ABSTRACT
The terrain of public education delivery in India has changed significantly since the inception of the liberalization agenda of the early 1990s. Besides large-scale programs, public education has also seen the growth of public-private partnerships (PPPs), including in Karnataka. This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork and examines a few such PPPs to raise a number of questions. First, what are the problems that underlie some of the current conceptualizations of PPPs in education? Second, what are the materials and discursive dimensions that frame the everyday work of PPPs, and what are their linkages to current structures of PPPs in education? Through these questions and the problems they underscore, the paper outlines a reconceptualization of PPPs as emerging from a process of negotiation rather than as (institutions’ arising from Memorandum of Understanding (MOUs) and located near centres of power. In conclusion, some questions that have implications for policies regarding PPPs in education and the nature of policy itself are raised.
