ABSTRACT
URBAN MARGINS AND EDUCATIONAL IMAGINATIONS: REFLECTIONS FROM BHUBANESWAR CITY IN ODISHA
The city of Bhubaneswar, the capital of the state of Odisha is one of the fastest growing cities in Eastern India and has emerged as an educational centre. The city has seen a lot of transitions from being a temple town, to a planned city or a capital city to a city that has been witnessing neoliberal growth. Education has been an intervening aspect in the growth and transformation of the city and its modernisation which unfolds in various transitional phases and has impacted the spatial structure of the city. In this context, the educational imaginations of the urban margins which constitute a significant portion of the city needs to be looked at.
The aspirations of the middle classes particularly the ‘administrative caste’ for their children’s education was a trigger for the growth of private education market in the city. They seem to have a ‘choice’, have the capability to ‘explore’ and they treated education as a key to ‘status retention’. But the slum dwellers seem to not have any choice. Thus, inorder to create an identity of their own, they prefer to educate their children in low fee private schools like the Sishu Mandirs which have come up to fill in the void created by two contrasting educational opportunities, one that is created by the bureaucratic caste and the other by the slum dwellers.
The paper looks at how the life situation shapes the educational imagination of the people at the margins, how they strategise to realize their educational aspirations of their children. The paper draws on the political economy perspectives to understand the capitalistic models of urban development to envision and develop spaces in the city which is relevant in the present context of urban growth.
