About the Book

This book acquaints the reader to the often invisible-ized practices and policies under the rhetoric of ‘inclusion’, through theoretical and empirical analysis. It emphasizes on the complexities of education policies in a multicultural state by identifying the challenges to the idea of ‘inclusion’ illuminated through judicial interventions, policy-frameworks and everyday experiences of individuals.

Higher education is imperative to empowerment in socially stratified societies marred with deep inequalities like India and many other multicultural countries. Disputes over inclusion remains a critical feature in Indian higher education sector, as it is viewed as facilitating access to economic opportunities and providing vertical mobility for individuals belonging to marginalized communities. Higher education empowers, and expands individual horizons of thought and ideas of freedom, dignity, equality, enabling individuals to participate actively in the political-sociological discourses in democratic polity. Therefore, policy makers, political theorists and educationists have been examining the question of inclusion and education as public-good. Contemporary India has witnessed an unprecedented attack on academic freedom, free exchange of ideas and expressions, challenging the very idea of inclusion and inclusiveness.

Contents

1.         Introduction-Papia Sengupta

 2.         Interrogating Neoliberal Market Rationality and the Exclusivity of Higher Education-V. Bijukumar

 3.         Negotiating Inclusion: Minority Institutions and Constitutional-Legal Dimensions in India-Malavika Menon

 4.         From Exclusion to Inclusion: The Case of Public Madrasah Education System in West Bengal-Abdul Matin

 5.         Language Conundrum: English Language and Exclusivity in India’s Higher Educatio-Ramanujam Meganathan

 6.         Inclusive Education from School to Higher Education in India: Provisions, Possibilities and Progress-Gagandeep Bajaj

 7.         Institutional Norms as Hindrance to Participation of Women as Members of Academic Community-Shivani Nag

 8.         Higher Education and the Question of Inclusivity for LGBTQIA+ Community-Shailja Tandon 

9.         Assessing Inclusion in India’s Higher Education: NEP 2020 in Perspective-Papia Sengupta

About the Author / Editor

Dr. Papia Sengupta teaches at the Centre for Political Studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. She was awarded the Distinguished Teacher award by former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in 2009 for her contribution to students’ mentorship. Dr Sengupta was fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, University of Edinburgh (2016) and Brown University, USA (2015). Her research interests include politics of language, diversity studies, minority rights and decolonization of knowledge, gender and multiculturalism. She has been awarded fellowships from the Shastri Indo-Canadian Faculty Fellowship, Swiss International Development Agency fellowship, Switzerland and the International Institute of Social History fellowship. Her monograph titled Language as Identity in Colonial India: Policies and Politics, was published in 2018. In 2020 the International Association for Applied Linguistics, Netherlands honored her with the Solidarity Award. Dr. Sengupta’s research articles have been published in reputed national and international journals such as Economic and Political Weekly, Social Action, Geoforum and The International Journal on Diversity