Orphan-schooling is one of the “unique” institutional arrangements where the Indian state addresses child deprivation. These destitute children from broken family background most often belong to the poorest stratum of society. The present paper on orphan-schooling in south India derives its reflexive insights from Sripuram village in Tamil Nadu.[1] The children of Sripuram present a case where their everyday life is being institutionally reproduced. Their institutional dependencies from early childhood years are generally being shaped by the systemic factors of education.

In Sripuram, the orphanage as well as the local school are located in the village agraharam where the “high” caste-men (or the Brahmins) live. The qualitative research analyses of both educational institutions depict the social distancing of the structural forces of the village. The intersectional social facts of both caste and class are distancing the children in the village. The well-being of children in this background is generally based on their institutional presence, as well as their human agential interaction with the social structure. The institutionalized welfare structures with their poor outcomes (due to the inferior infrastructure of the orphanage, as well as the mediocre educational quality of the local school) are most often failing the children. These failures have been analysed from theoretical readings of capability approach which highlight the importance of constitutive as well as instrumental aspects of education. Given these educational realities, the paper concludes that the broader notions of capabilities are far away from their agential role of well-being.   

[1]^{Sripuram, a multi-caste village in Tamil Nadu has been studied by renowned Sociologist Andre Beteille in the 1960s. He conducted his ethnographic fieldworks on caste, class and power. The current paper revisits the same village attempts to analyse the dimensions of caste, class and education.}

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