Missing in NEP: Rural Youth

Context: NEP overlooks the complexity of contemporary rural India, which is marked by a sharp deceleration of its economy, extant forms of distress, and pauperization of a majority of its citizens.

Issues Neglected by NEP-2020

• Fails to address the growing school differentiation i.e government schools are now primarily attended by disadvantaged class while private schools by advantaged castes and classes. 

• School differentiation defies the idea of education as a leveler and the possibility of schooling acting as a shared experience that forges social coherence.

• Growing privatisation of education along with no assurance of quality is placing a huge burden on citizens.
• Neglects the idea of fostering equality of educational opportunity with equality in quality education.
• Poor quality education marks and mars the lives of rural citizens.
• Inability of rural candidates to gain entry into professional education and the lack of fit between their degrees and the job market.
• Overlooks the general adverse integration of the rural into the larger macroeconomy and into poor quality mass higher education.
• Rural youth with limited access to quality education are amenable to being recruited into violent anti-social activities.
• Absence of smaller regional learning centres in which the youth can be taught a range of revamped older knowledge systems along with newer skills and knowledge.
• Fails to recognise the fact that correspondence courses and distance education degrees have become a source of revenue generation.
• The NEP draws on its neoliberal economic ideas and moots the possibility of establishing “Special Education Zones” in disadvantaged areas and in aspirational districts.

• NEP does not provide functional details and beneficiaries of SEZs.

• Fails to recognise vernacular architectural traditions and skills, and a range of artisan and craftsmanship to use local resources for generating employment.
• Fails to recognise the promotion of environmental studies for local ecological restoration and conservation, agro-ecologies.

Conclusion: NEP must be aimed at facilitating full human potential and developing an equitable and just society for promoting national development.