ABSTRACT
The comparative understanding of transnational trends of neoliberalism and its consequences for education is useful in re-visiting the current elementary education policy context in India through the lens of competing frameworks for combating educational inequality. The judgement dated 18 August 2015 by Justice Sudhir Agarwal of the Allahabad High Court directing the Uttar Pradesh (UP) government to ensure that government servants and all such persons who receive any perk, benefit, salary, etc., from the state exchequer or public fund send their children only to primary schools run by the UP Board of Basic Education can be read as an attempt by the Indian judiciary to mitigate sharp educational inequalities. This incisive chapter examines the audaciously radical legal development against the threat neoliberalism poses not only to the diversity of knowledges and languages but to the entire society by augmenting existing inequalities while ignoring the wider structural concerns.
