Farah Farooqi, Education in a "Ghetto": The Paradoxes of a Muslim-Majority School. Routledge: South Asia Edition, 2024, pp. 205, Price: ₹1,295, ISBN: 9781 0327 685 64 (Hardback).

The book Education in a “Ghetto”: The Paradoxes of a Muslim-Majority School by Farah Farooqi is an engaging ethnographic work of a school located in old Delhi. This book, in the words of the author, is a “labour of love” and an offshoot of her decade-long journey with the school as part of its management. The book has a total of nine chapters which are categorised into four parts, namely: School organisation and leadership; The children context; Children, children’s groups and teachers’ perceptions; and School functioning and changes. Throughout the text the author openly expresses her angst, the deeper dreams of “marginalised” children, and the fate of the minority community amid state apathy, the rise of right-wing politics of hate, and the global neoliberal market (Lall & Anand, 2022). The author—besides being a reflective researcher—acknowledges clinching multiple roles as a teacher, a Muslim, a woman, and a power-holding authority. She solicits these as vantage points in her critically nuanced reading of school operations in the face of tough childhoods and erratic learning trajectories, bureaucratic humdrum, power politicking, esoteric “ghettoised” mohallas (localities), community aspirations, and the grim realities of a neoliberal market.