Inclusions and Exclusions of Tribal Narratives in the Indian Education Policies of India

2022 ◽  
pp. 207-227
Author(s):  
Lina Pegu

The COVID-19 situation in India exposed the deep social and economic divide that exists within. Revealing these existing inequities and vulnerabilities, the pandemic situation critically questions what this divide means for the already marginalized communities in India. The founding fathers of the Indian Constitution foresaw the profound challenge of creating social, political, and economic equity with huge diversity. They saw education with development as a solution to create a just society. Therefore, the structures of reservation and economic support were built into the Constitution. However, these government policies of development and education were intensely geared towards integration as a nation-building exercise. Meanwhile, access to education is still provisional, subject to factors like lack of infrastructure, and that access is not always enough for emancipation. Through this chapter, the nation-building exercise will be critically examined in the light of diversity and the missing narratives of the consent of marginal citizens through the post-colonial lens.

Author(s):  
R.V. Vaidyanatha Ayyar

This chapter describes the personality and politics of Arjun Singh who was Minister of MHRD for about nine years in two spells (1991–95 and 2004–9), and left a deep imprint on Indian education policies. It also describes the developments during 1991–6, a watershed in Indian economic and political history which among others marked the end of Nehruvian era and the unquestioned sway of hegemony of the liberal-left ideas about nationalism, identity, and secularism which were regnant from Independence. It outlines how Arjun Singh built his political career around a fiery commitment to secularism, leftist economic ideology, and social justice, and how that commitment served him well in his battles with political rivals including the Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao. It also outlines Arjun Singh’s strategic use of MHRD to cultivate ‘progressive’ intellectuals, and further his political agenda. It elaborates the conceptual underpinnings of the perennial controversy about school history books, and offers a blow by blow account of the controversy during period 1967–1996 which includes the reign of Indira Gandhi, Janata Party, and P.V. Narasimha Rao.


Author(s):  
R.V. Vaidyanatha Ayyar

This book chronicles the history of education policymaking in India. The focus of the book is on the period from 1964 when the landmark Kothari Commission was constituted; however, to put the policy developments in this period into perspective major developments since the Indian Education Commission (1882) have been touched upon. The distinctiveness of the book lies in the rare insights which come from the author’s experience of making policy at the state, national and international levels; it is also the first book on the making of Indian education policy which brings to bear on the narrative comparative and historical perspectives it, which pays attention to the process and politics of policymaking and the larger setting –the political and policy environment- in which policies were made at different points of time, which attempts to subject regulation of education to a systematic analyses the way regulation of utilities or business or environment had been, and integrates judicial policymaking with the making and implementation of education policies. In fact for the period subsequent to 1979, there have been articles- may be a book or two- on some aspects of these developments individually; however, there is no comprehensive narrative that covers developments as a whole and places them against the backdrop of national and global political, economic, and educational developments.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1326365X2110096
Author(s):  
Norshuhada Shiratuddin ◽  
Shahizan Hassan ◽  
Zainatul Shuhaida Abdul Rahman ◽  
Mohd. Khairie Ahmad ◽  
Kartini Aboo Talib ◽  
...  

Malaysian marginalized youth participation in nation building through various media platforms is low. Therefore, an action plan was developed to enhance the social, political and economic participation of youth in marginalized communities through media utilization. The action plan consists of target items and approaches to conduct activities. Eight media-participation-related modules were also tested in an intervention study. The modules were targeted at increasing the level of youth media, social and political participation. Various agencies such as the Malaysian Youth Council, were involved to help realize the plan aims. Results from the stakeholders’ reviews indicated that more efforts have to be carried out to expose these youth to good practices in the use of social media for participation purposes. The findings also concluded that this action plan is well-formed, can serve as a guide, allows integration of cultural harmony and offers empowerment to the youth.


2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (s2) ◽  
pp. 273-289
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Rzepa

Abstract This article approaches recent discussions on the state of contemporary CanLit as a body of literary texts, an academic field, and an institution. The discussion is informed primarily by a number of recent or relatively recent publications, such as Trans.CanLit. Resituating the Study of Canadian Literature (Kamboureli & Miki 2007), Refuse. CanLit in Ruins (McGregor, Rak & Wunker 2018), Luminous Ink: Writers on Writing in Canada (McWatt, Maharaj & Brand 2018), and the discussions and/or controversies some of those generated – expressed through newspaper and magazine articles, scholarly essays, but also through tweets, etc. The texts have been written as a response to the current state and – in some cases – scandals of CanLit. Many constitute attempts at starting or contributing to a discussion aimed at not only taking stock of, but also reinterpreting and re-defining the field and the institution in view of the challenges of the globalising world. Perhaps more importantly, they address also the challenges resulting from the rift between CanLit as implicated in the (post)colonial nation-building project and rigid institutional structures, perpetuating the silencings, erasures, and hierarchies resulting from such entanglements, and actual literary texts produced by an increasingly diversified group of writers working with a widening range of topics and genres, and creating often intimate, autobiographically inspired art with a sense of responsibility to marginalised communities. The article concludes with the example of Indigenous writing and the position some young Indigenous writers take in the current discussions.


Author(s):  
Ian Taylor

Africa is a continent of over a billion people, yet questions of underdevelopment, malgovernance, and a form of political life based upon patronage are characteristic of many African states. ‘Introduction to Africa and its politics’ explains that the core questions underpinning this VSI centre on how politics is typically practised on the continent; the nature of the state in Africa; and what accounts for Africa’s underdevelopment. This VSI aims to appraise sub-Saharan Africa’s recent political history, examining post-colonial political structures, the impact of colonialism, and the form and nature of post-colonial states. The type of politics practised in many African states continues to be hostile to genuine nation building and broad-based, sustainable development.


2020 ◽  
Vol 249 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-211
Author(s):  
Antoine Acker

Abstract This article aims to identify new historical causes for the making of the Anthropocene (the rise of humans to a geological force) by addressing Brazil’s transformation into an oil producer and an oil-dependent country between 1930 and 1975. This example allows an escape from the essentialist explanation of the Anthropocene as the result of humans’ insatiable appetite for consumption, commonly rooted in an analysis of Western industrial society, and to focus instead on the notion of freedom in a former colony. Indeed, in the context of nation-building and modernization debates, petroleum appeared to many Brazilians as an opportunity to emancipate the country from its peripheral role as global raw material provider. The rise of petroleum gave a post-colonial sense to the nation-founding myth of Brazil’s exceptional nature, which served as romantic background for a movement towards resource sovereignty embedded into a global anti-imperialist context. In Brazil specifically, oil production became an opportunity for a process of ecological transformation that promised to rid the country of colonial landscapes of exploitation, and even appeared as a solution for stopping the unsustainable destruction of tropical forests. Ultimately, these petro-ideals of emancipation, by positively linking nature and the nation, also hindered fully detecting the scope of the pollution problems that oil was generating. As argued in the article’s conclusion, this example should rekindle the discussion about the unintended link between freedom and geological change in the analysis of Anthropocene causalities.


1975 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Jordan ◽  
John P. Renninger

What is Africa doing wrong? Africans as well as others are increasingly asking this question. We are, in effect, invited to consider that there are, perhaps, negative as well as positive aspects to the nation-building process in post-colonial Africa. To the layman, indeed, the image of Africa has tended to accentuate the negative. The strife in the Congo during the early 1960s, the civil war in Nigeria, numerous military coups d'etat and political assassinations, bureaucratic corruption, disappointing progress in the economic field, and more recently famine and drought, all could lead to the conclusion that efforts at nationbuilding have been less than successful.


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