Tales of resistance of a CommunityThe marginalized self questions The century-old perception of the Musahar community as rat-eating, pig-rearing, habitually drunk, lazy and unmotivated; a perception fostered by the dominant discourse of development, and the historically prevalent hierarchical social system. This collection of essays argues that these victims of the dominant model of development acquire a different kind of power and critical consciousness due to their marginality, which helps them to examine the processes, practices, and institutions that give rise to and justify poverty, displacement, corruption, greed, competition, and violence in the name of development. Ethnographic studies focussing on the Musahar have demonstrated that the people of this community are capable of offering resistance to the might of the development regime in terms of a comparative critique of modern civilization.They can assert the value of their own world view and epistemology, and in doing so, they subvert the superiority that is generally assigned to the logical and formal schema in understanding the world, and which often speaks in contradictory, evasive, ambiguous, and metaphorical terms. The book offers insights into marginality, culture, and development in India, and will be of interest to students, scholars, practitioners and policy-makers associated with the disciplines of development studies, social Work, social anthropology, critical social psychology, history, and public policy.
List of Tables and Figures
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Section 1: Alignment of Inclusion in Elementary Education
Inclusive Elementary Education in India: The Journey
R. V. Vaidyanatha Ayyar
Social and Regional Inequality in Elementary Education in India: Retrospect and Prospect
Madhumita Bandyopadhyay
Section 2: Social Diversity and Learning Performance Disparity
Education of Equitable Quality: 81All Children Reading
Dhir Jhingran
Social Diversity and Learning Achievement: Contextualising Policies and Practices for Primary Schools in Rural Bihar
Manoj KumarTiwary and Sanjay Kumar
Section 3: Children in Unconventional Learning Settings
Rights, Mobility and Social (In) Justice: The 2009 RTE Act and Mobile Pastoralist Children's Education Deprivation
Caroline Dyer
Educationally Excluded Street and Working Children: Financial Literacy and Life Skill Based Education as a Way Forward
Shushmita Chatterji Dutt
Section 4: Learning English in the Labyrinth of Contrasting Technologies
The Technology and Politics of Teaching English
Nita Kumar
The Road to English: The Slow Migration of the EWS Child to Elite India
Peggy Mohan
Section 5: Pedagogy, Teacher Agency and the Operation of Stereotypes
Cultural Marginality and Reproduction of Stereotypes: An Insider's View on Practices of School
Vikas Gupta
Becoming a Critical Pedagogue: Teacher Agency and Critical Theory
Smriti Singh
Conclusion: Situating India's Inclusive Education in the Global Episteme of Diversity, Inequality and Democracy
Arvind Kumar Mishra
Contributors
Index
