Differences in morbidity, mortality, and nutritional status linked to differences in socioeconomic status, caste, class, gender, and geography persist in India.

Dropouts are only one outcome of bad quality. Poor learning outcomes, low employability of graduates, low productivity, and consequent low wages constitute another set of outcomes.

India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and many others in the post-independence leadership—though, emphatically, not all within this cohort—deeply believed that the combination of liberal democracy, civic nationalism, and socialist economics was essential to successfully building a modern Indian state.

India’s post-independence leadership eschewed parochial nationalism in favor of civic nationalism where the rights and privileges of being Indian were conceived as arising not from some pre-existent modes of belonging—religion, race, or ethnicity—but instead from participation in a collective political endeavor.