L. N. Venkataraman: The Social Construction of Capabilities in a Tamil Village (with a Foreword by William R. Jackson)Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam

ASIEN – Nr. 158/159 (2021) pp. 239–41

Himayatnagar, Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2021. XIX + 190 pp.

In 1953, then Tamilnadu Chief Minister Rajagopalachariar suggested a controversial education reform: instead of following the academic syllabus, children should for part of the school day be instructed in their parents’ caste occupation, because that might sooner secure them an income in the face of a glut of educated youth. The proposal was furiously mocked and spurned by the Dravidian parties as kula kalvi tittam (caste vocation plan), to be subsequently buried quietly and never put forward again. It was seen as preventing children from the lower castes to climb out of poverty, aspire to an academic career and to social mobility and as cementing the dominant position of Brahmins in the academic professions and the crucial civil service. Education in the sense of schooling, book learning and attaining an academic degree is now generally taken as a panacea for all ills, economic and social. That this is not the case has long been argued about in the literature. While education can provide a path out of poverty and towards social mobility, it also always has a clear filter function.