Bollywood’s New Heroes: An Analysis of the Role of Popular Media in shaping India’s Discourse on Privatization

• In Event: Poster session I
  In Poster Session: Poster session 1

Proposal

Three facts are about India are undeniable: 1) India’s Public Education is broken. Despite increasing enrollment, learning outcomes remain tragically low—According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2017, approximately half of all fifth grade students cannot read at a second-grade level and only a quarter can do simple division. The reasons affecting the learning outcomes are myriad: teacher absteniism remains high; teacher-training institutes are not sufficient to meet the demand for trained teachers and of the few that do exist, they are at best viewed as cash cows, which reward teachers with low-grade degrees making them ‘credentialed,’ but ill equipped to deal with the reality of the classroom; school financing remains amongst the lowest in the world – India spends only 2.7% of its GDP in schools (on average across the world, government expenditure is roughly 7%), and corruption severely undermines school administration regularly. 2) With a young workforce, massive socio-economic inequality, and a pro-market government, it is perhaps unsurprising that privatization, in the form of low-fee private schools and public-private partnerships, is increasingly marketed as a solution to India’s education crisis. Over the past few years, India has witnessed a burgeoning of “eduprenuers” and edtech solutions promising catch-words such a personalized, project-based learning. 3) Popular media in the form of films, commercials and TV shows play in an influential role in shaping public debate around key issues in India. Given these facts, I wish to explore the role of popular media in shaping the debate around India’s privatization debate. In telling its stories, what are the subversive messages that movies communicate about education, achievement, and inequality in India? What are the stories that are not heard? What is the narrative about India that becomes dominant through these movies? I will start with a historical analysis of Bollywood and how, over time, the Bollywood has shifted from viewing education as a vehicle for ‘nation-building’ to a vehicle for ‘individual achievement.’ I will show that underlying this shift is an increasing prominence of Human Capital Theory in the education policy debate in India. Next, I will analyze the stories of the saviors of education according to Bollywood and will show how these stories further a neoliberal solution to India’s education crisis. Lastly, I will focus on the gaps within these stories– who is left out in these stories? What are the voices that remain unheard? Through my analysis of popular media, I want indicate how narratives come to dominate and dictate the shaping of educational demands in the country. Currently, India’s education reform movement is occupied by a neoliberal individuals and institutions. Despite inconclusive research in America about the impact of Charter Schools and Voucher Systems, such solutions are regarded as effective and full proof. I want to analyze how the media propagates and supports these trends, and the danger of a single story in solving India’s education woes.

Author

• Radhika Kumar, Miss