A Critique on National Education Policy (NEP) 2020
D. Ramesh Patnaik, Andhra Pradesh
Member, Presidium,
All India Forum for Right to Education
As is known widely, the Central Government has issued the “National Education Policy 2020” on 29th July 2020. The Central Government has bypassed the Parliament, Central Advisory Board on Education where the State Governments are represented by the education ministers of the respective States, all other Central and State level education bodies, educationists, teachers’ and students’ organizations in finalizing the policy. On a close analysis of the policy document, which runs to 66 pages, one finds that it was prepared for further commercialization, centralization and fascisation of education. Now the policy is being implemented with great urgency. Let us try to analyze the salient features of the POLICY hereunder. To be brief and precise, we shall deal with the policy, pointwise. Hope, this piece will give hints for further study of the policy and its implementation.
1. No Constitutional Values: The words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Secularism’ are not to be found in the entire 66-page policy document. These blatant omissions will have great ramifications for the rights and entitlements of the persons and communities in the Country as and when this policy is translated into action, fully. Of course, the different aspects of the policy are already under implementation for the detriment of the education system, which has already degraded by widespread commercialization of education. While this policy repeatedly speaks about the “Fundamental Duties”, it doesn’t make any reference to the “Fundamental Rights”. As is widely known, authoritarian States are always against the fundamental rights of the people. Now, we have an education policy in place which doesn’t have any regard for the values enshrined in our Constitution. The policy mixes up the so-called human values with constitutional values to marginalize constitutional values (see introduction).
2. Commercialisation of Education: It has got six important components:
A) Global Trade in Education: NEP 2020 proposes measures to intensify commercialization, corporatization and globalization of education. At present, private managements of educational institutions are not legally allowed to transfer any financial ‘surplus’ outside a given institution, whether for establishing another educational institution or for spreading business. However, this policy allows such financial transfers even across borders. This policy paves a path for globalisation of education. The Congress government could not do this and the BJP government is all set to take this patriotic measure of developing global trade in education.
B) Ease of doing Business in Education: In line with World Bank promoted policies, the NEP 2020 seeks to reduce State regulation of privately managed educational institutions. It recommends just transparency while allowing private players a free hand in all aspects of management like fees to be collected from students, salaries to be paid to teachers and other staff, infrastructure, playgrounds etc. What is required of private management is transparency. They could loot but transparently.
C) Siphoning Public Funds to Private Operators: NEP 2020 recommends allocation of 6% of the GDP for education. In 1966, the Kothari Commission recommended a gradual increase in the allocation to education to reach 6% of GDP by 1986. However, no government till date has ever implemented the recommendation, and it has remained an empty promise. The NEP 2020 makes the same promise; however, it also recommends siphoning of public funds to private players in the name of encouraging philanthropic initiatives. Thus, even if the government provides 6% GDP, public institutions will be starved of funds because these will be diverted to private institutions in the name of Public-Philanthropic Partnership (PPP).
D) Hiking fee in Public Institutions: The policy is seeking to hike fees to be collected from students even in government colleges and public universities, and bringing them on par with private institutions. This will be another major blow to the public provision of education. “All HEIs – public and private – shall be treated on par within this regulatory regime … fee determining mechanism will ensure reasonable recovery of cost while ensuring that HEIs discharge their social obligations… (EPW 26TH Feb 2022).”. No need to state that fee hikes will be ensured in public institutions, and the social justice agenda will be left to the mercy of the administration who will in turn be identifying the ‘Socially and Educationally Disadvantaged Groups’. This is elaborated later.
E) Commoditization of the intent and content of education: This doesn’t require any elaboration. This started long back in our education system and NEP 2020, though vociferous about social interest in education, is only set to produce theories and professionals for the corporate business. More and more access to education is linked with the ability to pay, and the purpose of education also becomes increasingly earning-oriented. Government, university and the students – all will orient themselves towards corporate interests to sell them well. NEP 2020 is buzzing with all facets of commercialisation of education.
F) Neglect of Public Institutions: Of course, commercialization of education is also associated with neglect of education in the public sector. Leave alone the vacancies in universities, even the schools are suffering shortages of teachers. Around ten Lakh teacher posts are vacant now throughout the Country. “Even prestigious Kendriya Vidyalayas are suffering shortage of teaching and nonteaching staff, and the vacancies doubled in the last three years (Jagriti Chandra, The Hindu, 28th Aug, 2022)”. As to the development of government schools, colleges and public universities, things are moving just in the opposite direction to policy pronouncements (13.2). The general rule is that all negative proposals will be implemented in fast-track mode and all promised positive measures will be neglected. In a nutshell, the commercialization of education is growing in leaps and bounds with all its facets under the umbrella of NEP 2020.
3. Language Education. A critical analysis of language education, as proposed in the NEP 2020, requires a full-length article. Here we may just note a few salient things: (A) While the “Right to Education Act” makes mother tongue as medium of education up to class 8, this policy reduced this to class 5 only. “Wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least grade 5, but preferably till grade 8 and beyond, will be the home language/mother tongue/local language/ regional language”. So, NEP 2020 is weaker than “RTE Act 2009” on the question of medium of education. (B) The “three-language policy” in vogue invariably includes mother tongue. But the NEP 2020 provides for a minimum of two native languages among the three. “However, there will be greater flexibility in the three-language formula, and no language will be imposed on any State. The three languages learned by children will be the choices of the State, regions, and of course the students themselves, so long as at least two of the three languages are native to India. (Para 4.13)” If you take any South Indian State, a school can implement Hindi, Sanskrit and English as “three language set” because mother tongue is not compulsory. That is what the private schools are doing in Andhra Pradesh. Take Gujarat, the State Government could deny teaching of English in government schools there and take Gujarati, Hindi and Sanskrit as “three language set” because in NEP 2020, one foreign language is not compulsory. The flexibility provided in the policy will be of use for profit making schools. (C) For NEP 2020, Sanskrit is most important. It wants to teach Sanskrit from the nursery. Sanskrit is not only proposed as one of the three languages but also as an optional subject at secondary level too. Sanskrit could be an optional subject at under-graduate level as well. The students, who are desirous of doing research into the classical literature, epigraphs, Ayurveda and such secular literature, could learn and master Sanskrit as part of Higher Education. But teaching Sanskrit at school level is only to develop bigotry in young minds. You may find some related excerpts here from NEP 2020. “Sanskrit will thus be offered at all levels of school and higher education as an important, enriching option for students, including as an option in the three – language formula…. Sanskrit text books at foundational and middle school level may be written in Simple and Standard Sanskrit (SSS) to teach Sanskrit through Sanskrit (STS) and make its study truly enjoyable (4.17)”, “all students in all schools, public or private, will have the option of learning at least two years of classical language of India and its associated literature….”. So runs the importance accorded to a language which has no direct link to the life of the people. It is one thing to support some students interested in research in Sanskrit, and it is a completely different thing to believe that Sanskrit enriches our culture and knowledge.
4. Centralization of Power: The policy seeks to concentrate all powers in the hands of the Central Government and its seven central education bodies including the overarching new body under the nomenclature of Higher Education Commission of India (HECI – Bill is pending). The policy seeks to marginalize the State Governments and State education bodies like Higher Education Councils and State Councils for Education, Research and Training (SCERTs). It seeks to impose even the textbook material for schools and courses in higher education from Delhi which has been the sole right and responsibility of the State level boards and Universities. Under this policy, NCERT would prepare school textbooks for the entire Country, and the General Education Council (GEC) would prepare courses for all Universities. National Testing Agency (NTA) is an unpopular central body which was established in 2019, and is being widely used now for centralization of admissions to higher education courses. Under NEP 2020, the NTA conducts the entrance exams for admission into Medical Colleges, IITs and NITs, Central Universities, and further proposes to conduct entrance examinations for State Universities also. NTA will be a bottleneck which only allows uniform aspects of diversified knowledge and ethos to find place in the institutes of higher education. It leads to the projection of majoritarian and authoritarian aspects of our heritage and culture. Every State, for enabling the students to prepare for NTA exams, will have to transform its education system to identify with the cultural positions pursued by the Central Government through NTA. The NEP 2020 also seeks to control research in all universities by the Central Government through National Research Foundation (NRF). This policy stands against federal rights of the States and neglects the rich diversity in language, culture and, thus, the differential aspirations of the peoples of India. The central bodies provide opportunities for the ruling party at the Centre to infiltrate its ideology into course content at all levels. More importantly, the masses of people in different States would lose the opportunity to achieve educational demands according to their respective aspirations through state level struggles, as the State Governments would not have any power to respond to the struggles of the people. The moot point to be noted is that the centralism pursued by this policy is not only against the federal rights of the State Governments in formulating education policies but also against the democratic rights of the people. On 17th July 2022, girls were asked to take away their inner-garments to enter the examination hall to write NEET in Kollam district of Kerala State. We can not forget the story of the young girl student S. Anita who committed suicide on 1st Sept 2017 as she could not compete through NEET. “If there has been no NEET, S. Anita (Tamil Nadu), who scored a cut-off score of 196.75 for medicine, would have enrolled in the prestigious Madras Medical College (EPW 26th Oct 2021)”. Anita has not been the only Victim. Centralization of admissions, which disregards the course content and regional ethos, led to many more tragedies, and many more things are in store.
5. The Autonomy of the Universities is at stake: This policy is against the autonomy of the universities, rights of the students and teachers in the universities. The aforementioned HECI and National Higher Education Regulation Council (NHERC), a regulatory body to be established under it, would establish a Board of Governors (BoG) for each of the universities in the entire Country. Of course, “Board of Governors” are already being established in different universities by the existing UGC, pending the establishment of HECI and NHERC. The BoGs, which would replace the existing “Executive Councils (ECs)” in universities, would have more members from outside the universities in comparison to the present ECs, and thus would be dominated by outsiders. The BoGs would control the university, and in turn would be controlled by persons from outside the university, who, in all possibility, would be belonging to the ruling party at the Central Government. Consequently, the autonomy of the universities, the internal possible democratic structure of the universities, the rights of students and teachers, and campus democracy would be at stake.
6. Right to free and compulsory education is at stake: As on date, “The Right of the Child to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009” (RTE Act) of the Central Government provides for universal elementary education (from class 1 to 8). Further, under the Act, the child has a fundamental right to get education at free of cost, and it is mandatory (compulsory) for the parent to send the child to school and also compulsory for the government to provide education in a proper school. Outside the RTE Act, different State governments are providing secondary education (class 9 to 12) also to all children essentially at free of cost in government schools and colleges. Some States have been providing free pre-school education also. However, provision of education has been weak on both the policy side and implementation side of NEP 2020. It proposes that all children from age 3 to 18 years (or from nursery to class 12) shall get education. It looks nice. But, the serious point to be noted is that the NEP 2020 doesn’t propose the provision of school education as a fundamental right of the child. It doesn’t speak about free and compulsory education. So, one could say that while the provision for education is extended to preschool and secondary school, the right to free and compulsory education stands liquidated.
7. New dimensions of discrimination:
We would find the following three discriminations in NEP 2020. (a) In difference with “Right to Education Act 2009”, this policy does not provide for nstitutional education for all children and, instead, only proposes to provide massive online programs for those who are outside the school and under the drudgery of child labour.
(b) Vocational courses would also be introduced from class 6th along with existing academic courses, and the child will be given the right to make ‘choice’. This would lead to a situation where government schools would be running vocational courses and private schools would be running academic courses. This in turn would lead to conditioning the poor and the socially disadvantaged children to pursue vocational courses in government schools, while allowing the children from the middle and rich classes to pursue academic courses in private schools. This is a new discrimination to be meted out to children. (c) The policy provides for two levels of school exams namely (i) standard level and (ii) high level exams. It need not be stated that poor and disadvantaged children would be pushed by circumstances to attend only standard exams and the children from better off families will be attending the high-level exams, and this would in turn lead to disallowing poor and disadvantaged children to pursue higher education. These three new dimensions of discrimination would be added by NEP 2020 to the existing discrimination in the standards of schools (in terms of the provisions of infrastructure and teachers) available to children coming from different social sections.
8. No Reservations, No Hostels: NEP 2020 doesn’t speak in terms of SC, ST, OBC, Minority, Women, Trans-gender and Persons with disabilities. Instead, it speaks about “Socially and Educationally Disadvantaged Groups (SEDGs)”. Such a general expression gives a long rope to the government to identify any social group of its choice as disadvantaged and extend the opportunities, while denying the opportunities to the really disadvantaged sections. Further, this policy document, where it has dealt with the SEDGs (Para 14), does not speak of proper quota of seats in colleges and universities. There is every possibility that reservations would be gradually liquidated. We see such trends in many States and institutes of higher learning. So, as the policy is being implemented gradually, the majority of the youth from the socially disadvantaged sections would not find opportunities in higher educational institutions. Even those youth who manage to get seats in higher educational institutions through open competition would not be provided with hostel facilities. The policy states that meritorious among the disadvantaged [only] would get scholarships (Para 12.10). One has to note that the policy speaks only about the scholarships for a few meritorious but does not speak about stipends to all poor and disadvantaged students. It may be that the majority of the poor and disadvantaged students will have to make use of the “open learning provision” through which the policy wants to ‘spread’ education. To say it straight, if this policy is implemented, the poor and disadvantaged would not find a place in colleges and universities. Under this policy regime, we also observe that the young scholars from disadvantaged groups are not allowed to take up research on the issues of disadvantaged communities. Under the scheme of ‘National Overseas Scholarship’, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment had been providing scholarships to SCs, STs and some other disadvantaged groups for pursuing research in foreign universities, and recently these scholars were barred from doing any research in humanities and social sciences. “However, the department of social justice and empowerment has recently introduced a specific rule that excludes subjects or topics that broadly come under the umbrella of humanities and social sciences from within the purview of this scholarship (EPW 26TH Feb, 2022)”.
9. Reservations, Seniority and Merit are at stake: This policy nowhere speaks about reservations in appointments of teaching and non-teaching staff in schools, colleges and universities. Further, it does not consider seniority as one of the components in promotions. In Para 13.7, it states “excellent faculty with high academic and service credentials as well as demonstrated leadership and management skills will be identified early and trained through a ladder of leadership positions”. One has to note that ‘Seniority’ is being replaced by ‘Service Credentials’. While seniority is an objective measure, service credentials cannot be measured objectively. A Vice Chancellor (VC) will not have any objective tools to measure the service credentials of the university teachers. He/she depends on his/her subjective assessment. In a setup where the VC is accountable to the Board of Governors, which is essentially filled with partisan persons, the VC will be more partisan and promote the persons who fall in line with the official line. Though the policy in 13.7 speaks of merit and excellence, the same is being countered by “commitment and leadership and management skills”. Further, these qualities will be recognized early and special ladders will be provided to the selected persons to reach higher positions. So, one is not sure if academic qualifications would even be considered for promotions. In all possibility, uncritical obedience to authorities may be considered as commitment, and serving the interests of the ruling party may be considered as having great leadership qualities. According to this policy, the period of probation will be evaluated and that would only lead, in all possibility, for regularization (declaration of probation) of only those who would fall in line. There is a provision for lateral entry. By face value, one need not oppose it. But, in practice, it will only lead not only to bribery and nepotism in appointments but, more dangerously, to party ideological appointments. Now, UGC has taken a decision for these lateral appointments of “Professors of Practice (23rd Aug, Andhra Jyothi)”.
10. Fascist culture: This policy speaks time and again about Indian culture. All education policies hitherto have been speaking about Indian culture and heritage. What is new with this policy is that it is highly sectarian in its approach to the heritage of the country. Indian culture, for that matter culture of any Country, is not something monolithic, uniform and static. Culture of any Country has diversity across populations, contradictions within each which leads to change in time. But for NEP 2020, the Indian culture is something unchanging for all times, and uniform across all populations of India. Further, it does not recognize the possible contradiction between the culture of the rulers and masses of the people. If we analyze the policy document, we understand that, for this policy, the culture of a select time, a select region and a select class, say a thing like ‘Manu Dharma’, which stands frozen, is Indian culture. It wants to impose such Hindutva, Brahminical and patriarchal culture on the gradually growing democratic and secular culture among the masses of the Country. This absolutist understanding of culture is nothing but fascism when interwoven with crises-ridden capitalism and market fundamentalism. The policy also seeks in different forms to impose communal literature through Sanskrit language on the students. The policy does not make any reference to the history of the middle-ages which gave highest material and cultural development to India. The policy makers cannot take the names of Ashoka as he was a Buddhist, Akbar as he was a ‘Muslim’ and Gandhi as he was Congress. The policy doesn’t speak of either the reform movement or independence movement. What sort of values will this policy be fostering in the next generation?
11. Informalization and Infiltration: This policy provides for informalization of existing structures and methods. Taking class demos from the candidates for teacher posts is one such thing. Selection of school teachers on the basis of written tests is more formal and evaluation is more objective. When class demo is considered for appointment of a teacher, the subjective role of the examiner becomes predominant in selection of teachers, and, in many cases, it leads to nepotism and corruption. So also, in appointment of university teachers, probation period is provided for in the policy and the performance during probation will be considered while regularizing the services of the person. Again, the subjective role could become dominant because reservations, seniority and qualifications are being sought to be replaced by ‘commitment’ to the institution and leadership and managerial skills. Wherever there is a space for subjective decisions of the officers or authorities, in all such places, the ruling party could infiltrate its preferred persons. Further, as noted earlier, the ruling party ideology will be infiltrated into education courses through NCERT, National Testing Agency (NTA), General Education Council (GEC) and National Research Foundation (NRF). If this policy is implemented in full, the ruling party at the Centre will be able to infiltrate both its persons and perceptions into the education system.
In Brief, this policy seeks to –
(1) centralize power against federalism both for control of institutions and courses,
(2) commercialize education and siphon public funds to private managements,
(3) deny institutional education facilities to the poor and socially and educationally backward sections by abolishing reservations and universal hostel facilities which would confine them only to online distance courses; it even seeks to bring new discriminations [provision of (a) education outside the school, (b) only vocational courses and (c) low standard examinations] to be meted out to the children from poor and disadvantaged families in school education,
(4) introduce informal methods of appointment and promotion to fill the posts with the persons obliged to the authorities and the ruling party and
(5) to establish a fascist culture in education through infiltration of reactionary ideas against democratic and secular values of the Constitution of the land. The future of the nation would depend on whether this policy will be resisted by the people or implemented by the rulers!
