By Nilotpal Basu
The fast of the activist educationist Sonam Wangchuk has completed more than two weeks. Without accountability and sensitivity of the government, his life faces a serious risk. There is growing support and solidarity from various student groups and the broad democratic and secular sections of the society. The fast has achieved the objective of bringing to focus, the dire state of Indian education. Resignation of the Education Minister is naturally the focal demand. But it encompasses the whole range of critical concerns that Indian education has come to suffer from.
It is apparent that we have moved a long way from the discourse, direction and paradigm that defined the trajectory of education in India since independence. While the Constitution was adopted, the overriding concern for education as an active instrument for decolonisation and its democratic consolidation by ensuring access and equity in the pedagogic process was the mainstay. Article 45 of the Indian Constitution – under the Directive Principles of State Policy –had directed the post-colonial State to ensure education for all children between six to eighteen years of age.
The emphasis on universalisation of education underlined universal access irrespective of caste, creed, religion and socio-economic vulnerabilities. In 1993 the landmark judgment of the Supreme Court modified the earlier Mohini Jain judgment, holding that the Right to Education is a fundamental right for children up to 14 years of age. This landmark judgment directly paved the way for Article 21A, inserted through the 86th Constitution Amendment Act in 2002. The amendment guaranteed free and compulsory education as a fundamental right for children between six and 14 years of age. The active schemes of early childcare and education paving the way for anganwadis and mid-day meals strengthened the process despite the inadequate resources invested to translate this potential into reality. But undoubtedly, heart was in the right place.
However, the scenario began to change from the mid-80s and full-fledged reversal came to be evidenced with the neoliberal reforms of the economy. The key role of public investment for the development of education was contested, if not fully reversed. From 1990s itself, gradually the education policy evolved the pre-eminence of three Cs – commercialisation, centralisation and some initiation of communalisation. With the Modi government firmly in the saddle, the full might of the corporate-communal nexus has exploded. The National Education Policy (NEP) of 2020 was authored largely through the intervention of the RSS on the one hand and to establish education largely as a sphere of corporate profits. Through the airy-fairy verbosity of NEP 2020, its ramifications were not fully realised initially by the people and the society at large. But now, the effects are on full public display with the signature claws and fangs. It is no longer in the realm of conjecture; the report card is out.
Now a NITI Aayog report admits that 94,000 government schools have shut across India over the past decade. Forget expansion, enrolment itself has dropped by 2.26 crore with 25 schools shutting down daily. The report in particular underlines the horrific dimension of the crisis in rural India. A further disaggregation of the data shows that tribal and Dalit dense neighbourhoods are most severely affected. Further details show that government schools declined from 11.07 lakh in 2014-15 to 10.13 lakh in 2024-25. During the same period, government aided schools also fell from 83,000 to 79,000. Conversely, private schools increased from 2.88 lakhs to 3.39 lakhs over the same period. Obviously, the expansion of private sector schools implies its devastating impact on affordability and access.
The analysis also brings out that school enrolment has declined in tandem with closure of schools. The report also grudgingly admits that the reversal and shrinkage resulting in declining enrolment is largely due to the policy of merger and consolidation as envisaged in NEP 2020, leading to the gradual disappearance of neighbourhood schools.
Such being the condition of the foundation, the dropout rates at the next higher levels has also increased significantly. Regardless of the poor quality of data in India, the gravity of the situation is palpable. In just 10 years, India added more than 550 universities. Most of them were privately managed. The Ministry of Education’s data from the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) shows a shift in who is setting up universities in India. This data from AISHE spanning the years 2013-14 and 2023-24 reveals that the number of privately managed universities grew from 219 to 546, a jump of nearly 149 per cent. While the government universities grew from 504 to 733 in the same period, a rise of just over 45 per cent.
The sphere of higher education and research faces severe underfunding with the policy actively promoting corporate involvement, largely for profits. The commercialisation of education is accompanied with large scale corporatisation of major segments of education. Along with commercialisation, centralisation has received great impetus in NEP. The RSS involvement in the framing of the NEP goes against the very grains of Indian reality – unity in diversity. It is to achieve that ideological underpinning, that centralisation has acted as the deadly instrument. One of the striking examples is the National Testing Authority (NTA). The ignominious record of the NTA has now come into such sharp focus with the massive scandal with the conduct of NEET-UG.
Ever since 2017, all centrally conducted exams have been blemished by minor and major scandals. With further centralisation of the processes and introduction of common entrance test for Central Universities, the danger is stark. The role of private institutions and the role of the coaching industry are found to be playing a big role in the massive corruption, which has completely destroyed the possibility of free and fair access. Hopes are dashed and hence the demand for the Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation has emerged as the central point for opposition mobilisation.
The commercialisation and centralisation is accompanied with the third foundational pillar of the new paradigm. Centralisation has facilitated the capture of all central nodes and agencies to govern all aspects of education by RSS functionaries and associates. The wholesale communalisation of syllabus and content is there for all to see. History as a subject is made prisoner to mythology. Science has become anecdotal – distinct from its evidence based development.
Never in the past has the imperative of defending the Right to Education as a means for development, access and equity been more significant. Along with this, defence of scientific temperament and reason is equally compelling. Therefore, not only is there an urgency for evolving the broadest possible platform to realise the objectives of such a struggle, but that platform has to embrace the larger society going beyond the confines of the academic community. (IPA Service)
