The year is 2020, the year when India’s favourite President Dr APJ Kalam, dreamt, a couple of years before the close of the previous millennium. He dreamt up a vision we must develop to achieve key goals. He was, of course, playing with the term, 20-20 vision, but also dreaming up a plan that we could reasonably challenge ourselves to achieve.

“A developed India, by 2020 or even earlier is not a dream. It need not even be a mere aspiration in the minds of many Indians. It is a mission we can we can all take up­ and accomplish.” – APJ Kalam in the book, ‘India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium’

It is not uncommon for a nation, to dream a plan and execute onto it. India, until very recently, read advent of the Modi government, had designed and developed based on five-year plans, that was put out by the planning commission. Adopted from the erstwhile Soviet Union, Nehru used it to craft a modern state. The first was Agriculture oriented, second Industrialization, etc., theme-based planning was the hallmark of this economic development model. It delivered quick successes initially, and these were not necessarily because of carefully designed plans, but more because of the focus and determination of the government of the day to make it deliver.

The National Education Policy 2020 was not the first education-related planning and policy document delivered by the Government of India. There were at least two other national policy documents on education that were formulated and implemented in varying measures by the governments past. Indira Gandhi in 1968 and Rajiv Gandhi in 1986, both developed new education policies. And they too had issues and problems, but since they are over and done with, there is little use to evaluate them, other than to know of mistakes made and learn from them. My diatribe here is regarding the latest Education Policy, now referred to as NEP 2020, even as it is toyed about as a solution for all problems. My assertions below are not necessarily in any particular sequence; importance, risks or threats.

To begin with, the 2020 policy is twenty years too late. You can decide who to blame for that, both UPA and NDA governments dawdled on this front. The point is that many of the issues addressed should have been solved by now, should they have been formulated in 2000.

It is, for this reason, that articulation of the purpose, direction, commitment and timelines in the NEP2020 look like a document too little too late. – Ashok Pandey, Times of India Blogs, Aug 4th 2020 ⁷

And why did we start a new millennium without an education policy? Obviously, it highlights our lack of perspective, as a nation.

The vision is lofty and well-intended but is clearly not aligned with the timeframe outlined. And there is a big discord between, what is planned and how this will be achieved. Obviously, there are several details missing from the policy, quite normal, considering that this is a policy and not meant to be a procedural document. Having said that, there are many places in the document where select procedures and details are spelt out, it appears possibly, to sell some pet idea or thought of one or many hands this document must have passed through.  Contradictions like this are many and seems to be part of a theme, rather than an aberration. Just one example, with respect to the teacher and their training. The policy outlines its purpose to meet the goals set forth in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a mere decade away. And yet proposes a change in teacher training, that will only yield results about 4+ years from the beginning of the implementation, and then in turn help to achieve the goals of this policy itself. There is a similar plan to achieve a big Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) at the secondary level by 2030, and yet the policy outlines avenues, ie vocational training etc., that are nothing but planned exits. There is more to this “vocational training” and requires a special call-out. Similar dichotomies and contradictions can be discerned from the many different sections and pages of the policy.

Free and Compulsory education had a prime placement in the first education policy in 1968. Today when we now know that it was achieved back then, and while the compulsory part can barely be considered as happening, the first part, ie free has now been clearly abandoned. The new 2020 policy documents hardly emphasise the government’s role in providing free education. In every major economy, all developed and many growing economies in the world, free education provided by the government, is a clear perquisite to the taxpaying citizen. A private school is priced higher and out of reach for the commoner, and usually unwarranted within the lager gamut of their education system. The government has clearly given up on this objective and instead is expecting the citizens to fund their way using private schools to achieve the objectives of this policy. One should question if that being the premise, does this policy serve any purpose, that is worthy of so many words?

Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) is paid lip service in a few places in the document. There is a phrase in the document that talks about to achieve 100% GER at the secondary level, and this in comparison to the other countries, a few of which are even mentioned in the document. Even this is trickery, in that, reasonable expectation at this point in time, that is 74 years after Independence, we would measure and target higher secondary and college enrollment. Instead, the policy focusses on the lowest of the low to making a mockery of the education system. There are several more references to GER in the document, as stated before, that are called out in the passing, with no clear cut definition of current levels at different grade or age, and how they expect to achieve change if any at these levels. More importantly, vocational training is provided prominence as a formal educational philosophy. The clamour to include vocational training stems i think from the presumption that children come from different background and therefore are unable or unwilling to pursue academics beyond a point. This is not on the basis that all children are not equal, which would be soundly placed, but from the casteist, view that certain sects of people in India are incapable of academic pursuit. The policy advocates early segregation of students, based on their interests, and placement into streams that are non-academic. There are references to using pre-defined exit points to determine if the students are capable of continuing in the academic stream.

They say “won’t detain children if they fail these exams,” but they will say that “you are not fit enough to go into the main curriculum.” It instils a failure concept into the kids mind as well as the minds of rural parents. Parents will think that my child is not good enough in formal education. So, naturally, they’ll be pushed towards vocational education. – Dr Ezhilan Naganathan ¹⁰

While it is easy to get side-tracked on the casteist colour of the policy, the bigger issue is the re-definition of the approach to collate and report data relating to the gross enrollment ratio at higher levels of the educational ladder. The vocational training option is given the sanctity of education, thereby allowing the student to formally exit the system, but yet claim them to be educated, and reportable metric in  GER.

I dont know if i would like to characterize this document as “well-intended, but misplaced”, or as “cleverly designed with an agenda”. Both though only means that this policy must be discarded as-is, and a new formulated in its place. Or better yet, simply fund the states to do a better job. There are a few examples to follow from India, instead of looking at US and Germany.

In 1982, MGR introduced the midday meal scheme11, or i should say re-introduced the scheme. I had just finished my schooling, and shared this as a joke with many friends. Children going to school to eat food, instead of studying. I had lived a sheltered life, and seen a dilapitated public school near my house not recognizing the horror of an education system that existed then. Tamil Nadu in the 1980s was still a poor state in comparision to the others in the Union. For our story here, the literacy rate as per 1981 census was 54.4%, in comparison to All-India rate of 43.6%. 
A simple afternoon meal, changed the face of the state, decades later shooting the literacy rate to 80.1%, in comparison to the national average of 73.0%. Literacy rate is very poor indicator of this prowess, but i was unable to find the GER information in 1980s for comparison. TN achieved a GER of 49.2% in the year 201812.
I dont laugh at this today. I look at this with pride, of how dravidian thought and leadership was able to achieve this growth. The credit is not just due to MGR, but also to Karunanidhi and Jayalalitha13. While the DMK and ADMK fought bitter political battles and differed on virtually everything, their focus on social upliftment was apparently common.
I dont joke about this today.     

1. ^{Abdul Kalam, A.P.J.; Rajan, Y.S. (1998). India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium. India}
2. ^{Planning Commission, Government of India: Five Year Plans. Planningcommission.nic.in (site is working, but very slow). An alternate site on Niti.In}
3. ^{National Education Policy 2020, Ministry of Human Resource Development (now Ministry of Education), Government of India}
4. ^{Ministry of Education, Government of India, 1968 Education Policy}
5. ^{Ministry of Education, Government of India, 1986 Education Policy, (Program Action 1992) As revised and updated in 1992}
6. ^{The Constitution of India, Article 45}
7. ^{NEP 2020 synched in 21st century world, Ashok Pandey, Aug 4th, 2020}
8. ^{New Education Policy : India Takes a Great Leap Backwards, Prabhat Patnaik, Aug 12th 2020}
9. ^{Tamil Nadu leads the nation in higher education enrolment, Vikas Pathak, Jan 5th 2018}
10. ^{NEP is casteist, self-defeatist; centre should learn from Tamil Nadu: Interview with Dr Ezhilan Naganathan, Abhay Regi, Aug 29th 2020}
11. ^{Tracing the history of Tamil Nadu’s mid-day meal scheme, T Ramakrishnan, Feb 21st 2020.}
12. ^{NEP 2020: Why India needs to learn from Tamil Nadu. K Ramachandran, Aug 4th 2020.}
13. ^{Inclusive growth in Tamil Nadu: The role of political leadership and governance. Centre of Government and Delivery Briefing, Jan 20th 2020}