Education: behind the classrooms

Title: Shaping and Denying Education: Role of Class, Caste, and Gender

Author: Aman Madan 

Illustrator: AbiraBandhyopadhyay

Publisher: Eklavya Foundation

Price: 360/-

Pages: 299

License: Creative Commons 

Development Support: Tata Trusts

Education : An uneven playing field

Up at Teacher Plus, July 2026. 

In his latest book, author Aman Madan talks about the impact of inequalities in our society (gender, class, and caste) on education, the dynamic nature of these inequalities, and how societal changes in the recent decades have impacted them. The book is spread across 14 chapters, each with its own set of references. The first two chapters lay the premise, the next five focus on caste and class, the three that follow talk about gender, and the final four about government policies and intersectionality. Towards the end is a list of further readings.  

Caste and class. The author talks about caste and class in a manner that is uncommon but welcome. He gets into the details, peels away layers, and explores how caste and class impact each other. This is where the book works the best. He discusses terms like varna, jaati, gotra and their impact or roles in the society today and gives examples of where and how caste plays a role. Much as I love train travel, I had no idea that the reason why most of the food we get on railway platforms is fried is because it is believed that one can have food cooked by other (read lower) castes only if it is fried! Madan reminds us that a school’s agendas are more often than not driven by the “caste culture of the people” who set it up and some of his observations resonate, like,“Morning school assemblies celebrate the deities and religious beliefs of the ‘upper’ castes alone.” However, this book did not make me as uncomfortable with caste and class as Ravikant Kisana’s Meet the Savarnas: Indian Millennials Whose Mediocrity Broke Everything did.

Then came gender. I could not connect with the chapters on gender as much. Gender has been written about at length in recent times and the discussions around gender too have gotten more nuanced and detailed. It was also not clear as to what statements like, “Schools, colleges, and universities today are where gender is being transformed in fundamental ways,” are based on. Towards the end, the book discusses how government policies play a major role. It takes us through the early years after independence, major policy shifts in the decades that followed, and how they all impacted education. 

Overall, the tone is open and gentle. Neither does the author use jargons nor does he try to prove that he knows it all. He shares personal experiences and brings in numbers (especially the NSS data) to support his statements. These numbers together with the thoughtfully done illustrations add value to the text. Across the chapters, Madan reminds us of stark facts such as that only one fourth of those who attend school actually go on to college, and makes us think with lines such as, “Choice is an illusion, somebody has already decided that job is better than farming.”

But, the book is loaded with generalizations and in a country as diverse as ours, they do not exactly help. The preface does clarify that the book is “meant for people who are interested in the domain of education but have never studied sociology or social anthropology. It aims to introduce social inequality, particularly caste, class and gender, and how our education gets influenced by these” and that it is not written from the perspective of “activist groups”, however the book could have benefitted more from rigour in both writing and editing. 

That said, Madan’s book, like many books do, helped me pause, take a step back, and raise a few questions:

• The book states that the “rich get rich schools and the poor get poor schools.” This may be the unfortunate reality of our times. But then what are “good schools”? Are they only for the rich? Are we assuming that more money leads to better education, better learning? 
• Over the years, government policies have surely impacted education, but can we also critically look at our mentality and attitude, which directly equates education with income. We only value the degree that helps us earn more. What then is the learning, the education we deserve? 
• The book briefly talks about Nai Taleem (Anand Niketan, Wardha) but can we ask why in a country that historically has been standing on the shoulders of cultivators, herders, artisans, forest produce collectors, and craftspersons, all of us need to go to schools and colleges? 

At a time when many of us deny the existence of caste, this book can be a good tool to get introduced to caste, class, and their impact on education, and to discuss and raise questions.