In India, as in many countries around the world, most government jobs are allocated through a system of merit-based exams. Over the past few decades, these exams have become incredibly competitive, at times receiving over 1,000 applications for each vacancy.

Against a backdrop of rising educational attainment, high aspirations, disappointment with private sector opportunities, and a deep unmet need for income security, it is understandable why the demand for public sector employment opportunities is so high.

Yet despite the large footprint that public sector recruitments have in our social, economic and political life, many basic questions about them remain shrouded in mystery. Who applies? Why do they apply? Are these intense levels of competition socially productive, or do they make people worse off? Why are people willing to invest so much in exam preparation? Why are people willing to gamble on such low odds of getting selected?

Our lack of understanding limits our ability to formulate sound labour market policy. As we will see, a large share of college graduates participate in public sector recruitment exams, and candidates for these exams make up a disproportionate share of the overall unemployed population. How can we improve employment outcomes if we do not understand who the unemployed are and how they invest their time?

The main reason for the holes in our understanding is a lack of data. To date, neither private nor public household surveys include questions on whether individuals are preparing for competitive exams; and recruitment agencies have historically been cloistered institutions, understandably concerned about protecting the integrity of the recruitment process. As a result, the crores of candidates preparing for competitive ex- ams around the country remain largely invisible in data, and by extension in policy.

This report attempts to shine a light on this dark corner of the labour market. To do so, the researcher uses several new sources of data. First, he draws on administrative data from a recruitment agency. This data allows us to observe the whole recruitment process for the entire universe of applicants — the first time such data has been made available in the Indian context. 

Second, the researcher uses data from a large-scale survey of over 3,000 candidates, which provides information about their investments in exam preparation, their access to resources, their constraints, and their beliefs. 

Third, the research collaborators and the researcher conducted interviews and focus groups with candidates to better understand them in their own words. These rich data sources provide new insights into the economic and social life of candidates preparing for competitive exams.

The goal of this report is to demonstrate how both labour market and recruitment policy can be informed by a better understanding of candidate application behaviour. This un- derstanding can, in turn, help us tackle some of the key challenges in the modern Indian labour market — high levels of educated unemployment, a lack of skill development, low levels of female labour force participation, and more.

This paper looks at a case of rural-to-rural movement of agrarian capital in southern India and the ways in which capital-labour relations are reworked to maintain oppressive forms of exploitation. Faced with an agrarian crisis, capitalist farmers from affluent communities of Wayanad, Kerala, take large tracts of land for lease in the neighbouring state of Karnataka and grow ginger based on price speculation. Landless Adivasis from Wayanad have served as labourers on these ginger farmlands for the past three decades. Recently, farmers have shifted to employing labourers from a Scheduled Caste (SC) from Karnataka. The change happened not just because of the lower wages the SC labourers were willing to work for, but also because of the farmers’ inclination to move away from Adivasis who have been resisting the poor working conditions on the farm. The story resonates with broader dynamics of agrarian-labour relations amidst capitalist expansion and highlights the centrality of socio-political factors at play.

In this entry, the researcher will analyse neoliberal policies and how they have been popularised through the mass media – with a particular focus on market triumphalism. This is an important issue in contemporary times as neoliberal policies have led to an increase in economic inequality. However, public discourse has argued that these policies are beneficial to the economy and workers. The first section will describe the historical trajectory that shaped neoliberal policies. In the second section, the researcher will trace the introduction of neoliberal policies in India in the 1990s and how English newspapers popularised them. In section ​“Sandel’s Critique of Market Triumphalism in America”, the researcher will discuss the popularity of market triumphalism through neoliberal policies in the USA and Michael Sandel’s (What money can’t buy: the moral limits of markets. Penguin, London, 2012) influential critique of it.

At the time when Saussure or Pierce were propounding and formulating their ideas about the relationship between a concept and the multiple ways they can be referred to, the world was still going through the extended effects of the industrial revolution. The world was still connecting and finding out that there could be multiple ways of referring to most concepts around us. But fast forward a hundred years and the world has changed a lot. Concepts have changed and we now live on an earth that is more connected than ever and new ​‘languages’ keep cropping up once in a while. The concept of sign propounded has had a big role to play in the structure of language, at least from a theoretical point of view. The idea of sign has evolved over time and this paper presents a discussion of the relationships between signifiers and signifieds.

Wellbeing is a complex concept and while a wellness-focused school culture is key, it also requires a very individualised focus. Children function at the level of emotions. Their wellbeing depends on how the school, teachers, other students, and the entire ecosystem make them feel. In this issue, there are several articles that should make us think about how a child who is excluded feels. How does a child whose family life is full of strife feel in school? Why does another feel that no one would visit their home because they are poor or belong to a lower caste?

In the list of new teaching methods that teachers quickly thought of for online classes during the pandemic, the worksheet emerged as a learning aid that is creative, and participative, making children want to use their minds more independently. This issue features articles that showcase tried and tested methods of creating and using worksheets.

Constitutional measures to ensure fair compensation and livelihood security to the land losing refugees of development processes, overlook the complexity of ​‘public purpose’ — the dominant rationale behind operationalizing ​‘eminent domain’ of the state. Popular perception of public purpose as urbanization muffles the de facto social citizenship around plural values of agricultural landscapes. Ignoring the enduring public purposes served by agrarian landscapes aids in underestimating the longterm welfare impacts on displaced farmers.

A lot of thought has been applied by individuals, teachers and organisations across the country to give the principles of responsible citizenship and shape in the minds of our children. All the articles in this issue show how dedicated have been the attempts to use the classroom to implant and nurture the ideas consecrated in the Preamble of the Indian Constitution.

On the 25^th of March 2020, the Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi, announced a nationwide lockdown to stem the spread of the novel Coronavirus, COVID-19. The decision, while imminent, was unplanned and unilaterally made without any consultation with the state governments. This has consequently caught millions of migrant workers and the bureaucracy off-guard, leaving them no time to plan for such an emergency. While millions of migrants successfully reached their home states, only to be quarantined in camps, many remain stranded far from home, with no money or food. We are therefore confronting a lethal combination of crises: health, hunger, sanitation, and trauma, both physical and psychological.

Children are, first and foremost, individuals and so it follows that their developmental patterns are influenced by environmental conditions. With even twins differing in their abilities and milestones, it is near impossible to predict at what rate a child will learn. Thus children enter school with a wide range of abilities — and therefore possibilities.

However, the assumption that all children can learn the basic curriculum at the same pace, in the same way and to the same extent and level- is unsupported either by research or by personal experience. If we agree that children have varied strengths (multiple intelligences) the it surely follows that teaching methods have also got to vary correspondingly and that there have got to be multiple teaching styles.

This issue addresses many of these concerns and to do that we have a wide range of articles from writers across the country which establish resoundingly that every child can indeed learn — only it requires empathy and compassion from the teacher to make it happen.

This issue focusses on Textbooks and their significance in learning, how they are created, the ways they have been used and how they can be improved upon. The articles are based on classroom experience and as such are relevant and universal. Much thought has gone into the perceptive analyses by the authors, who have considered the full impact and importance of the power of textbooks.

This issue of Learning Curve focuses on ​‘Innovative teaching-learning practices’ — recipes that have been tried and tested and found to be efficacious, not methods recommended by textbooks. They are practical and completely doable in the most ordinary circumstances, as most classrooms in India find themselves in. No special equipment is required to try out these ways of teaching and the common thread running through them is just the desire to make a difference.