The formulation of a new education policy is still underway even though it’s been three years since the NDA government promised one. The recently created Dr. K. Kasturirangan committee is the second committee to be formed under the NDA government to look into the policy after the T.S R Subramanian committee submitted
its report in April 2016. The last such policy to be formulated was the National Policy on Education in 1986 under Rajiv Gandhi. This policy was modified in 1992 under Narasimha Rao. Since then there have been several changes in the Indian society and the education sector, which called for an improved policy to tackle the present-day
challenges.
Some of the pressing issues present today are that India is one of the youngest nations, with over 54% of its population being under 25 years of age, while also having the largest number of youth and adult illiterates in the world. Its non-literate population is the highest in the world at 282.2 million. There are 10 lakh Indians joining the job
market every month while only 2-3 lakh jobs are being generated every year. In addition to that, the gender disparity in education is visible both youth literacy (8.2 percentage points) and adult literacy (19.5 percentage points). The percentage of female dropouts is higher than that of males. With regard to the budgetary concerns,
the 1986 resolution had suggested having 6% of the GDP outlay for education, yet the expenditure has generally been only about 3.5%.
We at NCAS, would like to point out that despite the government having claimed to have taken the respectable initiative of holding consultations in every district and taluka, the MHRD website confirms that the claims of the government are false and that barely 50% of the consultations actually took place. Moreover, the reports of
these consultations are not available in the public domain. The GOI, till date, has not officially owned the Subramanian Committee Report; let alone putting it in public domain. The government needs to be transparent in its work in order to allow it to be accountable for the greater good of the nation.
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In solidarity Team NCAS
