A glaring blindspot of the much-heralded National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is the large number of supervisory and regulation committees it prescribes. Based on the recommendations of the nine-member Dr. K. Kasturirangan Committee which submitted a 484-page report to the BJP government at the Centre in 2019, the report was distilled into the 66-page NEP 2020 approved by the Union Cabinet on July 29, 2020. While the K’Rangan Report is visionary and forward looking, its downside as highlighted by EducationWorld in a lead feature titled ‘More government, more governance’ (https://www.educationworld.in/national-education-policy-2020-visionary-charter-educracy-shadow/) was recommending a spate of committees to supervise quality standards, curriculums, fees regulation, teacher education and academic autonomy in schools and higher education institutions. We warned of the danger of governments at the Centre and in the states packing important committees with ideologically aligned comrades and party faithfuls. And so it has come to pass. For instance the recently appointed chairman of the National Council of Educational Research & Training (NCERT), the country’s largest school textbooks publisher and syllabus formulation body, is Dinesh Kumar Saklani, hitherto professor of history at the obscure H.N. Bahuguna University, Garhwal. Last month NCERT was in the news for purportedly recommending the inclusion of mythical epics Ramayana and Mahabharata in the history textbooks of high school children. Although when a row broke out over the issue, NCERT issued a denial, this recommendation was traced to Prof. C. Isaac, a Kochi-based academic appointed chairman of a focus group by NCERT to write model social science textbooks under the National Curriculum Framework (NCF). Moreover in history textbooks published by NCERT and mandatory in 28,900 high ranked CBSE schools, the entire Mughal period (1526-1757) has been eliminated “to reduce students academic load”. The tea leaves don’t read well for Indian education, especially the study of history.
