The struggle for public education: activist narratives from India

The aim of this paper is to explore and analyse constructions of public education amongst Left-leaning education activists in India. This discussion highlights the adverse impact of two decades of pro-privatisation education reforms on entrenched educational and socio-cultural inequalities. It also provides a preliminary mapping of the scope and substance of social mobilisations in the domain of public education. This discussion is grounded in my ongoing research with the All India Forum for the Right to Education (AIF-RTE): a nationwide network of organisations and individuals engaged in collective struggle to protect and strengthen public education. I explore a multiplicity of activist representations about public and private education as well as their ‘imaginaries’ about the transformation of educational and social inequity. In addition to positing education as a site where subaltern groups engage the capitalist state, I show that activists construct knowledge in different ways depending on the contexts and relationships in which knowledge production occurs.