Education is championed as a fundamental human right. However, in India, inequality in education contributes the most to the overall inequality index.

India’s Education Paradox critiques the growing interpersonal and interstate educational inequalities along with the falling standards in education, through previous education policies, and in the way analyses the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Contesting the routine constructs of ‘inequality’ and ‘efficiency’ in education with the help of alternative paradigms, the author examines the subject in the context of wide-ranging regional economic disparities, to take us a step closer to understanding why India is at the crossroads between ‘expanding up’ and ‘expanding out’.

Enriched with recent data, the volume offers new insights into designing policy agenda by centring the ‘capabilities’ approach, and delving into the social choice dilemma between correcting the distribution and improving the standard of education; and, between education as a public good and as a private good.  Analysing the neglected aspects of fiscal policies and federal issues in the creation of opportunities, the author suggests an effective evaluation of reforms to ensure maximum impact on educational development. Also offered is a comparative understanding of the vocational systems of countries such as Finland, South Korea and China, having varying types of governance.

This monograph will interest scholars of education, public economics and development economics; journalists; NGOs and policymakers.

Debdas Banerjee, Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, has served as Professor at Central University of South Bihar, and Institute of Development Studies Kolkata (IDSK).

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Abbreviations
Preface

INTRODUCTION

I. Contextualising education policy

PARADIGMS EXPLAINED

II. Equity and equality in education
Issues and perspectives

III. Effective modelling in divergent agency behaviour

SCHOOL EDUCATION AND REFORMS

IV. Regional variation in outcomes  
Exploring ‘principal-agency’ relationship

V. Capabilities approach for school turnouts

VI. Aspects of process of opportunity
Vocational education

HIGHER EDUCATION

VII. Higher education
Disproportionalities and dilemma

VIII. Fiscal possibilities
Cooperative federalism as reforms

References
Index