Article Title: MK Gandhi’s vision of Ram Rajya

Article Summary

In this article, the author talks about expensive private schools and their deleterious effects on education and the society. In post-liberalisation India, education is quantified, commodified and designed to arouse consumerist desires of elite global schooling. Considering the shift in parental aspirations since the 90s, the ‘local’ was readily abandoned in favour of the ‘global’. The image-driven projection of schools as ‘global’, offering world-class-everything, is nothing but a visual strategy. These lavish schools have made education exclusive to those who can afford it and eventually, it boils down to one and only one tangible thing – the quantifiable outcome that determines merit and restricts entry. As the cut-offs keep soaring, the right to free and compulsory education for all stands fettered by access barriers – defeating the egalitarian purpose of education. The author says that a developed nation relies on investments in human resources by ensuring quality education at all levels and not by restricting admissions and securing privileges left to the private players. Therefore, he is not surprised that education – which was once deemed to be a service to the society has has now been transformed into a mere commodity operating on principles of the market.