The grand promises made by the BJP and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in the run-up to General Election 2014 to reform and upgrade Indian education, have remained mere IOUs to the people: Summiya Yasmeen 2015 was a disappointing year for Indian education. The grand promises made by the BJP-led NDA coalition, which was voted to power with a huge majority at the Centre in the summer of 2014 to reform and upgrade Indian education have remained mere IOUs to the people. The year was marked by controversies with the NDA government dismally failing to fulfil its election promise of raising education spending to 6 percent of GDP. Moreover the Hindu revivalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — the acknowledged ideological parent organisation of the BJP — which has a record of interference in school curriculums and faculty/institutional appointments, cast a long shadow over all BJP/NDA education initiatives. Nevertheless the calendar year 2015 began on an upbeat note with the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry inviting public participation on the website www.mygov.in to prepare the long-awaited New Education Policy (NEP). While the initiative to formulate NEP 2016 was generally welcomed, the HRD ministry’s modus operandi — proposals to be submitted online within a cramped window of 500 characters and elaborate village/district/state-level consultations — prompted uneasiness and disquiet. Suspicion about the HRD ministry’s elaborate public participation exercise being a cosmetic drill were also sharpened by reports that the RSS had parallely established a Shiksha Niti Aayog (education policy commission) to invite education reform suggestions from “right-minded” citizens. The NEP announcement was followed by a rude shock for Indian education. Despite the BJP’s election manifesto promising to increase the annual expenditure (Centre plus states) on education from the current 3.4 percent of GDP to 6 percent, while presenting the Union Budget 2015-16, finance minister Arun Jaitley slashed the Central government’s outlay for education from the budgeted Rs.82,771 crore in 2014-15 to Rs.69,075 crore — a first in the history of post-independence India when the budgetary outlay for education was lower than in the previous year and not even adjusted for inflation. Moreover, instead of pressing the ministry’s case for a larger outlay for education in Union Budget 2015-16, Union HRD minister Smriti Irani made media headlines for reckless interference with the administration and autonomy of the country’s few globally ranked higher ed institutions, especially the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). In early March, nuclear scientist Anil Kakodkar put in his papers as chairman of the board of governors of IIT-Bombay citing persistent interference from the HRD ministry. In May, the combative HRD minister sparked academic outrage by decreeing a new selection process for appointing the director of IIM-Lucknow with eminent educationists forced to undergo a humiliating ‘group discussion’ with her presiding. A month later, a new IIM Bill 2015, substantially expanding the supervisory and regulatory powers of the Central government, i.e, the Union HRD ministry, drew sharp criticism. In November, there was a national outcry…
