ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the possible role that higher education could play in influencing the future of social inequalities in India in the coming decades. The hope formerly invested in widening access to higher education as a means of substantially reducing inequalities by enabling significant social mobility for hitherto excluded classes and communities has been belied across the world in a time of unprecedented expansion in enrolment. The chapter summarises recent changes including the massive expansion of Indian higher education in the twenty-first century and goes on to examine the latest statistical data on specific dimensions of inequalities across classes, castes, and communities as well as gender. The most significant shifts have been in the role of public institutions, and the rise in female enrolment which coexists with a worryingly low proportion of women in paid work. The speculative conclusion argues for contextualising educational statistics and re-situating them within a more grounded qualitative and ethnographic perspective on inequality.
