Drawing on fieldwork in three sites, this article serves as a preliminary report on research findings about aspects of processes that are in evidence in schools and communities in the context of the relatively recent insertion of dalit and adivasi children into formal schools. The idea of this report is not to serve as a checklist of what has changed and what remains as is, but more to underscore some interesting trends, transformations and discontinuities that we see emerge in the research data thus far. What the research reveals, and to some extent confirms, is the dynamic interchange between the formal ideologies that underpin schooling, on the one hand, and the diverse trajectories of social and economic mobility of different groups in India today, on the other. These dynamic forces raise questions for the shape that educational policy can take, grounded as it is within wider constitutional and policy discourses on the importance of social inclusion for groups entrenched in disadvantage and located at the bottom of the Indian socio-economic hierarchy.
