NEP 2020: An Illusion Of Inclusion, Equity, Affordability
Tinanjali Dam
Education is a form of emancipation that leads people to think freely and possess their right to respond against different kinds of social discrimination. It plays a vital role and affects human lives in all aspects, the key to self-empowerment, and has always helped people understand the problems in society.
In India, the history of education began with teaching traditional elements in a “gurukul” structure that focussed on logic, theology and arithmetic. Steadily, India’s formal education system’s growth started experiencing a dire necessity, overcoming the British, and attaining self-confidence. Soon, Macaulay’s famous Minute gained strong bias on the European culture of education in 1835, and the need for higher education thus began. India focused on colleges and universities, and soon the states of Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras established their first affiliating colleges, following university pattern in London (Philip G Altbach, 1968). As the number of universities started increasing, students’ enrollment too rose. Consequently, political awareness among students also witnessed a rise and students began to actively participate in the national independence movement.
Higher education was then the sole centre of students from middle and upper-middle-class families. There existed many discriminatory factors over time, where a section of the society was wholly denied access to education due to many human-made barriers. Women, Dalits, Adivasis, and other minorities who constitute a significant part of the Indian population were denied access to the gurukul structure of education and other forms of educational models. Against all this, social reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidya Sagar, Dadabhai Naoroji, Birsa Munda, Savitribai Phule, Jyotiba Phule, Rabindranath Tagore, and BR Ambedkar raised their voice. They led struggles and helped women and the marginalised to get access to education. These efforts have reflected on the strength of the underprivileged and also proved that education is to be made compulsory for all and not restricted to ‘Upper-Class Brahmins’ only.
Post Independence, the first education policy was drafted in 1968 and the last framed in 1986, which got updated in 1992. Therefore, it is after 34 years now that a new policy on education is being formed. The National Education Policy 2020 needs to be discussed and scrutinised — it should be brought into every section of the society because every individual is linked to it in some way. A crucial document, it has to be discussed linked with the RSS and BJP led central government’s ideological pretensions. NEP 2020 was passed amid a pandemic and all the educational institutions closed down as a result; it was tabled without proper discussion and in the Parliament and did not consider the feedback provided by the country’s scholars, teachers, students, and experts with regards to the draft (Kasturirangan Committee Report) released in 2019. Despite widespread dissent, no change has been made.
Moreover, the policy has minimised the discussions on accessibility, equity and affordability, making it an exclusionary document. Like Delhi University professor Abha Dev Habib said, the policy can therefore be called the ‘New Exclusionary Policy’. The New Education Policy 2020 reflects a proper Neo-Brahminical framework (Sachidanand Sinha, 2020). It does not address the problems faced by Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Bahujans in education. Although the Right to Education is a fundamental right, it is widely understood that the marginalised are always deprived of education and for most of them, this right seems to be something only the privileged can hold. The NEP fails to recognise the hegemonic role of caste and patriarchy in access to and participation in education and knowledge production. If the existing disparities and high inequalities become guiding principles for the future, it is extremely dangerous for Indian education. The society would then merely propagate ‘knowledge’, just as it did during the ‘gurukul’ system.
It promotes the education system as a playground for private players with an emphasis on digital learning. This inclination gives an open call to neoliberal capitalist forces to turn education into a centralised system disregarding the country’s federal ethos. It was Ambedkar, while addressing in the Constituent Assembly, who said “the basic principle of federalism is that the legislative and executive authority is partitioned between the center and the states. The states in the constitution are in no way dependent upon the center for their legislative or executive authority.”
The policy has already set its priority and the Ministry of Human Resource Development has signed an agreement with the World Bank. The World Bank’s intervention in pre-primary and primary level education will only worsen the situation of government schools, anganwadis, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, and other government schooling structures. The recommendation will increase dropouts and will only discriminate against minority and underprivileged groups (Anil Sadgopal, 2020).
In higher education, NEP proposes:
• The introduction of multidisciplinary courses from undergraduate to PhD courses: It promotes “light but tight” rules and regulations for higher education students.
(See, NEP 2020,9.5).
The main concern here is that multidisciplinary courses already exist in many universities, institutions, and colleges. But what did the current government do to recognise them? Statistics and research show that multidisciplinary centres like the Centre for Social Exclusion and Inclusion, Centre for Dalit Studies, Centre for the Indian Diaspora, Centre for Women Studies, Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences are facing a shortage of funds, massive seat cuts and threat of a shutdown. Above all, faculty recruitment in such centres is zero. In the last 6 years of India’s higher education sector, we have experienced enormous fund and seat cuts and inefficient procedures regarding fellowships/scholarships. Hence, the introduction of multidisciplinary courses through private/philanthropic contributions that the government boasts of is simply another ploy for profit-making. Such a move, naturally, will deny Dalits, Adivasis, Bahujans, and other minority communities’ access to higher education.
• NEP promotes ‘Financial Autonomy’, which focuses on affiliating colleges under universities, to foster a culture of autonomy and empowerment. By 2035, the policy promises to club all affiliating colleges under one university and these would be autonomous. (See, NEP 2020, 10.12).
We must remember that the word ‘autonomy’ itself means liberating. This particular agenda of financial autonomy or graded autonomy implies that universities and colleges will introduce courses that will charge exorbitant fees from students to meet the financial needs of institutions. Therefore, students will be mere consumers in a capitalist society — they will be denied the circumstances to inculcate free-thinking, making them a cog in a large capitalist machine. Again, the percentage of students from marginalised, lower middle class and middle classes enrolling in public universities would shrink from 26.3% (AISHE Report, 2019) to almost nowhere, thereby making it impossible for them to pursue their dreams.
• NEP 2020 proposes to scrap M.Phil. Throughout the policy, there is special attention paid to science and engineering. The sole motive behind scrapping M.Phil could be due to the lack of recognition given the arts, humanities and social sciences. It fails to recognise the need for this important course which could help scholars in several ways to acquire relevant practical research skills. M.Phil is a crucial option for those who might not want a pre-doctoral and doctoral degree but might need something more than the master’s level at the same time. In many courses like journalism and clinical psychology, M.Phil is the preferred course rather than a research degree.
• The introduction of a Four Year Undergraduate Degree, with multiple entry and exit options and diploma certificates after every year (if any student drops out, in between). (See, NEP 2020, 11.8).
This nature of a policy framework to make decisions about multiple exits, without providing any financial support to students from under-represented groups will only lead to more dropouts. It is shocking to notice that education no longer stands for free-thinking, constructive knowledge, and progressiveness. Instead, the policy focuses simply on buying degree certificates.
• The striking feature of this policy is the offer of multidisciplinary courses and multidisciplinary institutions. It aims to end the fragmentation of higher education by transforming institutions into multidisciplinary universities with a student strength of 3000 and above. (See, NEP 2020, 10.1). The concept of multidisciplinary courses is not clearly manifested and the plan to build more universities in every district is again unclear. Following the public-private-partnership method for regulating universities and colleges will exclude students from marginalised communities.
Multilingualism and Sanskritisation
The NEP 2020 focuses on teaching what are considered mother tongues and other classical languages. The policy envisages that a child should be exposed to different languages from childhood, as the normal notion goes children until 8 years of age can acquire as many languages as they are taught (See, NEP 2020, 4.10). A 3-6 years old child in the practical scene is not at all exposed to so many languages in any case. Also, if this is done, it would merely confuse the children, turning them into “jack of all trades, but master of none”. Languages like Hindi, English, Sanskrit, and mother tongues would be included in the school curricula. It is evident that Sanskrit would be taught compulsorily, in order to emphasise on the ‘common interest’ in Indian mythology, superstition and Hindutva.
The policy claims that Sanskrit will be offered in schools and even in higher education. (See, NEP 2020, 4.16,4.17). It is to be noted that concerned authorities do not even recognise many indigenous and tribal languages. The Sanskritisation of education only clears the path for the teaching of Sanskrit, which is highly problematic as individuals will be left with no freedom to learn according to one’s own choice. The inordinate prioritising of Sanskrit is suspicious as well as hypocritical. It must be remembered that a Muslim faculty was recently forced to resign from the Department of Sanskrit of the Banaras Hindu University, following protests claiming the “inappropriateness” of a Muslim teaching Sanskrit.
Internationalisation and Commercialisation
The policy mentions foreign universities and aims to internationalise higher education, by welcoming such institutions to operate its campuses in India (See, NEP 2020, 12.8). The main concern that bugs scholars, students, professors, and educationists in India is who would decide these universities/institutions’ rankings? What kind of foreign universities will be constructed here?
The answer is relatively straightforward — the policy lightly mentions that all of these will be conducted under private firms, thereby signalling the commercialisation and privatisation of the educational sector. The policy demolishes the enthusiasm of research-based knowledge in higher education with the proposal to introduce a National Research Foundation (NRF). It would centralise administration and limit freedom for independent research. Thus, the policy’s aim to centralise education is quite evident. Following this Western system will only lead to mechanisation of higher education, making free and open thinking as vague as possible. Another concern is whether institutions like Amity, Sarada, or Lovely Professional University too will be introduced as foreign universities or not. In any case, it’s quite clear that marginalised students will not be able to afford such an education. The memories of Rohit Vemula, Payal Tadvi, Fathima Latheef and many others remain stark.
The policy should have considered the existing problems and decided upon it further, but rather that that, it just added more to it. The promise of 6% GDP, has been mentioned in previous policies as well, but never fulfilled. There have been rampant seat cuts, fund cuts and delay in issuing scholarships. This 6% is nothing but a myth put forth by the government. Whether or not it is recruiting teachers or increasing seats, there is no positive change in sight as far as education in the BJP-ruled states are concerned. There has also been no recognition and acknowledgement of teachers working under contract in many institutions. Although there has been an increment in gross enrolment ratio from 26.3% in 2018 to 50% by 2030, the policy does not put forth a concrete idea to propose more public funded universities. Statistics show that 67% of Indian students pursue higher education in private universities at the moment — so such a policy would only encourage further enrollment into such private institutions (MHRD Report, 2018).
Conclusion
The Right to Education becomes meaningless unless there exists universal education to students from pre primary to higher levels. What did the present government under Modi regime do to make RTE accessible to each class of the society, especially to the marginalised, if it wishes to focus on inclusion?
What procedure did the government follow to listen to the problems of students, especially those belonging from marginalised section? What steps did the government undertake to stop suicides of meritorious students?
For the last 6 years, ever since the RSS-led BJP government came into power, we have experienced tragic declines in every sphere of the economy, and now we are witnessing the commercialisation, privatisation, and centralisation of education. Before framing this policy and passing the bill, it should have been discussed.
To frame an inclusive education policy requires research and a scientific study of each aspect mentioned in it. However, NEP 2020 has deplorably failed to meet its aims and objectives and sets off myths amid the public domain.
References
1. Philip G Altbach, Student Politics and Higher Education in India, (1968)
2. National Education Policy, 2020
3. Kasturirangan Report, National Education Policy Draft (2019)
4. Anil Sadgopal, (2020, August 28), ‘Decoding the Agenda’, Frontline, 9-13
Tinanjali Dam is a PhD Candidate at Christ University, Bengaluru. She can be reached at tina.hcs@gmail.com.
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