The realization of the country’s aspirations involves change in the knowledge, skills, interests and values of the people as a whole.
This is basic to every programme of social and economic betterment of which India stands in need … If this ‘change on a grand scale’ is to be achieved without violent revolution (and even for that it would be necessary) there is one instrument, and one instrument only, that can be used: Education. (Education and National Development: Report of the Indian Education Commission)
Andhra Pradesh’s development goals cannot be achieved without harnessing the potential of its women. (Government of Andhra Pradesh 1999)
Of the various orthodoxies that prevail in gender and development thinking, that of the importance of education has remained unexamined. It is an unquestioned truth that the educational status of the population in general, and more specifically of women, is an important indicator of development. The term “education” carries with it a notion of progress and empowerment which is so taken for granted, that interrogation of the term, its content and the implications of its easy and widespread acceptance, becomes barely even possible. In this present moment in India where the focus, as in several other countries, is on gender and development, education of the girl child and of women is regarded as key in alleviating existing problems and in ensuring socio-economic growth. But it is precisely this rich promise which necessitates an interrogation of the discursive production of education as the panacea for a whole range of problems. Central government, state governments, some landmark judgements of recent times, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the World Bank and business interests all endorse the importance of primary education, that too of the girl child.
With the overwhelming consensus in current development discourse on the need to provide universal primary education, with special focus on the girl child, “education” has come to carry very different meanings, marking a radical departure from the past. But what does this consensus actually consist of and what has “education” come to mean within it? What is the link between “education” and “development”? How far has the situation on the ground justified the faith placed upon it in discourses of development? What difference has it really made to the lives of the women development agencies seek to reach?
This article makes an effort at outlining approaches to the education of women in India that have been taken over time, in order to better grasp what today’s policy decisions on education mean. The article focuses on four different moments that have shaped pervasive thinking in relation to the education of women in India. The moments chosen for discussion are:
- The debates on women’s education in the nineteenth century reform period in Indian history.
- The approach towards education outlined in the Towards Equality report prepared in 1974 by the Committee on the Status of Women in India.
- The anti-arrack movement triggered by literacy programmes in Andhra Pradesh in 1992.
- Recent policies in relation to education of women.
A reading of the shifts and manoeuvres over these four moments presents some striking observations. First, it emerges that following the high visibility of the question of women’s education in the social reform period, it dropped out completely from public discourse only to resurface much later in an intermittent manner. Also, there are significant differences between the earlier reform moment and the present one. While the reform movement shaped the identity of the upper caste woman, it is now the lower caste/class woman who is the subject of the developmental discourse and the seeming beneficiary of the state’s attention. These differences in fact serve to draw our attention to some of the contentious issues in the contemporary context. It helps us ask what characterises the present moment and what are the agendas involved? Why have educational programmes not lived up to their promise of genuinely empowering women, despite the massive supports provided by the government? How can the situation be changed so that education has a more meaningful role when thinking about gender and development rather than being a mere statistical indicator?
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This article comes from the IDS Bulletin 35.4 (2004) Within the Edifice of Development: Education of Women in India
