Schooling and Social Mobility in Rural
India: Evidence from Bankura
Abhisek Khan,
Ph.D. Research Scholar,
Department of Political Science,
Bankura University, Bankura,
West Bengal, India.
Abstract: Education
is often seen as the key to a life. The place where people can move up in the
world no matter where they come from.. If we look at the facts we see that this
is not always true. In India many studies have shown that going to school does
not always mean you will get a job or a better life. This paper looks at how
going to school affects people’s lives in India especially in a place called
Bankura district in West Bengal. This area is mostly made up of tribes and
people who work in farming. It is also a place where many people do not have
access to education and where the differences between rich and poor and between
different castes are very clear. We used information from sources that we found
online to write this paper. We looked at how people’s lives change from one
generation to the next and how their caste and social status affect their
chances in life. We also looked at what the government has done to help improve
education in this area. We made two tables to help us understand the situation in
Bankura and West Bengal. One table shows the state of education in this area
and the other table shows what has been done to improve education. Our paper
says that education can be a way for people to move up in the world but it can
also be a way to keep people in their place. It all depends on the situation.
Education can change people’s lives. It is often held back by things like
discrimination based on caste, poor quality schools and the fact that some
people do not get the same benefits from their education as others do. Finally
we suggest some ways that the government can change its policies to help make
education a way for people to move up in the world than a way to keep them in
their place. Education in India in rural areas like Bankura district, in West
Bengal needs to be improved so that it can really help people have better lives.
Keywords: Social mobility; schooling; rural India; Bankura;
caste; intergenerational mobility; educational inequality; West Bengal;
conditional cash transfer; Kanyashree
Introduction
The idea that
going to school can help people move up in society has been a part of India’s
plan for development since it became independent in 1947. The country’s
constitution says that everyone should have access to education and there are special
rules to help people from certain groups like the Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes get into schools and jobs. For over seventy years India has
been working to make sure more people have access to education. The hope is
that if people from groups that have been treated unfairly in the past can get
an education their children will have a life.. What is happening in rural India
is not that simple.
A study in
Frontiers in Sociology from 2024 shows that Indian society is still divided by
caste and it is hard for people to move up in the world. Even though the
country’s economy has been growing since the 1990s there is still a gap between
the rich and the poor.. It turns out that just because someone gets an
education it does not mean they will get a good job or make more money. This is
especially true for students from areas and from the lower castes and tribes.
The Bankura
district in West Bengal is a place to look at this issue. This district has a
lot of people from the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes living in areas.
Most people in Bankura work in farming and many have to move to places to find
work during certain times of the year. The district also has a time providing
good education compared to other parts of West Bengal.. There are also some big
programs in place to help like the Kanyashree Prakalpa, which gives money to
girls who stay in school. This paper will look at how education affects
mobility in Bankura using information, from the district and from studies done
all over the country.
Literature
Review
The literature
on education and social movement is very big. It includes many things like
human capital theory by Becker from 1964 credentialism by Collins from 1979 and
social reproduction theory by Bourdieu from 1986. When we talk about India, the
important recent studies are about caste capital and how people move up in life
from one generation to the next. PMC from 2024 says that people from castes do
not get the same benefits from education as people from upper castes because of
discrimination in the job market. This is a problem for social movement: if
education is necessary but not enough for people from lower castes to move up
then policies that only focus on getting people to go to school and finish are
not complete.
Kamal from 2023
studied how caste affects the schools people choose in Uttar Pradesh. He used a
mix of methods. Found that students from the SC category do worse as you move
from public to private schools while students from the General category do
better. This shows that education is separated by caste not in what people
learn but also in which schools they can go to. The IJSR from 2026 looked at
what determines who gets to go to college in India. Found that money, caste,
religion, gender and where you live all affect education and these effects get
stronger at higher levels of education. Frontiers in Sociology from 2024 did a
complete study of how people move up in life from one generation to the next
and found that the number of years people spend in school increased from 2.4 in
1950 to 6.7 in 2021 but education is still not equal for all groups of people.
For example ASER from 2023 showed that 20.5% of rural students in Grade 3 could
read a Grade 2 textbook. This is a problem for education in India. The
education system in India is not fair to people from castes and it needs to be
changed. Education is very important for movement in India but it is not
enough, on its own to solve the problem of caste discrimination.
Rationale of the
Study
There are three
things that made me want to write this paper. First Bankura district is a place
to study because it has a lot of people from the ST/SC population and they have
a hard time getting a good education in rural areas. It also has some really
good programs like Kanyashree, Samagra Shiksha and NSP scholarships that can
help us see what actually works to help people get ahead.
Second people
have looked at how school and social mobility are related but they usually do
it for the whole country, not just one district. This means we do not really
know what will work in a place like Bankura district.
Third I am at
Bankura University, which's really helpful because I can get information from
the community and the district administration and I can work with people who
know the area really well. This means I can do research that's really specific,
to this area, which is something that studies that look at the whole country
cannot do.
Research
Questions
1. What are the current educational access,
quality, and outcome indicators for rural students in Bankura district,
disaggregated by caste, gender, and block location?
2. Under what structural conditions does
schooling generate genuine upward social mobility for rural SC/ST students in
Bankura?
3. What is the evidence for the effectiveness of
key educational policy interventions in Bankura/West Bengal in reducing
educational inequality and promoting mobility?
Statement of the
Problem
The main issue
is that education is supposed to make everyone equal but in reality it is not
doing that in Bankura. Even though students can go to school for free and there
are programs to help them students from areas and lower castes in Bankura are
not doing as well as students from cities and upper castes. They are less
likely to go to school at the level more likely to drop out and they do not
learn as much as other students. When they finish school they also do not get
good of jobs as other students. The problem is not just that these students are
not able to go to school. We need to look at the reasons why education is not
helping these students get ahead in life. Education is supposed to help
students, from Bankura and lower castes have better lives but it is not doing
that. Instead it is just keeping things the way they're. We need to understand
why education is not working for Bankura students and lower caste students..
Operational
Definition
When we talk
about mobility in this paper we are talking about how people move from one kind
of job or income level to another from one generation to the next. For example
we want to know if kids from families where the parent’s work as farm laborers
or have farms can get a much better education and job than their parents did.
On the hand social reproduction is what happens when the education system
treats people differently based on the kind of background they come from and
this helps keep social inequalities going from one generation to the next.
Social mobility is an idea here because it can help us understand how social
reproduction works and how it affects people’s lives. The idea of reproduction
is that it helps keep social inequalities going and this is something that
happens through the education system, which rewards some people more, than
others based on their social background and the kind of social mobility they
have.
Objectives and
Hypotheses
1. To document the educational landscape in
rural Bankura district using available UDISE+, Census, and NSO data.
2. To analyze the mechanisms through which
schooling generates mobility or reproduction for different caste and class
groups in the rural Bankura context.
3. To evaluate the evidence for key policy
interventions — Kanyashree Prakalpa, Samagra Shiksha, SC/ST scholarship schemes
— in generating educational equity and upward mobility.
4. To derive context-specific policy
recommendations for Bankura district.
Hypothesis: Schooling in
rural Bankura operates as a mechanism of social mobility primarily for students
who combine educational access with adequate cultural capital, economic
security, and freedom from caste labor market discrimination — and as a
mechanism of social reproduction for those who lack one or more of these
structural conditions even when formally enrolled.
Delimitation of
the Study
This study is
delimited to Bankura district, West Bengal, and to school education (Classes
1-12) plus the transition to post-secondary education and employment. It does
not include an analysis of higher education quality or specific block-level
administrative data beyond what is publicly available. The study synthesizes
secondary data and published research; primary data collection in Bankura
schools is proposed as a next phase.
Methods
This paper uses
a documentary research design that combines secondary data analysis with a
review of the literature. For data the sources include UDISE+ 2024-25 ASER 2023
PARAKH 2024 Census of India 2011 NSSO data and NSP scholarship administration
data. The evidence for evaluating policies comes from the Kanyashree Prakalpa
difference-in-differences study that was published by Springer Nature in 2024
and the quasi-experimental time-series analysis by Discover Education in 2025.
The framework for analysis is based on the theory of mobility the analysis of
caste capital by Kamal and Roluahpuia in 2025 and the methodology for evaluating
policies. The paper looks at the UDISE+ 2024-25 data and the ASER 2023 data to
see how they relate to the policy evaluation evidence from the Kanyashree
Prakalpa study and the quasi-experimental time-series analysis. The UDISE+
2024-25 and the PARAKH 2024 are also used to analyze the intergenerational
mobility theory and the caste capital analysis by Kamal and Roluahpuia, in
2025.
Results
Educational
Landscape in Rural Bankura
Table 1 presents
key educational indicators for rural Bankura and West Bengal, compared against
national benchmarks, with primary data sources for each indicator.
Table 1:
Educational Indicators for Bankura District / West Bengal — Key Metrics,
National Comparators, and Sources
|
Indicator |
Bankura /
West Bengal Data |
National Comparator |
Source |
|
Literacy rate
overall |
~75% (rural
Bankura estimate based on Census 2011 trends) |
74.04% (Census
2011); 80.88% male, 64.63% female (PLFS 2023-24) |
Census of
India; IASGyan (2024) |
|
SC/ST
population share |
~38% SC and ST
combined in Bankura district (ST-dominant tribal blocks) |
SC: 16.6%; ST:
8.6% national (Census 2011) |
Census of
India (2011) |
|
Secondary
dropout rate (girls) |
West Bengal:
girls constitute 55.7% of higher secondary students — among highest
nationally; however significant variation across Bankura's rural blocks |
9.6% national
(UDISE+ 2024-25); Bihar 6.8% |
Business
Standard (2024); Education for All in India (2025) |
|
Intergenerational
education mobility |
Low: mean
years of schooling increased from 2.4 (1950) to 6.7 (2021) nationally but
rural-urban gap persists; caste-based immobility documented in eastern India
studies |
Mean years
schooling 6.7 (2021); SC/ST significantly lower attainment at every level |
Frontiers in
Sociology (2024); PMC (2024) |
|
Pre-primary
enrollment |
ST children:
13.1% nationally in pre-primary (disadvantaged entry point for rural tribal
children) |
21.2% boys,
19% girls nationally; SC 17.3%; upper caste 29.4% |
PMC (2023);
IJSR (2026) |
|
Effect of
school proximity on enrollment |
Distance to
secondary school is a measurable barrier for rural girls in West Bengal;
village-based schools show higher enrollment in experimental evidence |
Regression
discontinuity studies confirm school distance as enrollment barrier for
secondary level |
Springer
Nature (2025); Sage Journals (2023) |
Note. Compiled
from IASGyan (2024); Education for All in India (2025); Frontiers in Sociology
(2024); PMC (2023, 2024); Springer Nature (2025); Business Standard (2024);
IJSR (2026).
Table 2
evaluates the evidence on key educational policy interventions relevant to
social mobility in rural Bankura/West Bengal.
Table 2:
Educational Policy Interventions — Mechanisms, Evidence of Effectiveness, and
Limitations
|
Policy /
Program |
Mechanism |
Evidence of
Effect in Rural West Bengal / India |
Limitation |
|
Kanyashree Prakalpa
(West Bengal, 2013) |
Annual
conditional cash transfer to girls 13-18 for school enrollment; lump-sum on
reaching adulthood unmarried |
DiD framework
shows 7-8 pp higher likelihood of independent movement; lower tolerance for
domestic violence; 4-5 pp lower wife-beating justification; suggestive
evidence of increased schooling (Springer Nature, 2024) |
Das and
Sarkhel (2023) find no positive effect on learning outcomes — enrollment gain
without quality gain; implementation quality varies across rural districts |
|
Sarva Shiksha
Abhiyan / NIPUN Bharat |
Universal
primary enrollment; foundational literacy and numeracy targets; school
construction and teacher deployment |
Enrollment
rates improved substantially nationally and in West Bengal; PARAKH 2024 shows
Bihar and Jharkhand improvement in foundational scores but West Bengal's
performance gap with Kerala persists |
Quality of
learning rather than enrollment is the unresolved challenge; rural Bankura
schools face teacher quality and absenteeism constraints |
|
SC/ST Scholarship
Schemes (National Scholarship Portal) |
82,000 fresh
scholarships annually; pre-matric and post-matric financial support; 50%
earmarked for girls |
NSP provides
financial support that reduces economic barrier to secondary and higher
enrollment; OTR system (introduced 2024-25) streamlines access |
Rural SC/ST
students face digital and bureaucratic barriers to scholarship access;
Aadhaar-linked OTR creates exclusion for undocumented families |
|
Mid-Day Meal
Scheme |
Free cooked
meal at school improving nutrition and providing incentive for enrollment and
attendance |
Established
positive effect on enrollment and attendance nationally; particularly
important for low-income rural households where food security is precarious |
Quality of
implementation varies; kitchen infrastructure in rural Bankura schools
requires sustained investment; limited impact on learning outcomes beyond
attendance |
Note. Sources:
Springer Nature / Journal of Population Economics (2024); Discover Education
(2025); Ministry of Education NSP (2024); ORF (2025); ASER (2023).
Findings and
Discussion
The evidence
from Tables 1 and 2 supports the nuanced hypothesis that schooling generates
mobility in rural Bankura under specific structural conditions and reproduces
inequality under others. The Kanyashree Prakalpa provides the most
methodologically robust evidence available in the West Bengal context: the
difference-in-differences framework (Journal of Population Economics, 2024)
identifies genuine positive effects on girls' autonomy and agency, but the
absence of learning outcome effects documented by Das and Sarkhel (2023)
suggests that enrollment gains without quality improvement produce incomplete
mobility — girls who remain in school longer but do not acquire the cognitive
skills that translate into labor market advantage. The PARAKH 2024 and ASER
2023 data confirm that West Bengal's rural educational quality, while
relatively better than Bihar and Jharkhand, still shows significant learning
deficits in rural Bankura's tribal blocks. The caste capital literature (Kamal
and Roluahpuia, 2025; PMC, 2024) adds the crucial finding that even when rural
SC/ST students in Bankura acquire educational credentials, discriminatory labor
market practices reduce the returns they receive from those credentials
compared to upper-caste peers.
Summarization,
Recommendations, Implications and Conclusion
Summarization
This paper has
examined the relationship between schooling and social mobility in rural India
through the specific lens of Bankura district, West Bengal. The evidence
demonstrates that the relationship is conditional: schooling generates genuine
mobility for rural students when educational access is combined with adequate
quality, sufficient cultural and economic capital, and freedom from caste labor
market discrimination. Where any of these conditions is absent, schooling
produces social reproduction rather than transformation.
Recommendations
First, quality
improvement in rural Bankura's secondary schools — teacher professional
development, foundational literacy and numeracy interventions in early grades,
and monitoring of learning outcomes beyond enrollment — must be the central
policy priority. Second, the Kanyashree Prakalpa should be extended to include educational
quality components alongside the conditional cash transfer: mentorship
programs, subject tutoring, and career counseling would complement the
financial incentive with the human capital investment necessary to convert
enrollment into learning gains. Third, scholarship disbursement through the
National Scholarship Portal must be made more accessible to rural SC/ST
families by reducing digital and documentation barriers, including through
Aadhaar-enrollment camps in underserved Bankura blocks. Fourth, labor market
anti-discrimination enforcement — through strengthened implementation of the
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act in
employment contexts — is a necessary complement to educational investment for
education to actually generate mobility for lower-caste rural graduates.
Implications and
Conclusion
The relationship
between schooling and social mobility in rural India is not a question with a
simple empirical answer; it is a structural question whose answer depends on
conditions that education policy alone cannot create. Schooling is necessary
for social mobility in twenty-first century India — without it, the probability
of upward movement across generations is near zero. But it is not sufficient.
The structural conditions that determine whether schooling produces mobility or
reproduction — quality, cultural capital, freedom from discrimination, adequate
material resources — are themselves products of political choices about
resource allocation, institutional design, and the social norms that determine
who benefits from educational credentials in labor markets and civic life.
Those choices, not the schools alone, are what will determine whether Bankura's
children climb the ladder they can already see.
References
Business
Standard. (2024, July 22). Slipping scores: How education knocked India down in
the gender gap race.
https://www.business-standard.com/education/news/slipping-scores-how-education-knocked-india-down-in-the-gender-gap-race-124072200321_1.html
Census
of India. (2011). Primary census abstract. Office of the Registrar General
& Census Commissioner, India. https://censusindia.gov.in/
Discover
Education / Kanyashree. (2025). Assessing the sustainability of government
educational reforms through conditional cash transfer scheme. Discover
Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-025-00611-6
Education
for All in India. (2025). The status of girls' education in India in 2025.
https://educationforallinindia.com/the-status-of-girls-education-in-india-in-2025/
Frontiers
in Sociology. (2024). Intergenerational education mobility in India:
Nonlinearity and the Great Gatsby Curve. Frontiers in Sociology.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2024.1295550
IASGyan.
(2024). Current state of gender parity in education in India. https://www.iasgyan.in/daily-current-affairs/gender-gap-in-education-in-india
IJSR.
(2026). Recent estimates on the determinants of higher education access in
India. International Journal of Scientific Research.
https://www.ijsr.net/archive/v15i1/SR26105235707.pdf
Journal
of Population Economics. (2024). Persistent effects of a conditional cash
transfer: Kanyashree Prakalpa in India. Journal of Population Economics.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-024-01045-4
Ministry
of Education, Government of India. (2024). National Scholarship Portal.
https://scholarships.gov.in/
ORF.
(2025). Tracking regional disparities in learning outcomes. Observer Research
Foundation.
https://www.orfonline.org/research/tracking-regional-disparities-in-learning-outcomes
PMC.
(2023). Regional and socioeconomic inequalities in access to pre-primary
education in India. International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy,
17, 13.
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40723-023-00117-4
PMC.
(2024). Caste-based diminished returns of educational attainment on wealth
accumulation in India. Open J Educ Res, 4(5), 243–255.
https://doi.org/10.31586/ojer.2024.1056
Sage
Journals / Kamal, U. (2023). Does caste matter in school education.
Contemporary Voice of Dalit.
https://doi.org/10.1177/2455328X231171509
Sage
Journals / Kamal, U., & Roluahpuia. (2025). Educational inequality and
household dynamics in India.
https://doi.org/10.1177/09731741241291689
Springer
Nature. (2025). Drop out v/s retention of female students in Indian states.
Discover Education.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-025-00552-0