Why has the closure of government schools become the new normal in contemporary India? In the last five years, more than 37,000 schools have been closed. Of these, over 23,000 are government and government-aided schools.To unravel its nuances, we need to examine the neoliberal agenda, which promises quality while sharpening the existing social hierarchies. This paradox, in which the state simultaneously advocates universal education while systematically dismantling its public infrastructure, reveals the contradictions inherent in India's educational policy framework. The closure of so many schools is not merely an administrative decision but rather a fundamental shift in the state’s responsibility towards public education.Numbers are StarkAccording to the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) data released by the Union Education Ministry for the academic year 2024-25, there has been a decrease of 5,303 government and government-aided schools in the last year alone (2024-25). As a result, the number of government schools decreased to 10.13 lakh in 2024-25, compared to 10.18 lakh in 2023-24.Education or Extortion?: Inside Delhi’s Private School Fee Crisis Many government schools have had almost no enrollment over the last few years. On the other hand, around 8,475 new private schools were opened in 2024-25, while 7,678 were started in 2023-24. The total number of private schools across the country increased from 3.31 lakh in 2023-24 to 3.39 lakh in 2024-25. This indicates a serious concern about the state of government school education in contemporary India.The recent scholarship on private school choice notes that the growing trend of low-budget private schools primarily caters to the lower middle class and working classes. It also suggests a possible shift from government schools to private education—a transformation that is neither accidental nor value-neutral. The neoliberal turn has intensified the mechanism of reproducing inequalities, reconfiguring education from a public good into a commodity available primarily to those with economic resources. This transformation clearly shows the shift from state responsibility to individual assignment.Privilege, Class Formation & Educational Choice Who will benefit from the creation of this new private schooling structure? The answer is straightforward: the upper privilege strata of the society. In a way, this is a new method of reinforcing ‘privilege’ and enabling further ‘class’ formation. This will lead schools to be framed as vehicles of class segmentation, where only a few upper- and middle-class students can gain a quality education.Historically, in the first phase of independent India, the state embraced the ideal of mass education for all citizens. However, the state machinery, which was captured mainly by the middle-class elites, did not invest much in primary education; instead, it focused on establishing numerous universities to pursue its own self-interest. 'Teaching Inmates Taught Me About Myself': Hany Babu on Jail, Justice, FreedomThe social anthropologist Anne Waldrop, working on elite private schools in Delhi, meticulously points out the discrepancies between rhetoric and implementation, as well as between investments at the lower and higher levels. Waldrop strongly argues that the educated elites are to blame for this.The Kothari Commission recommended the introduction of a common school system with equal access to children from all sections of society. This is far from the actual reality. One set of educationalists who advocated for an equal schooling system has been relegated to the peripheries. The post-colonial state, controlled by elites, failed to ensure equal access to quality education through a common schooling system. Therefore, this new ‘regime of choice’ offers multiple options in the education market, which has become a dominant force, especially since the neoliberal economic reforms. These school choice policies, promoted as neutral and individualistic, function as a class strategy that reinforces social inequality. This positions parents as consumers of education; policies that are not equally open to all are instead successfully navigated by the privileged sections of society.In India, if we look at the pyramid of wealth inequality, the highest concentration of poverty is found among the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. In the context of schooling, existing scholarship also suggests that state schools are primarily dominated by children from poor backgrounds, mainly Dalits and Tribals.On the other hand, the advocates of such choice policies justify them by citing healthy competition among service providers, which they argue will improve the quality of education. However, the ability to make such choices in the educational landscape largely depends on the resources parents possess—primarily economic, cultural, and social capital. Without these resources, families cannot afford such alternatives. Importantly, such arguments in favour of the market primarily advantage certain classes and communities.'Kids Struggling': Is Delhi Govt Schools' NEP Merger Doing More Harm Than Good?Beyond Capital Possession & Class Advantage It is worth noting that merely possessing such resources does not confer a social advantage; it is the activation of these resources through investment that makes the difference. Even people belonging to the same caste and class location cannot derive the same social advantage; it depends on how they actually deploy these resources to realise educational advantages. The Comprehensive Modular Survey (CMS) on Education, 2025, conducted under the 80th round of the National Sample Survey (NSS) released by the central government, shows that parents in Haryana spend the most on their children’s school education annually, followed by those in Manipur and Punjab, while Bihar records the lowest expenditure among all states. The survey reveals a stark urban–rural divide in educational spending, with rural households spending an average of Rs 8,382 per child per year, compared to Rs 23,470 in urban households—nearly three times as much. This illustrates the case in which families seek to translate their economic capital into cultural capital by strategically investing in their children’s education, striving to reproduce their social position and secure future mobility.The middle classes are the primary beneficiaries of such choices, as they rely heavily on educational credentials and can exercise their preferences because of the resources available to them and their cultural capacity to navigate the educational landscape.This is not to argue that only this class sends its children to private schools, but rather to emphasise that the middle classes depend the most on education for mobility or social reproduction, and therefore, actively invest in it.The marginalised castes and classes remain at the lower edge of the social hierarchy. In India, caste and class are deeply intertwined. Poverty is highest among marginalised groups. With the emergence of new education regimes, they struggle to survive in this unequal system. In the search for quality education, middle-class parents are increasingly turning to English-medium private schools.The ‘regime of choice’ has become prevalent across India since the introduction of neoliberal reforms in the Indian economy. Privatisation has expanded across several sectors, including education. Over the past two decades, private schools have become a significant phenomenon in India.CJI Gavai’s Targeting Shows How Deeply Caste Hatred Still Shapes Public LifeMiddle Class Anxieties: Risk, Competition & ChoiceIn the race to provide the best education, parents are seeking the best private schools in their local context. They want to give their children an advantage in the race for career opportunities. For them, leveraging class advantage is necessary to protect their privilege. This privilege begins at home and is reinforced by another institution—the school. Reports of worsening conditions in state schools in the media and on social media create anxiety among the middle classes, who are heavily dependent on education. Thus, within their social networks, people are discussing the state schooling system, including issues such as the quality of education, teacher absenteeism, lack of individual attention to students, poor infrastructure, and the absence of space for extra-curricular activities.This plays a massive role in shaping parents’ school choices in the educational market. In a way, such social networks also influence parents’ perceptions, encouraging them to shift towards private schools, which are seen as more output-oriented. If we look at the board exam toppers across the country over the last five years, the majority have come from private schools, with minimal representation from government schools.This provides private schools with the opportunity to advertise their schools through such board results, thereby attracting more students and accumulating greater profits. These output-driven schools are highly popular among middle-class parents, who cannot afford to take risks with their children’s futures.The choice of private schools is strongly associated with risk management, as the uncertainty of educational and occupational success poses a threat. This sense of risk is deeply tied to the reality of the large number of young, educated, unemployed people in the country.Regulatory Revolving Doors: When Education 'Reform' Means CentralisationYouth Unemployment & the Broken Promise of Education This educated, unemployed youth generate a culture of waiting, where “timepass” becomes a coping mechanism and, at the same time, serves as a critique of the broken promise of education in India, as Craig Jeffery points out in his seminal ethnographic work on Meerut, Uttar Pradesh.To avoid this disjuncture between education and employment opportunities, parents make serious efforts to secure admission to aspirational schools, which they see as the pathway to middle-class occupations for their children. As a result, they become more vigilant about school choice and try to gather as much information as possible to make the right decision for their children.This ‘regime of choice’ provides space for the reproduction of existing social hierarchies. Marginalised children, who solely depend on government schools, now have to travel much farther from their homes to attend school.This will either increase dropout rates or make schooling more difficult for the marginalised people in contemporary India. In states with geographical difficulties, this will create even more challenges for people living on the margins. On the contrary, instead of addressing these issues, the system —already built on unequal relations — further reproduces inequality in contemporary times through the site of education. Education, which is often seen as a neutral and emancipatory tool for the marginalised, is instead being used against them through the privatisation of education.(Ravi K Bharmouri is a Doctoral Candidate of Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author's own. The Quint does not endorse or is responsible for them.)