Shadow Education amid Privatisation: The Emerging Educational Landscape in India

Abstract

The advent of neoliberal policies has brought about a transformative change in India’s educational system over the last three decades. In continuation of this paradigm shift, shadow education, a recent form of privatization in the form of private coaching, seems to be reshaping India’s educational landscape. Its unprecedented expansion appears to pose significant challenges to the country’s commitment to a fair and egalitarian educational system. Using secondary sources of data, this article explores the origin and nature of shadow education and its critical challenges in the social, cultural, psychological and institutional context of India. The findings underscore that shadow education is predominantly catering to a handful of the affluent sections of society, while systematically excluding underprivileged strata. Moreover, significant disparities in access to education in general and shadow education in particular are more pronounced in rural and peripheral communities, where coaching opportunities are scarce and public institutions are facing multiple challenges. It is also revealed that the rise of competitiveness, fuelled by shadow education, is detrimental to the social and psychological well-being of society. While the shadow education sector is projected to generate trillions in revenues by 2028, it is also evident that unless we address the disparities implicit in the uncontrolled, unregulated growth of the shadow education industry and its repercussions, the notion of education as a universal human right will be nothing more than an illusion.