Education and social (in)justice for mobile groups: re‐framing rights and educational inclusion for Indian pastoralist children

Abstract

Social exclusion is not random, but concentrated in already marginalised groups and often related to the “frozen accidents” of particular forms of thinking about education and development that come to dominate policy and strategies for service provision. This paper examines how accessing the recently enacted right to education raises a range of justice concerns for mobile, and particularly transhumant pastoralist, children in India. It argues that provision of formal education reflects institutionalised patterns of economic discrimination and status inequality that deny such children what Nancy Fraser terms “participatory parity”. The policy norm of habitation‐based provision fails to fulfil the rights criteria of making schooling available and accessible, while the colonial criminalisation of mobility leaves an enduring legacy of discrimination. Formal education is complex and contradictory in relation to both moral dimensions of the human right and its contribution to social justice.

Keywords:

• education
• schooling
• social justice
• pastoralists
• participatory parity
• India

Notes

1. Although it appears as a label in several places in the Constitution, the term “backward class” was not clearly defined within it. OBC affairs are overseen by the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC), located within the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. The categorisation is intended to be dynamic, i.e. those once included who no longer satisfy criteria should no longer feature, but since inclusion confers privilege, any such changes are highly contested.

2. The ASER survey report describes the household sampling methodology deployed, and the tests given to children to assess levels of achievement in numeracy and literacy. There is an element of taking the government to task in its approach, but the methodology it employs is respectable and transparent and results are rapidly put in the public domain. http://www.pratham.org/images/aser08.pdf

3. Migrants are employed in cultivation and plantations, brick‐kilns, quarries, construction sites and fish processing; and in the urban areas, in informal manufacturing construction, services, tourism or transport sectors; they are also employed as casual labourers, head loaders, rickshaw pullers and hawkers (Chatterjee 2006).

4. Foreign investment in prospecting for oil, however, threatens to provide direct competition for resources in Kenya’s arid and semi‐arid lands.

5. CERD: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cerd/.

6. Perhaps the most contested has been the second Backward Classes (Mandal) Commission’s 1980 recommendation that OBCs reservations be 27%.

7. The NCDNSNT website is at http://ncdnsnt.gov.in/ but websearches have been unable to bring up the text of the full report and the most informative site is Wikipedia.