Abstract
In India, recent estimates indicate that nearly a third of social enterprises work within the education sector. These organizations are entering a discursive field in which some of their contrasting features, including public and private interests, profit-making and social impact, are fraught with ideological implications already deeply vested in the sector. Within this discursive field, one particularly divisive debate concerns whether to enhance educational opportunities, especially for low-income and socially disadvantaged groups, primarily by working to reform government schools or by embracing the increasing privatization of the schooling sector that has marked the past several decades. This chapter draws upon interviews with thought leaders in the fields of social enterprise and education in India to illuminate key points of tension in this debate and how they might affect the position and perception of educational social enterprises.
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Salovaara, I.M. (2018). Education Conversations: Situating Social Enterprise in India’s Education Discourse. In: Agrawal, A., Kumar, P. (eds) Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Business Models. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74488-9_2
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