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International agreements that aim to achieve universal primary education for all children, regardless of need or ability, have ensured that governments around the world have considered policy development to support greater equity in education. Many of the world’s more economically advantaged countries have made significant progress to ensure that all children have opportunities to attend school. Progress has also been evident in countries which are less advantaged, though often this has been inhibited because of a lack of resources and expertise. The relationship between policy, provision, and practice in education is complex, and in responding to international agreements, governments have needed to take account of their own cultural and socio-economic circumstances. While many administrations have adopted models developed in other countries, the need to take account of existing practices and to build upon local expertise is apparent.

The risk of HIV infection looms large among male, female, and transgender sex workers in India. Several individual, sociocultural, and structural-environmental factors enhance the risk of HIV infection among sex workers by restricting their ability to engage in safer sexual practices with clients and/or intimate partners. While most HIV prevention programs and research focus on visible groups of women sex workers operating from brothels (Pardasani, 2005) and traditional sex workers, for example, Devadasis (Orchard, 2007); there is a whole subgroup of the sex worker population that remains invisible within HIV prevention programs, such as the male, female, and transgender sex workers operating from non-brothel-based settings. This paper provides an overview of the different types and contexts of sex work prevalent in Indian society, discusses the factors that increase a sex worker’s risk of HIV infection, describes the varied approaches to HIV prevention adopted by the existing HIV prevention programs for sex workers, discusses the limitations of the HIV prevention programs, and concludes with implications for social work practice and education.

India has witnessed a substantial decline in the rate of new HIV infections in the past decade. Despite the reduction in incidence, the social determinants of health, such as poverty, gender inequality, and stigma, have made tackling the disease challenging for medical practitioners, health educators, and social workers, among other stakeholders. This article describes social determinants of HIV/AIDS and provides a brief history of shifts in the HIV/AIDS policies in India, with an overview of the current policy that is complicated by regional variations in HIV prevalence and transmission. In addition, it discusses the nature and impact of HIV in different communities vulnerable to the infection, major interventions supported by the Indian government, and the diverse roles played by social workers in combating the epidemic and providing services to people living with HIV/AIDS.

Climate change as a global crisis looms large in the public imagination, along with a widespread acknowledgement of a need to develop educational interventions and strategies that can help people engage with the climate emergency. However, conventional environmental education (EE) for a large part has remained focused on climate literacy and techno-scientific determinism, thus lacking the conceptual tools to engage with the sociopolitical, cognitive, and normative aspects of climate crises. Given the abstract, temporally stretched, and geographically diffused and distributed nature of the issue, the challenge for educators goes beyond an epistemic framing to encompass value-laden ideas of social justice, ecological sustainability, and collective well-being. Pedagogical efforts need to radically expand their reach to include context-specific, historical trajectories and development narratives that have shaped the current debates in climate mitigation and adaptation. The environmental discourse around climate change has been problematic in the Global South given that those discussions tend to eclipse the more pressing, local issues of pollution, soil degradation, water scarcity, or waste management. However, a growing understanding of the complex linkage between climate and other environmental issues has prompted newer forms of discourse and engagement. India faces daunting challenges as a large agrarian economy poised to bear the brunt of climate related events, alongside the material aspirations of a growing middle class. Nevertheless, numerous grassroots experiments are offering pathways for an alternate view of development and well-being through examples of resilience and adaptation. A historical and spatially grounded discussion of the climate change debates along with an exploration of promising initiatives can guide the design of EE for climate justice.

The Chalcolithic Period of India, first identified at the site of Jorwe in the 1950s, is an important cultural period in the history of India’s civilizational development, especially for the Central, Deccan, Southern, and Eastern regions of the subcontinent. The period ranges from the 3rd millennium bce to the mid-1st millennium bce and covers the origin, development, and decline phases of the Chalcolithic cultures in these regions. While traditionally referred to as two distinct groups, the “Central” Indian and “Deccan” Chalcolithic cultures represent a cultural continuum across the regions of southeast Rajasthan or Mewar, Central India or Malwa, and the Deccan. The archaeological sites are found along the river valleys, and some of the typological sites include Ahar, Balathal, and Gilund in Mewar; Kayatha, Eran, Navdatoli in Malwa; and Savalda, Inamgaon, and Daimabad in the Deccan region. The Central Indian and Deccan Chalcolithic cultures form a cultural community defined by the Black-on-Red Ware (B-on-RW) and the Black-and-Red Ware (B&RW) ceramic types, along with their associated pottery types that have helped frame the chronology and cultural sequence of origin, development, and decline. Also referred to as the early farming communities, they are defined by a sedentary lifestyle with permanent and semi-permanent structures, an agropastoral economy with the production of goods for exchange and commerce, along with variations in religious practices that include fire worship, bull worship, and distinctive burial customs, among others as identified by the excavators. Based on stratigraphic sequence, stylistic similarities, and material culture, five distinct cultural phases have been identified in Central India and the Deccan—namely, the Ahar, Kayatha, and Savalda followed by the Malwa and Jorwe. The origin of these cultures, while not distinctively clear, has been attributed to various native and foreign elements including the Mesolithic and Neolithic cultures of the region, contemporary Pre-Early-Mature-and-Late Harappan cultures, and West Asian influence, among others. The Chalcolithic period in the history of the Indian subcontinent provides a bridge between Prehistory and Early History while raising several relevant questions with regard to its identity in terms of origin and influence, and its placement within the general frame of existing archaeological chronology between the Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Iron Age. Interaction and exchange networks within cultures such as the Southern Neolithic and Harappans—including Early, Mature, and Late periods of Haryana, Gujarat, and north Rajasthan, which contribute to the Chalcolithic period’s rich material assemblage—need to be seen from a fresh perspective. In addition, it is important to reexamine the excavated material from these sites, and possibly undertake fresh excavations in light of new information from sites in southeast Rajasthan, to establish the cultural continuum that these Chalcolithic cultures represent within the chronology of cultural development of the subcontinent.

The challenge of providing education that is inclusive and seen as equitable for all children is one that has exercised policy makers and education professionals in most countries throughout the late 20th and early 21st centuries. International agreements such as UNESCO’s 1990 Jomtien Declaration and 1994 Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education were instrumental in promoting debate about the rights of children who were denied access to an appropriate schooling and who, in some instances, had no opportunity to obtain any formal education. The Education for All Goals, which were used to prioritize the development of universal primary education, and more recently the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Education Goals, which reiterated a commitment to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (Goal 4), have increased the focus upon developing inclusive education. This has encouraged governments around the world to re-examine the ways in which they provide schooling for their children and young people. With such a plethora of initiatives, agreements, and advice, it is only to be expected that most national administrations have felt it necessary to respond and to demonstrate that they are taking action towards improving educational opportunities for all. However, the relationship between policy and practice is complex; and in some instances, the development of legislation has failed to provide increased equity in the manner that was intended. This article considers two distinctly different routes towards achieving inclusive education and discusses those factors that have either supported or inhibited success. In drawing upon examples from current developments in India, it additionally proposes that researchers who conduct investigations in international contexts should invest time in understanding underlying policy and cultural and historical factors that may impact upon the ways in which we interpret meaning from data.

Decolonization is a historic process that picked up momentum in the second half of the 20th century, whereby several countries of the Global South in Asia, Africa, and Latin America successively gained independence from European colonial rule and became sovereign modern nation-states. However, territorial independence from an external ruling power alone could not bring an end to all the social, political, and economic problems ushered in by hundreds of years of imperialism. This fact was realized long before independence from colonial rule by Rabindranath Tagore within the context of British colonial India. Hence, even before territorial and political decolonization, Tagore sought to decolonize the minds of people through education reform by first setting up his own school in 1901 and then establishing Visva-Bharati University in 1921. In fact, Tagore, who is the author of the national anthems of two independent modern South Asian nation-states, never saw independent India. He died in 1941 as a British colonial subject, six years before the independence of India from colonial rule in 1947. While many indigenous intellectuals of his era adopted violent and nonviolent methods to fight against British imperialism, Tagore devoted much of his adult life to the pursuit of freedom through pedagogic reforms. Tagore’s philosophy and practice of pedagogic reform sought to “decolonize education” in British colonial India. Tagore’s own writings on education beginning in 1892 reveal that his philosophy and practice to “decolonize education” was based on the memory and critical reflections on his own experiences as a student in mainstream schools during the British colonial era in India. Tagore’s philosophy of education, institutionalized through his decolonizing pedagogic reform work in his school and university at Bolepur, Shantiniketan, were concrete responses of a highly creative and critical-thinking indigenous intellectual to the problems of the mainstream education system during his time. Hence, studying Tagore’s perspective on “decolonizing education” can provide us with a deeper understanding of the educational problems posed by British imperialism in India, as well as the evolution of these problems in the colonial metropole, which became global in nature through the process of colonialism, as has been argued by a number of academics, including modern British historian Michael Collins and postcolonial Indian academic Sanjukta Dasgupta.

Policy discourses on education in all countries are historically shaped by a range of regional, national, and global factors and dynamics. In the Indian context, ideological and structural contexts have influenced the policy visions and practices of gender and schooling, particularly in relation to the education of girls. Mapping historical shifts over the colonial and post-colonial periods up to the present, the early 21st century, reveals the intersections of ideologies and structures associated with both gender as a social category and education as a state project. Such a discursive cartography reveals certain key moments that point to how these intersections have impacted practices and processes within school education. From the early 2000s, the intensification of neoliberal economic reforms has been marked by an ideological shift that sees education as a private good and the operation of discourses of school choice. The ascendance of majoritarian nationalism and its presence in state power has also seen an undermining of the gains in women’s education. At the same time, India passed a historic legislation, the Right to Education Act (2009), making education a fundamental right of all children. These somewhat contradictory and competing discourses and practices have had critical implications for the education of children of marginalized communities like the lower and former untouchable castes (Dalits), marginalized ethnicities like the Indigenous communities (Adivasis), and a marginalized religious minority community (Muslims). Within an intersectional perspective, it emerges that girls belonging to these communities face the greatest challenges in accessing and participating fully in schooling, even as recent policy initiatives are silent on many of the critical issues relating to promoting gender equality within the education system as a whole.

Since the late 1960s and early 1970s, there has been a great deal of criticism of the colonial heritage of early ethnographic research. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, scholars have also raised concerns also about the colonial heritage of comparative education. Erwin Epstein defined comparative education as “the application of the intellectual tools of history and social sciences to understand international issues of education.” Hence it is important for comparative education as a global field of study to engage with the recent debates in social sciences to generate deeper understanding about educational problems embedded within specific international contexts. The dominance of Northern theory in analyzing research data from the Global South has been increasingly critiqued by scholars in a number of scholarly publications since Raewyn Connell published her book Southern Theory in 2008. They have argued that Northern theory arising out of the colonial metropole is provincial in nature and, therefore, provides incomplete interpretation of data and generates misunderstanding or limited understanding of social phenomenon occurring in the hybrid contexts of the Global South. Therefore, lately scholars have been debating about postcolonial comparative education to argue for the relevance of Southern theory in conducting postcolonial comparative education research for both analytic (ideological), as well as hermeneutic (affective historical) engagement with research data. Drawing on the methodological insights from an empirical case study, this article demonstrates why Southern theory drawing on Tagore’s philosophy of education was found more suitable to analyze research data arising out of a case study designed to conduct an institutional ethnography in a particular international context. It demonstrates how contextually relevant Southern theory helped to provide deeper comparative understanding (verstehen) of a social phenomenon, i.e. inclusive pedagogic work of an old colonial school within a particular historical, geopolitical and cultural context in postcolonial India.

This article examines the interplay between race and racism in the backdrop of the assemblages of ideologies, assumptions, imageries, and practices of the exclusion of the “other” in India. Attending to the workings of caste, one of the foundational forms of racism, it is argued that the precolonial contexts of racist marginalization worked alongside colonial and postcolonial threads of racism in India, forming an infrastructure of violence. This infrastructure of violence rooted in the ideology of race purity connects caste with White supremacy. The article draws on the culture-centered approach to map how race and racism have played out historically and how they are sustained discursively in present-day India and in the Indian diaspora globally. Centering and identifying the messages that shape the construction of the “other,” the article locates the ontologies of race and racism in India amid the rapidly transforming neoliberal landscape. In doing so, it is noted that race and racism in India are intertwined with regionalism, colorism, and xenophobia; anchored in the making and marking of borders; and deeply tied to the neoliberal project. Finally, the article draws on the culture-centered approach to outline strategies of resistance, anchored in the voices of the “margins of the margins.”

Street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) interact directly with users and play a key role in providing services. In the Global South, and specifically in India, the work practices of frontline public workers—technical staff, field engineers, desk officers, and social workers—reflect their understanding of urban water reforms. The introduction of technology-driven solutions and new public management instruments, such as benchmarking, e-governance, and evaluation procedures, has transformed the nature of frontline staff’s responsibilities but has not solved the structural constraints they face. In regard to implementing solutions to improve access in poor neighborhoods, SLBs continue to play a key role in the making of formal and informal provision. Their daily practices are ambivalent. They can be both predatory and benevolent, which explains the contingent impacts on service improvement and the difficulty in generalizing reform experiments. Nevertheless, the discretionary power of SLBs can be a source of flexibility and adaptation to complex social settings.

Pollution is one of the greatest causes of premature deaths and morbidity in the world, and this burden of pollution is disproportionately borne by the lower and middle income countries such as India—home to more than one-sixth of humanity. In India, due to the compound effect of its large population and high levels of environmental pollution, the human cost of pollution is among the highest in the world. The environmental degradation is partly a consequence of the development model pursued after independence in 1947 based on large-scale industrialization and exploitative resource utilization, with scant consideration for sustainability. Moreover, it is also due to the failure of the environmental administration, governance, and regulatory infrastructure to keep pace with the magnitude and pace of economic growth in India since economic liberalization in 1991. Ironically, India was also one of the early pioneers of integrating environmental considerations into its legislative and policy-making process beginning in the early 1970s. The federal and state environmental regulation and policy framing institutions set up during this era, along with environmental legislation such as the Environment (Protection) Act 1986, are comparable in design, stringency, and comprehensiveness to other contemporary command-and-control environmental regulatory regimes in many industrially developed economies. However, the widening gap between de jure expectations of environmental compliance and the de facto state of affairs has been a great concern for environmental governance in the country. The ongoing debates discuss several mechanisms to address the regulatory failures. The first is a greater emphasis on strengthening institutions and mechanisms that foster transparency and public disclosure by pollution sources with the intent to increase access to and credibility of information on pollution. Proponents argue this will help mobilize groups such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the general public to pressure the industry and government to improve regulatory enforcement. Second, there have been calls for wider adoption of market-based instruments that are more efficient than the traditional command-and-control approaches on which India relies. Again, information is a prerequisite for the functioning of such market-based regulatory mechanisms. Third, the legal infrastructure to facilitate expedited hearing of environmental litigation is being created. With the establishment of the National Green Tribunal in 2010, India is one of only three other countries in the world to have an exclusive judicial body to hear environmental cases. This is potentially a significant step in providing greater access to environmental justice. An emerging view, however, argues that the prevailing economic development model is incompatible with ensuring sustainable development and requires a radical rethink.

Kesharichand Dashrathsa Gangrade (1926–2019) is known for his indigenous writings and application of Gandhian principles in social work practices in India. He developed the concept of Gandhian social work—an amalgamation of Gandhian ideology and values of social work practice. He had an immense exposure to the sociocultural dynamics of different societies and working with vulnerable groups and marginalized communities. Gangrade brought all his wisdom, from experiments to experiences in community organization practices, in his 30 books. He was also an educational administrator par excellence. Imbibing Gandhian virtues in his practices and belief in simplicity and trusteeship as life principles, he learned, loved, and lured values of life with Gandhian ethics. Along with academics, he worked with Mahatma Gandhi’s close associate Jai Prakash Narayan through promoting nongovernmental and community-based organizations for rural development.

Gauri Banerjee instituted the first department of medical and psychiatric social work in the field of medical and psychiatric social work in India. She laid the groundwork for indigenizing social work education by modifying and linking concepts from Indian traditional literature, religious texts, and Indian social reformers into her teachings and practices.

Jagdisan Mohandas Kumarappa (1886–1957) was an erudite scholar and a passionate social reformer. He championed the cause of social work education and criminology as the director of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, the first institution to impart social work education in Asia. He was also a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Parliament. Kumarappa’s contribution to social work and criminology in India is immense.

India took a keen interest in the nascent European Economic Community (EEC) and was acutely concerned about the adverse implications of the British application for membership. New Delhi was one of the first developing countries to establish diplomatic relations with the EEC and the first non-associate member developing country to sign a commercial cooperation agreement. During the Cold War, relations with India were of marginal interest for Brussels, especially as South Asia was traditionally considered a British domain and a complex region beset with intractable problems. In the early 1990s, India sought an upgraded political dialogue with the EU as the West moved up in its foreign policy calculus as a market, source of technology, and foreign direct investment. Brussels no longer had to look at India through the prism of Cold War equations. India had in fact become more interesting because of its economic reforms and liberalization policies. Recognition of India’s growing stature and influence regionally and globally, growing economic interest in a rapidly and consistently growing economy, acquisition of nuclear weapons, steadily improving relations with the United States, and acceptance of India as a potential global player led the European Union to launch in 2005 a strategic partnership with India. India and the European Union have a multilayered institutional architecture with annual summits (since 2000), a Joint Commission, and over 30 sectoral dialogues encompassing political, security, economic, cultural dimensions, some of which still need to acquire a more operational character. Even in 2020 the India–EU relationship continues to be basically driven by trade and economic relations though it now encompasses diverse areas including climate change, energy, science and technology, migration and mobility. The European Union is India’s biggest trade partner and a major source of technology, foreign direct investments, and a major destination for Indian investment overseas. In the 2010s, the European Union and Member States are becoming active developmental partners in the realization of key flagship programs like Clean India, Smart Cities, renewable energy, skills and technology. Growing convergence at the fourteenth India–EU summit (October 2017) reflected convergence on important global issues like a rule-based international order as well as on the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate change treaty, Myanmar and the North Korean imbroglio. The India Strategy Paper 3.0—“Elements for an EU Strategy on India” (2018)—outlines an ambitious roadmap for the 2020s to more meaningfully engage India in building a multifaceted strategic partnership with India.

Since the late 1990s, the news media landscape in India has experienced widespread and arguably transformative shifts that are manifest in the explosive growth of media outlets and consumption at both national and regional levels. As of 2021, the country has over 100,000 registered periodicals and newspapers, with 17,000 dailies that report a combined circulation of over 240 million copies according to government data, as well as an estimated 400 news and current affairs channels and numerous news-related websites. Yet despite the existence of a seemingly dynamic and expansive news landscape, many observers have expressed significant concerns about the independence of the Fourth Estate in the world’s largest democracy. According to the annual World Press Freedom Index, compiled by the media watchdog group Reporters without Borders, India has experienced a steady decline in press freedom since 2015, slipping from a position of 135/180 in 2015 to 140/180 in 2019, and 142 in the 2020 report. At present, India ranks behind most of its neighbors, including Afghanistan (122), Bhutan (67), Nepal (112), and Sri Lanka (127). Thus, even though the writers of India’s constitution clearly recognized the right to the freedom of the press as an essential part of the freedom of speech and expression as guaranteed in Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, and this right has generally been upheld in court, the space for the free expression of views and critique by the press—widely recognized as crucial to democratic functioning—has been shrinking consistently in the Indian context due to a variety of threats ranging from physical violence and intimidation of journalists, and government pressure on news outlets to structural economic forces.

India is a linguistically diverse country and supports this with its Language Policy based on the “Three Language Formula” (every child is taught three languages in school). However, its implementation has exhibited monolingual bias as multiple languages are offered as subjects of study and not as media of instruction. The medium of instruction in the majority of government schools is the concerned state’s regional language. Due to a rise in the demand for English medium instruction, governments in various states have started introducing all English medium instruction in schools. It is unfortunate that in a multilingual nation, a monolingual mind-set has dominated the language-in-education policies and effective pedagogical reforms have largely remained side-lined in such policy debates. There is no denial of the importance of learning English for the children in government schools in India. However, the success of any language-in-education policy in India will depend on a flexible multilingual approach that recognizes the languages existing in the ecology of children (which will vary from state to state as media of instruction), acknowledges the importance of learning the English language, and ushers in effective pedagogical reforms.