Shrabani Mukherjee

Fiscal Stress and Education Expenditure: a Tale of Two Indian States Shrabani Mukherjee

Education is widely viewed as a communal responsibility, and both its financing and substance are controlled to a large extent by the state. It is true that knowledge has gained its position in the central stage as a key to empower the nation states and have an authority in the global playing field. Now,with rising competition and consumption being more varied the significance of knowledge & information became more critical to the production and realization process. Since one of the complimentary parts of such knowledge accumulation is via formal school education, therefore the importance of it can be easily felt (apart from other gains from education) in the present day context. Now, with changing time the ?structural? realities changed and with the new rule of eligibility, to survive, one has to adjust to the new socio-politico-economic structures. In some broader sense of the term, this is what ?structural adjustment? means. Given the background this study investigates as how India accommodated itself in the new regime, especially in terms of social services and in particular education. Thereby, two of its states are taken as samples and investigated in deep in the said context.