Piecing the Puzzle

“Education” in its broadest sense has been a matter of great scholastic, policy and moral interest. Despite this, a comprehensive understanding of the scope of the term “education” and its various facets is difficult to map. Education, given its relevance, dynamism,and complexities forms a subject that is both generic enough for anyone to venture a dialogue with and complex enough for anyone to completely grasp. With multiple agencies, stakeholders and institutions interpreting what constitutes education, the dialogue on education in the Indian context is fraught with challenges. Amidst the cacophony created by research findings and studies being done by universities, government agencies, non-governmental agencies, and many other stakeholders, it is difficult to make any comprehensive sense of the state of education in the country. There is a lack of consensus among, and even within these various agencies. For instance, there exists an implicit divide between departments of education (DoE) and centres for educational studies (CES) at various universities. There is little or no engagement between these two as they maintain distinct spheres of influence. As a result, there is a huge body of non-convergent research and parallel running scholarly dialogue.

With a gamut of research themes, locales and stakeholders and a number of competing world views, it is immensely difficult to produce a coherent sense of education in India. What must, therefore, be borne in mind is that compiling an edited volume on education is a challenge, in that, it needs to cover a wide ground, capture realities of diverse socio-economic contexts, all the while negotiating the different perspectives and voices to maintaining coherence and focus. To, therefore, embark on the quest to make a handbook of education is in itself an ambitious endeavour. To espouse to write a handbook of education in a context as diverse as the Indian subcontinent is a mammoth task. In this regard, Routledge Handbook of Education in India: Debates, Practices, and Policies takes on a brave challenge by deliberating over in scholarly voices situated across CES and DoE along with sociologists, geographers, anthropologists, historians, and physicists, among others.