Introduction

On a bus in Gujarat, Western India, in 1992, I was returning to Vadodara with a friend, Archana, from visiting rural primary schools. The bus juddered to a halt, stopped by a pastoralist clad in white, who had raised his stick towards the driver to demand passage for his animals. We waited while the sheep and goats noisily pushed across the highway in front of us. As the bus moved again, we spoke simultaneously: ‘What do pastoralists do about sending their children to school?’ ‘Do they need to be able to read and write?’