The Idea of the Child: The Politics and Culture of Pre-School Education in India

Professor Nita Kumar studied Anthropology alongside History and has been productive in research and publishing in both fields. She has further moved on to include Women’s and Gender Studies, Literary Criticism, Education and Performance Studies in her approach.
From 1990, Nita Kumar has been associated with NIRMAN, a non-profit NGO that works for education and the arts in Varanasi, India. Kumar’s scholarship has included a questioning of the pursuit of agency and ‘justice’ in history, and the responsibilities of the scholar towards her subject(s) of study. At NIRMAN, Nita Kumar has taught, written curricula, trained teachers, and worked on children’s books and arts. She has worked with weavers’ children, working class women, and village families. These are also subjects she has written the histories and anthropologies of.