Dr Nishant A.Irudayadason
Professor of Philosophy and Ethics, Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune.

This process for a New Education Policy (NEP) has been underway for a few years now. A committee of retired civil servants comprising only one education specialist conducted a national consultation, gathering the opinions of the Indian people through online contributions and consultation meetings, which proposed thirteen topics for discussion for the school education and twenty for higher education. According to the ministry’s website, 110,623 of 244,252 village organizations, 725 of 4,027 municipalities, 2,738 of 6,620 blocks, 340 of 669 districts and 19 of 36 states or union territories took part in these consultations or sent their contributions online for the new education policy. It is arguably the largest consultative process ever for educational policy development in the history of modern education! It is not clear, however, what specific contributions were received from each of these consultations. We could not find on the site either a summary of the key contributions or mention of the methodology used to consolidate all of this data.
The revision of the National Curriculum Framework (NCF), developed in 2005, and textbooks were expected to be high on the priorities of the new government; and all the more so since the NCF 2005 had been considered as a reaction aiming to influence “safranization” curriculum and textbooks then prevailing. The new government has, from the outset, completely taken over the NCF 2005, welcoming the principles on which it was formulated. The committee for NEP recommends that the guiding principles of curriculum reform as set out in NCF 2005 be considered relevant and actively implemented. The ministry also put an end to the revision of the curriculum documents. Textbooks developed by the National Council of Educational Research and Training have been retained unchanged.
It seems that the education ministry is striving to appear as modern Hindutva or guided by ideological interests. The only subject that has received national attention is that of yoga, promoted as a teaching subject under the title “yoga for health and well-being.” The inclusion of yoga practice in school, promoted by the MHRD, is currently receiving strong support. But, as might be expected, this has raised concerns as to whether this practice should be seen as the effective promotion of Vedic practices in school. The MHRD itself has carefully avoided any reference to the links between religion and yoga, instead emphasizing its internationally recognized virtues for physical and mental well-being. But any doubt or examination of what exactly is understood as “yoga” immediately elicits its share of strident and misleading comments from far-right groups.
In some of the BJP-ruled states, notably Rajasthan, history textbooks have been revised to incorporate a Hindutva version of India’s freedom struggle, which radically redefines the roles attributed to national heroes, including the Mahatma Gandhi, reducing the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, to a minor figure, while some Hindutva figures are promoted to the rank of heroes, as is the case of Veer Savarkar, an admirer of Hitler.
We are currently witnessing in India the convergence between an old right and neo-liberalism. In its overall development outlook, the Indian state views political dissent as a waste of time and resources when, on the contrary, all citizens should be united for the advancement of the nation. In this context, freedom of expression is seen as an unnecessary luxury and the activity of those not having to justify their time or their results. It is in fact the entire education system that is currently being “disciplined” in India, through this accountability regime, which aims to achieve greater efficiency and limit waste. The Indian federal state has also sent police to campuses or excluded students for “disrupting” campus life.
The neoliberal developmental perspective promotes close supervision of teaching for greater effectiveness and the notion of accountability for better results. It is this approach that has been adopted at the central level, alongside the rise of the ideological Hindutva agenda in different structures. While a new educational policy is expected in the coming months in India, the new educational landscape is already taking shape, but without the necessary foundation of fundamental rights and freedoms.