ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an understanding of the complexity the phenomenon of public-private partnerships, and the struggles entailed in operationalising a rights-based, social integration agenda through a hybrid model of delivery mandated by the state. The government also sought to use private schools as vehicles to combat social segregation and rising inequities by compelling private schools to enrol children from disadvantaged groups – thus engaging in another form of private-public partnership. India has a long history of private sector involvement in schooling. The colonial government of pre-independence India introduced privately managed but publicly funded ‘aided’ schools as a means of expanding the education system at minimal cost to the State. Private and public sector systems of governance are often treated as simple alternatives; however, in practice, policies replace one system with the other, they only change the scope for each system.
