About the Book : This monograph focuses on education and development in a well defined taluka of Maharashtra. But the issues and concerns that preoccupy this action research are not unique to this area, nor is the developmental process here untypical of the mainstream in this country. The crisis of education in India demands nothing less than a restructuring of the formal school in a new institutional model. However, it would of course be naive to expect a total restructuring with all the vested interests that have now coalesced around the educational system. But small innovations and creative responses on a minor scale now, can make larger changes and structural transformation possible later. For this, more micro-level analysis is needed particularly with regard to the school-community linkages. This was the original inspiration of the action-research undertaken here. This study undertakes a twofold investigation: the impact of the school on the students and how it can be adapted to their culture; and the influence of the school on the community and how it can be adjusted to its needs. The participatory method used involves a three-way comparison between mission, government and other private schools, made at three levels: the individual, (students, parents, teachers...), the school, and the community. In anyalyzing the mismatch between formal educational institutions and tribal life, this study points to a fourfold isolation that must be overcome: the community within society, the school within the community, the pupil within the classroom, and the teacher within the education system. The initiatives and innovations being recommended in this study will certainly meet with resistance. For in the final analysis, education is ‘an arena of struggle’ in society, and an unequal one at that, in which like other such struggles, the weak are driven to the wall, unless something positive is done to even out their handicap and integrate them more equitably in the system.

About the Author : RUDOLF C. HEREDIA completed his doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1979. From 1980, he has been the Director of the Social Science Centre at St. Xavier's College, Bombay, and has recently been appointed director of the research department at the Indian Social Institute, New Delhi. His publications include: "Structure and Performance of College Education: An Organizational Analysis of Arts and Science Colleges in Bombay" (Somaiya, Bombay, 1981); "Religious and Social Change: Behavioural Responses in Bombay University" (Indian Social Institute, 1984), "Voluntary Action and Development: Towards a Praxis for Non-Government Agencies" (Concept, 1988); "Urban Housing and Voluntary Agencies: Case Studies in Bombay" (Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, 1989). At present he is working on a study of Jesuit seminary training in South Asia.