Page 50 - EW July 2024

Cover Story

Non-bouncer Pradhan ducked 3. One of the great deficits of Indian education is inadequate

common feature of all education ministers of the BJP/NDA attention to skilling, reskilling and upskilling. Skilling and en-
A government at the Centre (except Prakash Javadekar) is trepreneurship education are integrated in your ministerial
that they have resolutely declined to respond to Education- portfolio. Currently only 5 percent of our 420 million workforce
World’s repeated requests for interviews to explain the elabo- is formally skilled. What are your plans to rapidly upskill India?
rate policies and plans they draw up for the world’s largest 4. A downside of NEP 2020 is the large number of commit-
child and youth population. This despite the globally unique EW tees — NHERC, GEC, HEGC and NAC in higher education
being India’s #1 education newsmagazine with over 1 million and DSEs, SCERTs and SSSAs in K-12 education. The fear is
print and online readers. that education could become over-regulated resulting in loss
Shortly after he was reappointed Union minister for educa- of academic autonomy. To what extent is this apprehension
tion on June 9, your editor sent several emails and messages justified?
to Dharmendra Pradhan to respond to the following questions. 5. A chronic problem of India’s K-12 and higher education
Typically, he failed and neglected to acknowledge or re- is that there is huge academia-industry misalignment. As a
spond to the questionnaire as under, raising doubts about his result the country doesn’t have an unemployment, as much as
comprehension of the grammar of democratic governance. unemployability problem. What’s your comment?
The innocuous questions posed: 6. Way back in 1967 the high-powered Kothari Commission
1. Sir, Congratulations on your appointment as Union Educa- recommended a minimum 6 percent of GDP per year to be
tion Minister for a second term. Evidently your track record expended on education. But for over seven decades the
since you were appointed education minister in 2020 has allocation has averaged 3.5 percent. Can we expect a sub-
impressed Prime Minister Modi. What would you list as the stantially larger allocation for education from the BJP/NDA
major achievements of your first innings? 3.0 government in the next Union budget ?
2. The onus of implementing the National Education Policy 7. India has the world’s largest child and youth population —
2020 devolved upon you as soon as you assumed office in over 600 million. How confident are you of transforming this li-
July 2020. How satisfied are you with the education ministry’s ability into the much awaited demographic dividend by 2047?
record in implementing NEP 2020? 8. Any other comment?

associated with them. Simultaneously with “light but tight touch”, as also Even public HEIs awarded autono-
Hindi-belt politicians are driving the recommended by the K’Rangan Com- mous status, have better reputation
country towards national suicide by mittee. than the majority of non-autonomous
discouraging learning of English, Institutional autonomy is especially colleges and universities. Therefore
the link language of the country and important in higher education. India’s clearly, their institution development
international language of industry, new genre, new millennium private model and best practices need to be
business and the Internet, in which universities led by vice chancellors of followed by government HEIs.
we have a historic advantage. It’s high unquestionable academic qualifica- “I welcome the reappointment of
time to take votes-bagging politics out tions and international track records, Mr. Dharmendra Pradhan as India’s
of education,” asserts Menon. which have captured the imagination education minister. His re-induction
Depoliticisation of education ne- of the new post-liberalisation middle into the Cabinet demonstrates a cer-
cessitates appointment of academics class and received excellent notices in tain degree of institutional stability,
with high qualifications and track national and international university policy continuity and regulatory pre-
records in scholarship and admin- ranking surveys, have clearly demon- dictability. During his first term, the
istration to important positions of strated that government involvement minister took several important initia-
authority and regulation. As recited and regulation is not required for at- tives. Now he has the opportunity to
earlier, the downside of NEP 2020 tainment of high academic standards. take these initiatives to their logical
is the establishment of numerous conclusion. I believe there are five im-
education monitoring and regulation Pradhan's priority in his portant policy areas of higher ed that
committees — HECI, NAC, SSSA on deserve high priority and serious at-
the advice of the Kasturirangan Com- second innings should be to tention of the Hon’ble minister. First,
mittee. If Pradhan at all aspires to be build a national consensus he should constitute a national-level
remembered in objective histories of steering committee to monitor imple-
this era, he should slash the number of for depoliticisation of mentation of NEP 2020. Second, he
education supervisory and regulation education, says teacher should negotiate a substantial in-
committees mandated by NEP 2020 crease in the forthcoming Union bud-
in favour of institutional autonomy educator Maya Menon get for higher education to fulfill NEP

50 EDUCATIONWORLD JULY 2024