Neo-liberalisation of Education in India |
India’s education system has shifted dramatically over the past four decades, embodying neoliberalism’s push to turn public goods into profit centres. David Harvey, a renowned British Marxist geographer and scholar of urban political economy, explains this through his concept of “accumulation by dispossession”; policies that privatise public assets for private gain. Some readers may see left-leaning bias here, however, this analysis draws from clear policy facts and Harvey’s economic framework, not ideology; this is just how neoliberalism works.
Neoliberalism cannot simply be defined as an economic doctrine but is instead a “political project to achieve restoration of class power.” Rather than producing sustained economic growth it promised, neoliberalism has orchestrated a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the economic elite through deregulation, privatisation, and what can be termed as “accumulation by dispossession.” Unlike classical Marxian primitive accumulation, which occurred as capitalism’s historical origin, accumulation by dispossession is an ongoing process central to contemporary capitalism. It involves the commodification and privatisation of assets once held in common, the expropriation of wealth through financial mechanisms, and the forcible removal of people from means of subsistence.
In India’s education sector, this process unfolded systematically. The National Policy on Education (1986) initiated the neoliberal assault by creating parallel, inferior education streams and non-formal education for the poor while establishing almost a different stream for the elite. The 1991 economic liberalisation, driven by structural adjustment pressures, accelerated this trajectory. India’s 1995 signing of the World Trade Organisation’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) marked a critical threshold; education ceased to be a constitutional right and became a “tradeable service.” When right to education is considered a fundamental right from ages 6 to 14 this single act transformed education’s legal status from public good to commodity.
The mechanics of accumulation through dispossession in Indian education operate through four interconnected processes. First, commodification has systematised the transformation of education into a market product. Where education is just limited to some sort of a........