Abstract
This paper probes the social and spatial distribution of educational resources in the dynamic space of an urban fringe of Delhi. It is based on the recognition that formal structured education, is a non-negotiable in the urban shift towards non-agricultural occupations and for realisation of better living conditions and higher incomes. It draws upon primary sources including ethnographic data collected by the author from an urban fringe of Delhi, which has been given the pseudonym of Morpur. There are reflections here based on data gathered through questionnaires, land records, and school reports as well as longitudinal findings from detailed interviews conducted between 2005 and 2012 with 85 students and their families living in the area. To elaborate the meaning of an urban fringe of a metropolis and the nature of urban agglomerations, the first part of this paper highlights the specific case of Morpur, followed by an exploration of the educational institutions, services and information that pose as educational opportunity in the area. In the final section, drawing upon the space and its social configurations, urban fringe is identified as being on the margins of ‘opportunity’. This brings us back to concerns about educational inequalities, as urbanisation expands its roots in India. In this scenario a few possible interventions are contemplated, which could expand access and improve the quality of educational opportunity available in an urban fringe.
Urbanisation as opportunity continues to be a normative question in India and it is put here in quotes to highlight the peculiar meanings that opportunity assumes in the urban fringe.
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Notes
- 1.
In order to maintain the confidentiality of the respondents pseudonyms have been used in this paper.
- 2.
- 3.
The unauthorized colonies of Delhi include farm houses belonging to the city’s wealthy, who in a bid to avail benefits of village life have set up exclusive communities without authorisation. However the spatial inequalities in asset ownership and density of population in the urban fringe, indicate that even though farm houses have taken over large tracts of land, these non agricultural gated communities do not typify life in Delhi’s urban fringe.
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Acknowledgements
This paper draws upon data collected during the fieldwork for my doctoral thesis (Menon R. Social Access, Participation and Attainments: A sociological study of two secondary schools in Delhi, 2014), which was supervised by Professor Geetha B. Nambissan, ZHCES, JNU. I would like to thank her for the questions flagged off as the editor of this section and also for her comments that enabled writing of this paper. The review comments by Professor William T. Pink helped in finalising this paper. Questions raised by Professor Purendra Prasad and Professor Nandini Manjrekar on the abstract of this paper have helped me deliberate on them. Discussions with Mr Rajendra Pratholi, Mr Jung Bahadur, Mr Kushwaha and with numerous youth from Morpur have provided insights on Delhi.
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Menon, R. (2017). On the Margins of ‘Opportunity’: Urbanisation and Education in Delhi’s Metropolitan Fringe. In: Pink, W., Noblit, G. (eds) Second International Handbook of Urban Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40317-5_25
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