Gargi Gayan
Education was seen as a key goal of the Indian state in its pursuit of development and social justice. Article 45, of the Indian constitution, reads that ‘the state shall endeavour to provide within ten years from the commencement of this constitution for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years’. Serious gaps, however, persisted between intent and actual practice. Many policy changes were sought over the years to address this, and it was in 2009 that the Right to Education Act1 was passed in Parliament. While the Act had many progressive measures that emphasized a conducive learning space, the everyday practices in schools often worked quite to the contrary. Thus, while enrolment in primary schools grew, the dropout,2 especially of girl students, particularly at the middle and high school level, also grew. This has been a matter of grave concern for a nation experiencing stark gender disparity. The central question that informs this chapter is why does this happen? Why do students, particularly girl students, drop out? Drawing from an ethnographic study of a ‘vernacular’ government school in Assam, this chapter seeks to show that the problem rests in the ways classroom transactions operate; with the assumptions that teachers coming from a social section hierarchically located vis-à-vis the students believe in and operate with the methods employed by the present structure of mass education. As each of these requires scrutiny, this chapter intends to describe how an intersection of class, caste, ethnicity, and gender defines the everyday life of girl students. And how this world that the girl students inhabit stands in sharp contrast with the everyday expectations that constitute the norms and practices of the schools.