The National Education Policy is another attempt by the government to mislead the people of India. Clouded in eloquent rhetoric, the NEP brings about changes that will disenfranchise students from socially and economically backward groups while absolving the State of its responsibility to provide quality education to all. Further, as is symbolic of the government’s policies, the NEP is another example of the over-centralisation of key issues and an attempt to erode the federal structure of the Indian Union.

The communalisation of education has been the hallmark of all RSS-backed governments and they have made conscious attempts to re-shape the curriculum in schools to further their own divisive political agenda. The recent choice of deletion of certain subjects by the CBSE is evidence of the ways in which the curriculum will be moulded to further the divisive politics of the BJP-RSS government. The NEP furthers the ability of the ruling party to control what is taught in schools and what is excluded. As the world moves towards a more scientific and technology-driven existence, the over importance of ancient knowledge in lieu of scientific temper is evident in the NEP and is a cause of deep concern.

Education in India has been influenced by the social and political realities of the country since Independence. Issues of access to quality education have been greatly influenced by the demography of class, caste and geographical location of students. These social factors to education appear to have been glossed over in the NEP with eloquent rhetoric but very little actual substance on how to overcome these issues.

A reading of the NEP makes it clear that the glossy language and flowery connotations used are mere smoke screens for what the government’s actual policy is. Access to education via small schools across rural and tribal areas are proposed to be amalgamated into large school campuses in order to be more economically viable and resource efficient. However, what the government fails to recognise is that for many children, especially girl and non-binary children, the distance to these large school campuses will become barriers to access education in the first place.

In Rajasthan, where 22,000 schools were merged since 2017 after a letter by the MHRD, there was a six per cent decline in the enrolment of children from backward social groups. Dropout rates in India have seen a dramatic decline till class 8thafter which the benefits of the Right to Education Act do not hold. In senior classes, the drop rate has only increased over the years. The NEP while acknowledging this problem has only offered elusively worded solutions while failing to address the crux of the issue.

In its previous draft, the NEP had sought an extension of the RTE till class 12th, something that is conspicuously missing in its present avatar. The failure to extend the RTE till class 12thfor all students is symbolic of the government’s failure to understand where the problem lies. In its eagerness to leave its footprint on the country, the government has overlooked a plethora of challenges that still need to be addressed before embarking on overhauling the education system in the country.

As has been the trademark of the Modi government, the corporatisation and privatisation of all sectors is once again reflected in this National Education Policy with the opening up of FDI in the sector to promote foreign universities to set up campuses in India. One must remember that in 2019 itself, 179 private colleges were closed down due to improper management and regulation causing great distress to thousands of students and their families. The changes to higher education which have been laid out in the new policy are a cause of great worry. Instead of focusing on strengthening public universities that enable access to students from all social backgrounds, the NEP talks about large multi-disciplinary universities along the lines of the Takshashila, Nalanda and Ivy League Universities.

Once again, the rhetoric of the NEP leaves very little concrete guidance on how these large-scale universities will come about and function. The implicit understanding from the policy is that private universities of scale will replace public universities and higher education will become systematically more inaccessible for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. It is even more worrying that while waxing eloquently about ‘autonomy and innovation’ in higher education, the policy appears to hand over greater control to government appointed bodies to regulate what is being taught and researched. In many universities across the country this control has already been exercised in various ways with research scholars being dissuaded from studying certain subjects.

The shrinking spaces of debate, dissent and critique in higher education will only be further curtailed by the NEP. An increase in budgetary allocation to six per cent of the budget is a positive takeaway from this policy. The government’s desire and willingness to invest national resources into education is a welcome step given the budgetary allocations for education in the last six years have only decreased in each budget. One hopes that the government will abide by this decision and actualise the budgetary allocations that the education sector in our country is so desperately in need of.

The National Education Policy, like much of the other policies of the Modi government, is shrouded in eloquent language and ambitious goals. However, if recent history is anything to go by, the government must ensure that gap between rhetoric and implementation is bridged effectively and education in India does not become a mere political tool to serve the ruling party. The democratic and secular minded people of India hope that the future of millions of young Indians is not jeopardised by an over-zealous yet under-performing government.
(IPA Service)