBagchi from the Max Weber Foundation as discussant, began with JNU Faculty Prof.Parimala Rao’s paper on the trajectory of history-writing in Indian pedagogic discourse. She argued that history in post-independence India was characterized by adherence to a specific political vision, selective curriculum and selective research areas; any ideas contrary to these models were suppressed and marginalized. Then Prof.AnkitaMookerjee from South Calcutta Girls College talked about the elitist bias of liberal arts and how to reframe a liberal arts curriculum which veers away from producing socio-technocrats. The last presenter in the session Prof.SayantanDasgupta from Jadavpur University spoke on the Comparative Literature model which has always emphasized many aspects in pedagogy that the NEP 2020 is now stressing on.
The final academic session of the day had two papers and Prof.Anirban Das from CSSSC as the discussant. The first, by Prof. Manoj Kumar from AzimPremzi University, examined the English-medium schools in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana, and tried to unearth the cultural processes that led to the growing demand for English education. The second paper, by Prof. Manish Jain of Ambedkar University focused on how the NEP 2020 redefines notions of citizenship and ‘belonging’, and posits the notion of a continuous, uninterrupted Indian civilization as the ‘Sanatan Bharat’.
The day ended with a Presentation by the ‘Gendered Journeys’ Project team, featuring Prof.SrabaniMaitra and Prof. Barbara Read from the University of Glasgow, and Prof.SaikatMaitra and Prof. Manish Thakur from IIM-C. Dr.Yamini Agarwal from the Max Weber Foundation was the discussant. The Presentation, through an analysis of the existing data of the Project, charted the precarious trajectories of female STEM students and graduates through higher education and into employment.
On the final day of the conference, the fourth academic session had Prof.Shibasish Chatterjee of Jadavpur University as the discussant, and began with a talk by Prof.ManabiMajumdar, former faculty of CSSSC. Prof.Majumdar talked about the attempts to erode the plurality of perspectives, rewrite Indian history, and blur the boundaries between the market and the state in education. The next presenter, Dr.Yamini Agarwal from the Max Weber Foundation, delved into the educational situation of religious minorities in Post-colonial India. Her data showed how religious minorities have faced challenges and discrimination in education which would be further intensified by the discontinuation and fund cuts in fellowships and schemes for minorities.
The last academic session of the Conference featured Prof.Debaditya Bhattacharya as the discussant, and consisted of two papers. The first, by Prof.ShivaliTukdeo of Indira Mahindra School of Education, elaborated on the correlation between Indian Education policies and the model of residential schools or ‘Ashram’ schools. The last paper of the session and of the conference was by Prof. Rajesh Bhattacharya of the IIM-C, who tried to decode the financial under text of the NEP 2020 and the politics behind its emphasis on ‘local’.
The last session of the Conference was the valedictory lecture by Prof. Krishna Kumar, former director of the NCERT, chaired by Prof.ManabiMajumdar. His lecture started with critically analysing the various factors that shape our imagination of the ‘contemporary’ in education. He looked at the ‘contemporary’ from the historical perspectives of economic, political, and technological, and also through the paradigms of caste, class, and gender. Prof. Kumar talked about the problems of regarding India as a ‘notion’, not as a nation, thus denying the plurality of India and the various states with their own fully developed education system. He pointed out that under the NEP 2020, the teacher has been replaced by the coach, and the policy aims for a complete elimination of subjectivity. He concluded his lecture with the idea of education as a site of creative resistance, where we fight for ourselves and for our children. While he acknowledged that the shadow of intolerance and prejudices in education is likely to loom darker in our contemporary times, he also expressed faith in the educational community to fight for social justice, and a democratic and egalitarian education system.
The conference ended with the vote of thanks on behalf of the organizers from Prof.SaikatMaitra from IIM Calcutta.
Apart from the discussions and debates during the lectures and academic sessions, the conference featured a lot of informal discussions and bonding amongst the participants during the lunch, dinner, and coffee breaks. The conference was truly a laudable endeavour towards dissecting the NEP 2020 and interrogating the contemporary attempts at commercialization of education. It is hoped that the Conference would encourage further critical analysis of the NEP 2020, and stimulate dialogues on the structural inequalities that plague Indian Education.
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