Renegotiating With Dreams: COVID-19 and Shifting Educational Aspirations in Rural Bastar

Pushpam Kumar Jha  | pp. 62-85

Abstract :
This paper explores educational marginalisation among Adivasi students in rural Bastar located in Central India and its intensification by the COVID-19 pandemic. Using ethnographic fieldwork from March 2017 to June 2019—supplemented by telephonic conversations thereafter—this research traces the educational journey of an Adivasi student, Sunder, across three phases: village school, residential school, and his return to the village during the pandemic. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical underpinnings of educational aspiration, this paper delves into the layered intricacies of schooling and the evolving agency of Adivasi students in rural Bastar. It suggests that first-generation Adivasi students often grapple with immediate survival in school— a challenge managed through gradual, evolving, and cumulative survival strategies that manifest themselves in progressive meanings of possibilities, embodied in individual aspirations. The pandemic disrupted this process and limited students’ evolving agency, resulting in a shift from their aspirations to more realistic expectations. 

Keywords : Adivasi, agency, aspiration, Bourdieu, Bastar, expectation, school education, pandemic, COVID-19