The advance of the human development perspective has seen education being established not just as a means of development but as an end in itself. This has created a case for focusing on mass education, even if it implies lower growth rates in the initial years. Such an approach is bound to influence the very pattern of development over the long run. For one, a sustained emphasis on mass education within a framework that assures adequate social security could increase the well-being of workers to a point where it affects the choices they make. In this paper a combination of a simple mathematical model and the experience of the south Indian state of Kerala is used to suggest some patterns of development over the long term that this approach throws up. It argues that the effects of this approach could be wide-ranging, including contributing to the creation of non-agrarian villages.

The pandemic and the long closure of educational institutions have changed the learning and teaching practices across the globe. A massive and unplanned shift towards online education with unequal access to digital infrastructure deepens the existing digital divide and socio-economic inequalities. Tamil Nadu Covid Pulse Survey shows the state’s commitment to strengthening evidence-based policymaking and continuing its welfare tradition including its efforts to provide uninterrupted education during the crisis. Based on the three recent rounds of the panel survey conducted in October 2020 and August 2021, this article discusses Tamil Nadu’s experience in continuing education during the pandemic. The result highlights the existing digital divide and challenges faced by students in accessing online education. Some of the government initiatives like Kalvi TV telecasting classes for school students have been effective in addressing the digital divide between rural and urban areas in the state and making its education system more inclusive.

This article is based on a study carried out between 2013–2015 in nine states in Central, Western and Southern India on socio-economic status and educational attainment among the de-notified, nomadic and semi-nomadic communities. The primary objective of the study covering 76 communities and 13,020 households was to track the barriers to educational attainment and the specific linkages between socio-economic status and education among these communities.

Based on the capability approach, this article tries to see the implications of reservation policy on the political freedom of women in Kerala. Using a primary survey of candidates in a recent panchayat election in Malappuram district of Kerala it establishes the role of reservation in bringing many educated young women into local politics and decision-making bodies. It also reflects on the role of party and non-party forces such as family and religion in local politics and political freedom of women. The article concludes that the new reservation has resulted in improving the constitutive political freedom of educated-young women in Kerala, but the instrumental political freedom resulted from reservation has not been as evident.

The advocates of intellectual property rights project strong patent regime as an effective way to promote research and development (R&D) activities leading to innovation while others argue that they may adversely affect local industries in developing countries and result in monopoly pricing that may compromise on larger interests including public healthcare. The process patent regime has enabled Indian pharmaceutical firms to strengthen their technological capability and performance in domestic and global markets. As the country reintroduced product patent protection in 2005, Indian ‘copycats’ could not follow their reverse engineering technology anymore. Being a developing country and ‘pharmacy of the Global South’, India’s experience offers global dimensions to these debates. This article makes an attempt to reflect on India’s experience with the new patent regime; it looks into the pattern of R&D, trade and trend of product patenting in the pharmaceutical sector and revisits public health concerns.