Manisha Priyam | National University of Educational Planning and Administration (original) (raw)
Papers by Manisha Priyam
South Asian history and culture, Apr 9, 2024
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 5, 2015
There exists today a critical discourse on educational policy, as it has evolved alongside domina... more There exists today a critical discourse on educational policy, as it has evolved alongside dominant notions of development and its critique. This dominant notion of development emerged following the Second World War. At that time, the global order was characterized by a cold war, with its bipolar division of a “First World” and a “Second World,” based on ideological grounds. There emerged simultaneously, a conglomerate of countries referred to as the “Third World,” sharing a common colonial past, located mostly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and viewed to be in need of development. Underdevelopment in these countries was a construct—understood as descriptive structural features of poverty, illiteracy, traditional orientation, among others. Economic growth and modernization were the prescribed measures for development—as if the “Third World” would progress by following the structural features of more “evolved” Western countries. Education was an important tool in this project, responsible for creating the appropriate civic attitudes both for modernization and for stimulating economic growth. The human capital theory was an economic variant of the ideas of modernization—it underscored the notion that investments in education were akin to physical capital; these would yield future benefits to society. There was an abundant desire amongst the political elites of these newly independent countries to provide for mass education as a way of liberation and progress. National education policies, and systems to implement them, were set up incorporating these ideas. Leading international organizations—such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), UN Development Programme (UNDP), later the World Bank, and now the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), helped translate these ideas into policy choices and influence agenda setting for educational policy. By the 1990s, there was abundant critique of modernization as development and of national systems of education as systems of power bereft of normative ideas about the intrinsic value of education. This gap was filled by the capabilities approach enunciated by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. The capabilities approach argues that the ends of development are not simply economic growth, but the expansion of opportunities and substantive freedoms. Education is intrinsic to the development of capabilities and for substantive freedoms. Since the 1990s, the capabilities approach and the human development paradigm have been guiding influences in development policy and education. Education policies influenced by the human development paradigm recognize the complex challenges poor people face and do not advance a fixed template of policy prescriptions in the name of development. Following the Education For All conference in 1990 and, a decade later, the adoption of Millennium Development Goals in 2000, there have been significant efforts, on a global scale, toward converging the educational policy ideas and actions of international agencies and national governments. Simultaneously, the expansion of globalization on an unprecedented scale now influences education policy in unanticipated ways, as the nation-state declines in importance. In an era of global governance, transnational policies on education that emphasize learning achievements, benchmarking, and testing are gaining currency. National education systems may no longer matter. Globalization, especially its alliance with neo-liberalism, also finds strong criticism from social movements and from scholars who question development, argue in favor of post-development, and call for respect and recognition of diversity of competing epistemes of learning.
Draining a nation's wealth? Coal denationalisation in India blogs.lse.ac.uk /southasia/2012/09/24... more Draining a nation's wealth? Coal denationalisation in India blogs.lse.ac.uk /southasia/2012/09/24/draining-a-nations-wealth-coal-denationalisation-in-india/ Manisha Priyam analyses the Indian government's decision to allocate coal resources to private players after three decades of state control and identifies reasons why a reasonable policy led to irregularities.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 5, 2015
Routledge eBooks, Mar 22, 2022
This piece attempts to analyse some of the dilemmas of institutionalism with respect to public un... more This piece attempts to analyse some of the dilemmas of institutionalism with respect to public universities in postcolonial societies and the developing world in the era of globalisation. Higher education in postcolonial societies has been developed on account of complex efforts to build national capacities. These societies aspired to build public universities and provide higher education to their masses as a part of their aspirations for nation building following the struggle for independence. Hitherto, universities had been seen as an exclusive institutional preserve of the Western world – the ‘core’ where these ideas grew as central public institutions. In contrast, in postcolonial societies, universities were like a less developed ‘periphery’ (as compared to the West). Yet, they were public institutions on which hopes of both freedom and development were pinned. In Nyere’s Tanzania, they were to be vehicles of both national self-reliance and self-respect.
In a two-part series, Manisha Priyam analyses the gruesome tragedy of 23 children who died in a B... more In a two-part series, Manisha Priyam analyses the gruesome tragedy of 23 children who died in a Bihar village, Gandaman, after consuming a school lunch served under India's flagship midday meal scheme. In part one, Priyam provides a narrative account of the tragedy, including voices from the grieving poor. In part two, she analyses the local political economy in areas where schools for India's most poor and vulnerable people are located as well as the formidable challenge in realising rights as entitlements. July 16 will rightly be marked as one of the most tragic days in the history of the child rights movement in India. On this day, in a devastating tragedy, 23 children in Gandaman Dharmasati, Chapra district, Bihar, died after eating a school lunch served to them under India's flagship midday meal programme (MDM). All the children were aged between 5 and 9 years and attended classes in a cramped, dilapidated single room located in the village commons.
Manisha Priyam finds that state-level political strategies and the contested interaction of inter... more Manisha Priyam finds that state-level political strategies and the contested interaction of interest groups and institutions are important elements in determining the outcome of educational policy reforms. The policy changes that initiated economic reforms in India in the 1990s and the politics associated with this process have been widely debated in the global arena. However, the politics of educational reforms have not received comparable attention. Writing about Latin America in "Crucial Needs, Weak Incentives", Robert Kaufman and Joan Nelson observe that the politics of 'first-phase' macroeconomic reforms are examined extensively while 'second-phase' social sector reforms receive belated and scant attention. This is true of India as well. Part of the reason for this limited attention is the difference in the nature of these two policy reforms-economic policy changes tend to have an immediate impact on daily lives whereas reforms in education and health involve slow changes to complex administrative machineries.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 5, 2015
List of Figures and Tables Preface List of Abbreviations Introduction: Understanding the 'Mis... more List of Figures and Tables Preface List of Abbreviations Introduction: Understanding the 'Missing' Politics in Educational Reform 1. Theory and Practice of Educational Reform in India: A Review 2. The Context of Change: Centre Sets the Agenda 3. Federal Opportunities, State-level Implementation: The Puzzle of Contrasting Outcomes in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar 4. Reform Opponents: Do Teachers and their Unions Resist the Implementation of Change? 5. Reform Proponents? Contrasting Effects of Educational Decentralization and Community Participation 6. Politics, Schools, and the Poor: A Local View 7. Politics Matters: The Continuing Agenda of Educational Reform Research Methods Appendix Glossary Bibliography Index About the Author
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 5, 2015
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 5, 2015
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 5, 2015
List of Figures and Tables Preface List of Abbreviations Introduction: Understanding the 'Mis... more List of Figures and Tables Preface List of Abbreviations Introduction: Understanding the 'Missing' Politics in Educational Reform 1. Theory and Practice of Educational Reform in India: A Review 2. The Context of Change: Centre Sets the Agenda 3. Federal Opportunities, State-level Implementation: The Puzzle of Contrasting Outcomes in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar 4. Reform Opponents: Do Teachers and their Unions Resist the Implementation of Change? 5. Reform Proponents? Contrasting Effects of Educational Decentralization and Community Participation 6. Politics, Schools, and the Poor: A Local View 7. Politics Matters: The Continuing Agenda of Educational Reform Research Methods Appendix Glossary Bibliography Index About the Author
Studies in Indian Politics, May 27, 2015
On the basis of an electoral ethnography done in an urban periphery of Delhi, this article presen... more On the basis of an electoral ethnography done in an urban periphery of Delhi, this article presents an interpretive account of Indian national elections 2014. At a time when sovereignty travels to a locality—in this case an unauthorized settlement known as Sangam Vihar—how do people deliberate on the act of voting? Sangam Vihar also faces severe segregation and restrictions on access to services such as water on account of its illegality and it’s being ‘off’ the city’s authorized master plan. In a locality such as this, how do its marginal citizens act in context-bound ways? What do they make of the larger national phenomena, such as the national elections, as it plays out in their neighbourhood? Listening to people’s responses on issues they consider important as they are about to make their decision, following political rallies and meetings and interviewing political actors, the author put together voices in three ‘arenas’ or sites of democracy. These arenas are more of a heuristic device and help at once aggregate what the author hears. They help the author to present an idea of democracy, where citizens assert their differences to create a plural public sphere.
Exploring urban change in South Asia, 2017
The current debate in India on social protection for the poor and poverty alleviation, more gener... more The current debate in India on social protection for the poor and poverty alleviation, more generally, is poised between votaries of cash transfers and those who see the possibility that such transfers will erode the existing Public Distribution System. Each policy choice is viewed as aligned to contrasting ideologies for growth and development. The provision of grains through state-designated fair-price shops is argued to be close to a left-leaning and humane ideological position, whereas votaries of direct cash transfers are type-casted as leaning to the right, and a retreat from the normative welfare obligation of the state. Drawing on the experience of a process of practical policy change with respect to social protection in the state of Delhi—one which led to an idea interchange between them and the Bolsa Familia in Brazil—this chapter argues that not only are these binary positions on social policy somewhat untenable, there are shared foundational principles on both sides. More importantly, there is a sense in which both arguments are still far away from what the city’s poor expect from the state. It is critical to think about social policy renewal as being embedded within the lives of the poor.
dreams-barriers-to-civic-and-social-rights-in-an-unauthorisedcolony/ Manisha Priyam draws on ethn... more dreams-barriers-to-civic-and-social-rights-in-an-unauthorisedcolony/ Manisha Priyam draws on ethnographic research over eight months to highlight experiences of citizens on the urban periphery. She argues that it is not lack of money but rather desperation for water and the lack of ability to make the state hear their grievances that constitutes 'poverty' in Delhi's unauthorised colonies. This is a narrative of the political from the spatial sites of the ordinary city of Delhi-places that are on the urban 'periphery'. To the south of South Delhi's richest residential areas, there is one such periphery-the 'unauthorised/illegal' colony of Sangam Vihar. While maps of the Forest Department show this area as open degraded forest, in real life it is inhabited by more than 2.5 lakh (250,000) people, mostly the labouring poor, providing services to the richer and urbanised parts of the city.
Manisha Priyam finds that state-level political strategies and the contested interaction of inter... more Manisha Priyam finds that state-level political strategies and the contested interaction of interest groups and institutions are important elements in determining the outcome of educational policy reforms. The policy changes that initiated economic reforms in India in the 1990s and the politics associated with this process have been widely debated in the global arena. However, the politics of educational reforms have not received comparable attention. Writing about Latin America in "Crucial Needs, Weak Incentives", Robert Kaufman and Joan Nelson observe that the politics of 'first-phase' macroeconomic reforms are examined extensively while 'second-phase' social sector reforms receive belated and scant attention. This is true of India as well. Part of the reason for this limited attention is the difference in the nature of these two policy reforms-economic policy changes tend to have an immediate impact on daily lives whereas reforms in education and health involve slow changes to complex administrative machineries.
South Asian history and culture, Apr 9, 2024
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 5, 2015
There exists today a critical discourse on educational policy, as it has evolved alongside domina... more There exists today a critical discourse on educational policy, as it has evolved alongside dominant notions of development and its critique. This dominant notion of development emerged following the Second World War. At that time, the global order was characterized by a cold war, with its bipolar division of a “First World” and a “Second World,” based on ideological grounds. There emerged simultaneously, a conglomerate of countries referred to as the “Third World,” sharing a common colonial past, located mostly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and viewed to be in need of development. Underdevelopment in these countries was a construct—understood as descriptive structural features of poverty, illiteracy, traditional orientation, among others. Economic growth and modernization were the prescribed measures for development—as if the “Third World” would progress by following the structural features of more “evolved” Western countries. Education was an important tool in this project, responsible for creating the appropriate civic attitudes both for modernization and for stimulating economic growth. The human capital theory was an economic variant of the ideas of modernization—it underscored the notion that investments in education were akin to physical capital; these would yield future benefits to society. There was an abundant desire amongst the political elites of these newly independent countries to provide for mass education as a way of liberation and progress. National education policies, and systems to implement them, were set up incorporating these ideas. Leading international organizations—such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), UN Development Programme (UNDP), later the World Bank, and now the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), helped translate these ideas into policy choices and influence agenda setting for educational policy. By the 1990s, there was abundant critique of modernization as development and of national systems of education as systems of power bereft of normative ideas about the intrinsic value of education. This gap was filled by the capabilities approach enunciated by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. The capabilities approach argues that the ends of development are not simply economic growth, but the expansion of opportunities and substantive freedoms. Education is intrinsic to the development of capabilities and for substantive freedoms. Since the 1990s, the capabilities approach and the human development paradigm have been guiding influences in development policy and education. Education policies influenced by the human development paradigm recognize the complex challenges poor people face and do not advance a fixed template of policy prescriptions in the name of development. Following the Education For All conference in 1990 and, a decade later, the adoption of Millennium Development Goals in 2000, there have been significant efforts, on a global scale, toward converging the educational policy ideas and actions of international agencies and national governments. Simultaneously, the expansion of globalization on an unprecedented scale now influences education policy in unanticipated ways, as the nation-state declines in importance. In an era of global governance, transnational policies on education that emphasize learning achievements, benchmarking, and testing are gaining currency. National education systems may no longer matter. Globalization, especially its alliance with neo-liberalism, also finds strong criticism from social movements and from scholars who question development, argue in favor of post-development, and call for respect and recognition of diversity of competing epistemes of learning.
Draining a nation's wealth? Coal denationalisation in India blogs.lse.ac.uk /southasia/2012/09/24... more Draining a nation's wealth? Coal denationalisation in India blogs.lse.ac.uk /southasia/2012/09/24/draining-a-nations-wealth-coal-denationalisation-in-india/ Manisha Priyam analyses the Indian government's decision to allocate coal resources to private players after three decades of state control and identifies reasons why a reasonable policy led to irregularities.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 5, 2015
Routledge eBooks, Mar 22, 2022
This piece attempts to analyse some of the dilemmas of institutionalism with respect to public un... more This piece attempts to analyse some of the dilemmas of institutionalism with respect to public universities in postcolonial societies and the developing world in the era of globalisation. Higher education in postcolonial societies has been developed on account of complex efforts to build national capacities. These societies aspired to build public universities and provide higher education to their masses as a part of their aspirations for nation building following the struggle for independence. Hitherto, universities had been seen as an exclusive institutional preserve of the Western world – the ‘core’ where these ideas grew as central public institutions. In contrast, in postcolonial societies, universities were like a less developed ‘periphery’ (as compared to the West). Yet, they were public institutions on which hopes of both freedom and development were pinned. In Nyere’s Tanzania, they were to be vehicles of both national self-reliance and self-respect.
In a two-part series, Manisha Priyam analyses the gruesome tragedy of 23 children who died in a B... more In a two-part series, Manisha Priyam analyses the gruesome tragedy of 23 children who died in a Bihar village, Gandaman, after consuming a school lunch served under India's flagship midday meal scheme. In part one, Priyam provides a narrative account of the tragedy, including voices from the grieving poor. In part two, she analyses the local political economy in areas where schools for India's most poor and vulnerable people are located as well as the formidable challenge in realising rights as entitlements. July 16 will rightly be marked as one of the most tragic days in the history of the child rights movement in India. On this day, in a devastating tragedy, 23 children in Gandaman Dharmasati, Chapra district, Bihar, died after eating a school lunch served to them under India's flagship midday meal programme (MDM). All the children were aged between 5 and 9 years and attended classes in a cramped, dilapidated single room located in the village commons.
Manisha Priyam finds that state-level political strategies and the contested interaction of inter... more Manisha Priyam finds that state-level political strategies and the contested interaction of interest groups and institutions are important elements in determining the outcome of educational policy reforms. The policy changes that initiated economic reforms in India in the 1990s and the politics associated with this process have been widely debated in the global arena. However, the politics of educational reforms have not received comparable attention. Writing about Latin America in "Crucial Needs, Weak Incentives", Robert Kaufman and Joan Nelson observe that the politics of 'first-phase' macroeconomic reforms are examined extensively while 'second-phase' social sector reforms receive belated and scant attention. This is true of India as well. Part of the reason for this limited attention is the difference in the nature of these two policy reforms-economic policy changes tend to have an immediate impact on daily lives whereas reforms in education and health involve slow changes to complex administrative machineries.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 5, 2015
List of Figures and Tables Preface List of Abbreviations Introduction: Understanding the 'Mis... more List of Figures and Tables Preface List of Abbreviations Introduction: Understanding the 'Missing' Politics in Educational Reform 1. Theory and Practice of Educational Reform in India: A Review 2. The Context of Change: Centre Sets the Agenda 3. Federal Opportunities, State-level Implementation: The Puzzle of Contrasting Outcomes in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar 4. Reform Opponents: Do Teachers and their Unions Resist the Implementation of Change? 5. Reform Proponents? Contrasting Effects of Educational Decentralization and Community Participation 6. Politics, Schools, and the Poor: A Local View 7. Politics Matters: The Continuing Agenda of Educational Reform Research Methods Appendix Glossary Bibliography Index About the Author
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 5, 2015
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 5, 2015
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 5, 2015
List of Figures and Tables Preface List of Abbreviations Introduction: Understanding the 'Mis... more List of Figures and Tables Preface List of Abbreviations Introduction: Understanding the 'Missing' Politics in Educational Reform 1. Theory and Practice of Educational Reform in India: A Review 2. The Context of Change: Centre Sets the Agenda 3. Federal Opportunities, State-level Implementation: The Puzzle of Contrasting Outcomes in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar 4. Reform Opponents: Do Teachers and their Unions Resist the Implementation of Change? 5. Reform Proponents? Contrasting Effects of Educational Decentralization and Community Participation 6. Politics, Schools, and the Poor: A Local View 7. Politics Matters: The Continuing Agenda of Educational Reform Research Methods Appendix Glossary Bibliography Index About the Author
Studies in Indian Politics, May 27, 2015
On the basis of an electoral ethnography done in an urban periphery of Delhi, this article presen... more On the basis of an electoral ethnography done in an urban periphery of Delhi, this article presents an interpretive account of Indian national elections 2014. At a time when sovereignty travels to a locality—in this case an unauthorized settlement known as Sangam Vihar—how do people deliberate on the act of voting? Sangam Vihar also faces severe segregation and restrictions on access to services such as water on account of its illegality and it’s being ‘off’ the city’s authorized master plan. In a locality such as this, how do its marginal citizens act in context-bound ways? What do they make of the larger national phenomena, such as the national elections, as it plays out in their neighbourhood? Listening to people’s responses on issues they consider important as they are about to make their decision, following political rallies and meetings and interviewing political actors, the author put together voices in three ‘arenas’ or sites of democracy. These arenas are more of a heuristic device and help at once aggregate what the author hears. They help the author to present an idea of democracy, where citizens assert their differences to create a plural public sphere.
Exploring urban change in South Asia, 2017
The current debate in India on social protection for the poor and poverty alleviation, more gener... more The current debate in India on social protection for the poor and poverty alleviation, more generally, is poised between votaries of cash transfers and those who see the possibility that such transfers will erode the existing Public Distribution System. Each policy choice is viewed as aligned to contrasting ideologies for growth and development. The provision of grains through state-designated fair-price shops is argued to be close to a left-leaning and humane ideological position, whereas votaries of direct cash transfers are type-casted as leaning to the right, and a retreat from the normative welfare obligation of the state. Drawing on the experience of a process of practical policy change with respect to social protection in the state of Delhi—one which led to an idea interchange between them and the Bolsa Familia in Brazil—this chapter argues that not only are these binary positions on social policy somewhat untenable, there are shared foundational principles on both sides. More importantly, there is a sense in which both arguments are still far away from what the city’s poor expect from the state. It is critical to think about social policy renewal as being embedded within the lives of the poor.
dreams-barriers-to-civic-and-social-rights-in-an-unauthorisedcolony/ Manisha Priyam draws on ethn... more dreams-barriers-to-civic-and-social-rights-in-an-unauthorisedcolony/ Manisha Priyam draws on ethnographic research over eight months to highlight experiences of citizens on the urban periphery. She argues that it is not lack of money but rather desperation for water and the lack of ability to make the state hear their grievances that constitutes 'poverty' in Delhi's unauthorised colonies. This is a narrative of the political from the spatial sites of the ordinary city of Delhi-places that are on the urban 'periphery'. To the south of South Delhi's richest residential areas, there is one such periphery-the 'unauthorised/illegal' colony of Sangam Vihar. While maps of the Forest Department show this area as open degraded forest, in real life it is inhabited by more than 2.5 lakh (250,000) people, mostly the labouring poor, providing services to the richer and urbanised parts of the city.
Manisha Priyam finds that state-level political strategies and the contested interaction of inter... more Manisha Priyam finds that state-level political strategies and the contested interaction of interest groups and institutions are important elements in determining the outcome of educational policy reforms. The policy changes that initiated economic reforms in India in the 1990s and the politics associated with this process have been widely debated in the global arena. However, the politics of educational reforms have not received comparable attention. Writing about Latin America in "Crucial Needs, Weak Incentives", Robert Kaufman and Joan Nelson observe that the politics of 'first-phase' macroeconomic reforms are examined extensively while 'second-phase' social sector reforms receive belated and scant attention. This is true of India as well. Part of the reason for this limited attention is the difference in the nature of these two policy reforms-economic policy changes tend to have an immediate impact on daily lives whereas reforms in education and health involve slow changes to complex administrative machineries.