Trails of the Learning Curve

The writer, a former Director of LBS National Academy of Administration, is currently a historian, policy analyst and columnist, and serves as the Festival Director of Valley of Words — a festival of arts and literature

- Sanjeev Chopra

When the British left India in 1947, we were an impoverished nation. Our poverty ratio was a staggering 80 per cent, and not more than 12 per cent of our people, predominantly upper caste males living in urban centres, had some modicum of literacy. From then to now, there has been a sea change. While governments, denominational institutions, civil society organisations and corporates have made significant contributions to the spread of literacy, the core argument of Manimala Roy's excellent study From Shanties to Schools: A Silent Movement is that the main driver of this change has been the economic liberalisation of 1991.

Taking the metropolis of Delhi as an example, where she has done extensive fieldwork, she argues that the reforms led by Narasimha Rao-Manmohan Singh not only generated opportunities and resources for children of migrants living in the Jhuggi-Jhopri (JJ) clusters of Delhi, but also convinced their parents that education was the one and only way out of this morass. Her study of the lives of migrant workers and their children in the shanty towns of Delhi reveals the 'migrant' viewpoint about education as the harbinger of social respect, empowerment and employment. Interestingly, as incomes rose, the middle class of Delhi moved their children to private schools, thereby creating the space for children of JJ clusters to enroll in state government, municipal and NDMC schools.