The Holy Grail: India's Quest for Universal Elementary Education [Hardcover]

This book is a lively chronicle of Indias quest for universal elementary education (UEE) with focus on the period after 1986, a period during which India made spectacular strides and mobilised funding on an unprecedented scale from the World Bank and other agencies in an innovative manner. All in all, the Book provides information and many insights few, even experts, possess, and should be of interest to not only to educationists, and educational administrators but also scholars and practitioners of development cooperation and policymaking in general.From being a country that accounted for a third of the world's out-of-school children, India has now brought down that statistic to a minuscule 0.3 per cent. Instrumental in bringing about this change has been educational policy-making. This volume is a rare peek into the internal workings of the education ministry and development agencies through the eyes of a bureaucrat who saw from close quarters how educational policy is formulated.The author locates the developments in the education sector within larger socio-political and global contexts. The book unravels the relations between Central and state governments in a federal polity and describes educational developments at the state, national, and international levels. It traces changing trends in developmental cooperation, as well as the functioning of bilateral, regional, and multilateral organizations like the World Bank. Using theoretical concepts of decision-making, negotiation theory, and international relations, this book helps open the 'black-box' of policy-making in India.Preface List of Abbreviations 1. The Tinsel Town2. The Great Master3. The Long Journey: Early Days4. Course Correction: NPE, 19865. Sa? Vidya? Ya? Vimuktaye6. Akshara Keralam to Akshara Bharatham7. India and Jomtien8. Good Intentions Not Enough9. Big Bad Wolf10. Test Case Project Becomes Testing11. Change of Guard12. New Lamps for Old13. Opportunity Knocks at the Door14. Muddling Through15. Bl#-