Historicizing Development Discourse and Higher Education Policy in India

Taking its cues from the sub-discipline of development economics, policy discussions have largely been premised on indicators of economic growth, or have proceeded along sectoral lines. Alongside, notwithstanding their centrality to the exercises of nation-building in the Nehruvian era, the ‘soft’ sectors such as education, culture, and labour have remained under-analyzed fields within both policy studies and the social sciences. Conformity with such antecedents, I argue, can only serve to limit the methodological canvas and analytical tools available to delineate and critically evaluate links between processes of marginalization in the contemporary moment on the one hand, and the formulation/analysis of public policy priorities and outcomes, on the other. How indeed may we reorient discussions of public policy beyond their primary allegiance to the terrain of development economics, assumed as a given within state discourse and discussions of policy within civil society? Recognizing that social policy initiatives in the Indian context predate the post-1950s development project, and share a longer history with contestations over colonial reform through efforts to create new codes, institutions, knowledge forms and practices, this paper posits alternative frames of reference drawing on the larger domain of the human sciences to explore aspects of post-1947 social policy, and its over-reliance on human capital theory.