ABSTRACT
This chapter takes up the thread of discourses of education, pastoralism, progress and inclusion articulated by Rabari leaders and first encountered during the access negotiations discussed in Chapter 4. Rather than an outward-facing political agenda addressing causes of livelihood insecurity, leaders’ focus has been on encouraging an exit from mobile pastoralism. Under a banner slogan consistently repeated for over 15 years – ‘Get out of sheep and goats, and get into education’ – they have extensively advocated education as a means of encouraging ‘inclusion’ on terms that position Rabaris more favourably within the socioeconomic frame of a ‘developed’ society, with a social identity that is distinctive, but no longer ‘backward’.
