This paper presents results from a larger household-, school-, and institutional-level study on the role of the private sector and the early phase of implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. While some of the controversies about the RTE Act were reported in the media and publicly discussed, this paper reports data from semi-structured interviews with key education officials and implementers, some of whom were responsible for drafting the Act, and traces successive iterations of draft bills. The paper exposes contestation, controversy and concessions that were made in policy backrooms throughout the processes framing the Act.
