Economic Liberalization in 1991 and Its Impact on Elementary Education in India

S. Venkatanarayanan

SAGE Open, 2015, vol. 5, issue 2, 2158244015579517

Abstract: The basic foundation of policy making had undergone profound shifts over the past two decades as the policy makers are inclined to rely heavily on the exercise of power in their pursuit of development and prosperity. Government interventionism was subject to a strong intellectual and political backlash, and a new ideological movement seeking to redefine the role of government rose to take its place. This new political–economic liberalism insisted on the removal of governments’ grip over the economy and the introduction of open competition into economic life. Thus, the market emerged as the central actor governing economic activity during the 1990s, and the ethos of neoliberalism progressively entrenched itself into law and public institutions in India. This change in “policy paradigms†implies a substantial reorganization of domestic political economies for an efficient governance of political and economic institutions in a longer run. This article attempts to look at the changes in “policy paradigms†that happened after 1990 in the domain of educational governance in India. Along with the policy changes, there happened a watershed in constitutional rights, making right to education a fundamental right of every citizen. This article further inquires how far the state has endeavored to fulfill its objective of providing quality education for all children within these economic and political changes. Indian states’ financial obligation toward elementary education and the policy directions during the period after 1990 were thoroughly analyzed to find out the commitment of state in providing universal elementary education of good quality in India.

Keywords: political economy; political science; social sciences; neoliberalism; elementary education; India; economic liberalization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244015579517 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sagope:v:5:y:2015:i:2:p:2158244015579517

DOI: 10.1177/2158244015579517

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in SAGE Open
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().