The Nation’s Got Talent: Education, Experimentation and Policy Discourses in India

This book explores the construction of the idea of the ’talented’ student in India and its relationship to the discourse of the ’nation’. It historically situates the evolution of the National Science Talent Search (NSTS) and its subsequent avatar, the National Talent Search Examination (NTSE), with state-sponsored ideas and practices of ’nation-building’. It also delves into how individuals who wrote and cleared the examination inhabit this identity of the ’talented’.

Drawing on policy documents and institutional literature of over 50 years as well as interviews with past winners of the NSTS/NTSE, including a Nobel laureate, this book is a major intervention in the field of South Asian studies, public policy, and education.

Rachel Philip is an Assistant Professor in the School of Liberal Arts, IIT Jodhpur. Her work explores the social imagination, construction, and application of discourses like ’talent’, ’equality’, ’quality’, ’interest’, etc. through the critical documentation of education interventions. With an interdisciplinary background in English Literature, Sociology, and Education, Dr Philip has previously worked with the ICICI Foundation, Pune, and taught at the Departments of Sociology of the Lady Shri Ram College for Women (LSR) and the Indraprastha College for Women (IPCW), University of Delhi. She has also undertaken fieldwork and implemented a pre-school reading program in Innopolis, Russia.