Abstract
<p> </p><p>This paper is based on some key findings of an original research carried out to explore the issue of inequitable access to education within caste-based social structures in rural Punjab, Pakistan. Data from 36 interviews with low and high caste parents, school heads and four key informant focus groups in two villages in southern and central Punjab revealed that schooling costs remained difficult to manage for the poorest low-castes despite provision of government sponsored free schools. Bourdieu’s social critical framework used with specific reference to his notion of capitals reveals processes of social reproduction. The economic<br />capital transubstantiates into social and cultural capital, refracting into schooling costs that are not just economic but also temporal, psychological and social for the lowest caste groups. This limits the impact of economic subsidies offered by the government for expanding educational access. The paper contributes to the current literature by arguing that policies aimed at equitable educational access must conceptualize educational costs as multidimensional, just as poverty itself is not just economic but multifaceted.</p><p> </p>
Highlights
Inequality in educational access remains a challenge in several South Asian countries with rural poor who are among the most disadvantaged (Millennium Development Goals (2015)
The low-castes struggled with the economic costs of even government-run schools, despite the economic subsidies being in place
This paper explored the comparative nature of costs facing high and low castes, based on the theoretical assumption that costs though linked with economic capital are multidimensional
Summary
Inequality in educational access remains a challenge in several South Asian countries with rural poor who are among the most disadvantaged (Millennium Development Goals (2015). This means that a significant number of marginalized communities may remain excluded from education, and evade detection in numerical estimations of country- based averages. This problem is common where schools are embedded in contexts of wider social inequalities. One such dimension of inequality, relevant to several regions of South Asia, is the class/caste nexus that triggers intergenerational marginalization of certain groups on the basis of their social identity (Alavi, 1971; Das, 2006; Gazdar, 2007)
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