Something not right with India’s intellectuals, especially dons, deans and faculty of the country’s 1,168 universities. Almost all of them have lavished praise on the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 without meaningfully debating this important 66-page document.  

EducationWorld raised some red flags by highlighting a contradiction in the policy which decrees establishment of almost a dozen government regulatory committees (SRA, SSRA, HECI, NHERC, NAC, HEG, GEC among others) to supervise the education sector. Simultaneously, NEP 2020 recommends that all higher ed institutions (including 47,000 undergrad colleges) should progressively transform into autonomous degree-awarding universities. This contradiction hasn’t evoked a squeak of comment from the academy. 

Somewhat belatedly, a forthright essay penned by two eminent Bangalore-based academics — Dr. Gautam Desiraju, Professor Emeritus at the Indian Institute of Science, and Prof. Mirle Surappa, Senior Scientist at the National Institute of Advanced Studies — surfaced in The Hindu (May 14). In the essay titled ‘In India, Education without Employment’, the learned professors dispute the government claim — dutifully echoed by the academy — that NEP 2020 “will enable an educational renaissance”.

On the contrary, they highlight graduate unemployability (42.6 percent) four years after promulgation of the “outdated and financially unviable” NEP 2020. They also belittle official claims about the progress of Indian universities in the QS and THE league tables; enquire about the fate of vanished mega research projects (CSIR-NMITLI, $10 Akash tablet, IMPRINT); highlight India’s low rank in the Global Innovation Index, overblown start-ups and lament obsolescence of the University Grants Commission.  

Unsurprisingly, academia and media response is deafening silence. But Dear Professors, dailies have a shelf life of five minutes. If you venture out of your ivory towers and improve your market intelligence, you might discover that the education-focused EducationWorld with a shelf life of 30 days, and archival value, offers a better forum.

Also Read: National Education Policy 2020: Manifesto of the aspirational middle class