Education, religion and commodification

Education, religion, and markets increasingly meet in the same spaces: a coaching advertisement promising success, a pilgrimage package with tiered darshan, a festival ritual sold as an experience. Consider a family choosing between a neighbourhood school and a branded coaching centre: the choice is about learning, but also about status, faith in credentials, and money. This chapter explains formal and informal education, religious organisations, piety, spirituality, commodification, communalism, and secularism.