Social hierarchy and enrolment in government and private schools in rural India: longitudinal evidence from a Rajasthan village

Abstract

With reference to a village in a predominantly tribal part of Rajasthan, this paper illustrates the increasing heterogeneity of the rural educational landscape and examines different patterns of enrolment within this. While the findings confirm those of more macro-level studies using the four official social categories, intra-category differences are shown to be equally, if not more, important in helping to explain variations in the types and locations of schools chosen by parents. The social composition of government schools in the village has greatly narrowed and the majority of pupils in local private schools now come from tribal households. The expansion in size and number of commutable schools has moved the frontier of private schooling away from the village and provided new and increasingly exclusive contexts for both old and new forms of social division to be manifested.

Keywords:

• India
• rural
• private schools
• government schools
• caste
• tribe

Acknowledgements

The fieldwork conducted in 2011 was supported by a research grant from the British Academy for which I would like to express my great appreciation. I would like to thank Mahendra P. Joshi for his long standing research assistance. I would also like to thank Joseph Chiriyankandath for his assistance in data analysis, and Dr Marylin Williams for her much valued help in editing the paper.