Indian educational policies are conceptualised within a very narrow framework and, therefore, gender concerns find little meaningful space in the final policy documents. This is because the cultural concerns colour the vision and value frames of the policy makers. The article interrogates the process of policy formulation by looking at selected XI Plan documents. The aim is to analyse the process of policy development, unravel the rhetoric of inclusion-exclusion and the myopic decisions which hardly touch the structures of exclusivity. The exercise for the XII Plan is underway and one hopes it will move away from mere rhetoric and be an improvement both in terms of conceptualisation and delivery.
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