ABSTRACT
A number of local organisations have emerged in the last few years with the express objective of promoting school choice and private schooling for the poor in India. The Liberty Institute, the Centre for Civil Society and the Educare Trust are the key sites for school choice and privatisation advocacy in India. The nomenclature in relation to schools established by private entrepreneurs for the poor is that of ‘budget private schools’ or ‘micro schools’. This chapter describes the flows of the rhetorics and discourses, particularly those which advocate school choice and private schooling as solutions to the problem of achieving universal, high-quality primary education in India. It identifies the role played by transnational advocacy networks and the particular activities of one individual policy entrepreneur based in the United Kingdom — James Tooley — in managing and driving those flows.
