Priyam, Manisha
(2012)
Aligning opportunities and interests: the politics of educational reform in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
This thesis investigates the role of politics in implementing educational reform in India
during the period 1994 to 2011. Much of the recent research on politics and educational
reform has been dominated by the analytical framework of formal political economy, but
this framework has not been able to explain how reforms are successfully adopted. Also,
the main focus has been on the negative role of politics, controlled by powerful interest
groups and biased institutions, in constraining changes likely to benefit poor people. I
focus instead on understanding the political dynamics in cases of success. In particular,
why do political leaders and public officials support educational reform even though this
does not suit their political calculations, and is likely to encounter resistance from teacher
unions and educational bureaucracies? To understand these dynamics, I use the framework
of comparative institutionalism, and examine the contested interaction of ideas, interests,
and institutions, leading to success or failure.
To analyse the process of reform implementation, I have selected two Indian
states—Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. Both were educationally backward at the beginning of
the 1990s and were confronted with a common agenda for reform established by the
federal government. However, they pursued divergent trajectories over the next decade,
with the former state achieving higher levels and reduced disparities in primary school
participation. I compare the political dynamics in three important arenas: the management
of teacher interests and their unions, educational decentralisation, and the daily interactions
between poor households, schools, and the local state.
I find that political strategies are important in determining variations in outcomes.
In Andhra Pradesh, the political leadership found an alignment between the new
opportunities provided by the federal government and its own agenda for development; it
created new allies for change by reducing discretion in teacher policies, playing on interunion rivalries, and creating a local cadre of party loyalists. However, a wider agenda of
development was missing in Bihar, and even successfully designed school decentralisation
policies could not be implemented due to weak support from political leaders, and because
of local elite capture. In both the states, however, the interaction of the poor with schools
and the local state was a process of struggle, indicative of the challenges that lie ahead.
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