Advocacy networks, choice and private schooling of the poor in India

Abstract This article is about the flows of rhetorics and discourses, particularly those that advocate choice and private schooling, and the role that transnational advocacy networks play in managing and driving these flows. We explore a set of network relations between advocacy groups in the UK and the USA and local ‘choice’ advocates in India, and some of the emerging impacts of local and transnational advocacy on the politics of education and education policy in India. The network advocates school choice and private schooling as solutions to the problem of achieving universal, high‐quality primary education. Individual policy entrepreneurs are active in making these connections and circulating ideas. A complex of funding, exchange, cross‐referencing, dissemination and mutual sponsorship links the Indian choice and privatization advocacy network, and connects it to other countries in a global network for neoliberalism.