The Deep Marketisation of Education: A Post-Development Perspective

This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of the concept of deep marketisation as an intensification of capitalist-neoliberal development discourses and practices by positioning it within the framework of the ontological politics of (in-)equality, combining elements of post-development with Jacques Rancière's principle of the presupposition of equality. By drawing on the example of the Indian education sector, I will demonstrate how both Development (with deep marketisation as one of its key strategies), and resistance and alternatives to Development, as sought-for by post-development, need to be understood and analysed as forms of ontological politics, centred around the notion of equality and the different understandings of this concept employed by a broad range of Development actors and institutions. This will essentially provide a new analytical framework to understand the on-going and intensifying processes of deep marketisation and resistance against it from a post-developmental angle.