Educating India

The proof of the new policy lies in its execution

The first National Education Policy (NEP) in 28 years has much to commend itself but the test of its efficacy will lie in how it is implemented. The focus of the policy is to prepare and skill India for the 21st century and in some respects the policy that was cleared by the Union Cabinet on July 29 offers proposals that could fulfil that aim. In terms of secondary education, for instance, the policy does well to focus on all-round learning by doing away with the artificial distinction of the arts, science, and commerce streams and allowing flexibility of choice to higher secondary students. The fact that music, arts, and sports have also been incorporated in these choices is progressive.

The policy has also partly recognised India’s multi-lingual diversity by leaving the choice of three languages (to be learned) to states, regions, and students — rather than insisting on Hindi as an early proposal had stated — so long as at least two of the three languages are native to India. It is an open question, however, whether such stipulations will adequately equip children for the globalised world, in which Mandarin and Spanish are emerging as the two major spoken languages after English. Although school dropout rates have fallen dramatically since the passage of the Right to Education Act in 2009, the real challenge, as ASER reports point out each year, remains the poor standard of foundational learning, and the test of the new policy lies in how far it can alter these outcomes. After all, India currently spends just 3 per cent of gross domestic product on education, which has been patently inadequate for the magnitude of the challenges at hand.

In higher education, the NEP has several good initiatives, such as allowing full autonomy to the top 200 institutes; the introduction of an independent National Research Fund to finance competitive peer-reviewed grant proposals, allowing the higher education corporation to raise long-term loans from the market, and letting foreign universities set up base in India would all go a long way towards addressing many long-pending problems. Again, these are obvious and forward-looking steps, but the issue is whether they will remain good intentions only. Indeed, this government’s track record does not inspire much confidence. The recent fracas with the Indian Institutes of Management — which were granted autonomy some years ago— over the duration of an MBA is a case in point. Last week, the All India Council for Technical Education, a regulatory body that has not covered itself in glory in the past few years, de-recognised three programmes of MDI Gurgaon, which ranked among the country’s top 20 management institutes, over course duration.

Preventing private and premier public universities from charging fees they need for expansion will ensure autonomy remains on paper. Also, the graded autonomy concept for private universities will ensure that the government retains control. Plus more parameters have been brought in to decide whether an institute deserves autonomy. The new regulator has to take a much broader view if the “light but tight” regime has to succeed. The fact that India recorded a new low in the 2020 Academic Freedom Index score — on a par with Saudi Arabia and Libya — reflects the journey the newly christened Ministry of Education will have to travel to make India a global intellectual racehorse.