Making NEP work

Context: Implementing the national education policy requires the framing of new organisational structures, more financial resources and mechanisms of accountability.

Public policy lessons for the implementation of New Education Policy (NEP 2020): Bernardo Mueller has listed five aspects of complex public policies that impact any standard approach to implementing them.

• Public policies are non-linear and emergent: This recognition is critical as most efforts in public policy-making assume linearity and rarely take into account the emergent nature of the policy. 
• Public policies do not settle in equilibria and are hard to predict: The history of the evolution of failed public policies is filled with pre- dictions that went wrong.
• Public policies evolve and coevolve: The evolutionary nature of public policy needs to be recognised and accepted while attempts are being made to implement NEP.
• Public policies are subject to cognitive biases: The dominant thinking while designing public policy is rational choice theory, which assumes decision-making as a part of rational human behaviour. 
• It is time that we recognise that there are pre-existing biases, prejudices and opinions — all of which may influence people’s behaviour.
• Public policies are subject to reactivity: The reaction to policy and how it impacts the implementation of public policy is always an empirical question. 
• But at the same time, it suffers from policy-altering behaviour, which was not taken into account while implementing the policy. 

Way Forward: The implementation of NEP should be based on the following five initiatives.

• Establishing a new organisational structure: The National Education Policy Commission, whose sole mandate is to work towards implementing the NEP.
• Establishing accountability: We need institutional checks and balances that will ensure that the responsibility to implement the NEP goes along with the powers and functions of the individuals and institutions entrusted with the tasks.
• Monitoring implementation: Establishing institutional mechanisms and empowered steering committees within the existing mandate of the Ministry of Education, the UGC and other such state and central level regulatory bodies to continuously monitor the implementation.
• Providing the financial resources: A special purpose vehicle (SPV) needs to be created to ensure that the funds for NEP are available and that the implementation process is not delayed.
• Need to promote private philanthropy for funding both public and private higher education institutions, and new and additional forms of tax incentives and other forms of incentives need to be evolved.
• Empowering institutions of eminence and other institutions: Who have been granted greater autonomy to function independently.