School dropouts or pushouts? Overcoming barriers for the right to education

Persistently high dropout rates are one of the biggest challenges to fulfilling the right to education in India. This paper attempts to assess the magnitude of the problem of dropout. The paper critically reviews the evidence on some of the commonly cited reasons for dropout, including poverty, limited to access to credit, child labour, and children’s and parents’ lack of interest in education. The paper argues that the literature rarely looks at the role of procedures and rules in schools and the wider education system in terms of pushing children out of school. It is the contention of this paper that the reason a persistently high dropout rate should be located in the absence of a social norm in terms of children’s right to education; and that this is reflected in the lack of systemic support available for children at risk of dropping out. The paper also documents an experiment initiated by MV Foundation in Shankarpalle Mandal, Ranga Reddy district, Andhra Pradesh, where procedures, rules and practices relating to various aspects of school were changed to ensure that every child stayed in school and completed elementary level

Rural Transformation of a Village in Telangana, A Study of Dokur since 1970s

The structural changes taking place in villages are partly due to market forces and also because of public policy. The article examines the transformation and development of a village namely Dokur in Telangana, India which has undergone changes since mid-1970s. The village was initially studied in 1975–1984 by the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), but resurveyed from 2001 to 2014. There has been seen a significant change since 1980s in its livelihood diversity. Until the mid-1970s, there was more focus on green revolution technologies under the assumption that the trickle-down effect would take care of poverty. Hence, in the initial years, very few development programmes existed and were mostly focused on agriculture growth. Although public distribution system was in place from the mid 1970s, a new government initiative targeted poverty directly through a 20-point plan. From the 1990s, more specific schemes were introduced, which often targeted poor, scheduled castes and tribes (SC and ST) and other backward castes (OBC) as well as small and marginal farmers also. After realizing that most of the benefits were captured by village elites and large farmers, the focus shifted to self-targeting of various developments and social safety net programmes targeting lower castes and poorer households in the late 2000s, especially after the introduction of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). This was also an attempt to reduce gender bias in the programmes. The participation of poor, SC and ST and women increased after the self-targeting schemes were introduced in the country. The Public Distribution System (PDS), Indira Awas Yojana (IAY), pension schemes, complete sanitation programmes, agricultural input subsidy programme, million wells programmes, loan waiver scheme and the drought relief programmes had positive impacts on livelihoods, but with less targeting. Most of the gains from agricultural subsidies were enjoyed by medium and large farmers, although small SC and ST farmers benefited some what. However, all indicators show a systematic and considerable increase in living standards