The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhisthan (VBSA) Bill proposes to statutorily take forward the implementation of National Education Policy (NEP 2020) that the Union government adopted during the COVID period without consultation with State governments. The Bill is under examination of a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC), which offers an opportunity to teachers, students, State governments, and civil society to submit their amendment proposals. The Bill, as it stands, is a constitutional overreach. Entry 66 of Union List gives limited and specific legislative power to Parliament only for coordination and determination of standards in higher education institutions (HEIs). Now, the VBSA Bill gives sole discretionary power to Union government-controlled councils to determine standards, conduct inspection, and exercise independent, unlimited powers and functions. Under the Bill, the Education Ministry has usurped the authority of allocating funds to HEIs. 

The Bill does not envisage participation of higher education institutions in decision making. Bureaucratic overreach is written into each provision of it. Bureaucrats have been given the charge of transforming higher education. The Bill dilutes the University Grants Commission’s (UGC) consultative requirements. Section 13 of the UGC Act provides for inspections for the purpose of ascertaining the financial needs of a university or its standards of teaching, examination, and research. The UGC is statutorily required to undertake inspections only after consultation with the university. The VBSA Bill, which covers Central and State-funded universities as well as private universities, takes away the autonomy of the governing bodies of Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and Inter-University Centres (IUCs). 

In the name of “Bhartiya Knowledge”, the Bill seeks to sow the seeds for Hindutva ideologies. It explicitly undermines the multi-cultural character of Indian knowledge. It allows bureaucratic control, centralised ways of prescriptive regulation, determination of standards, and accreditation process. The Bill seeks to promote hyper globalisation and to regulate based on outputs legitimised in global rankings. It does not seek outcomes for national innovation, self-reliance, and social justice. The Bill has been brought in to allow the Union government to withdraw from the obligation to promote education as a public-funded enterprise for common good and push the dependence of higher education on loans. It does not provide for the enforcement of affirmative action and reservation to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes (SCs/STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). It does not seek inter-institutional, inter-State and inter-regional justice.

Amend for democratisation and justice to States

The National Research Foundation (NRF) was proposed in the NEP 2020 to provide research funds to State universities (SUs). As of now, it has no provisions to provide block grants to SUs for integrated scholarship. The State Higher Education Councils (SHECs) need to be represented on the councils envisaged under the VBSA Bill. The Councils should provide for consensual decision making to pursue a jointly strategic direction. The SHECs should also have a clear mandate and space for influencing the future of HEIs. The Bill should explicitly affirm the role and contribution of associations of students, teachers, and non-teaching staff in the governance of higher education by involving HEIs’ senates and academic councils in gathering feedback on planning and progress. 

Under the Bill, the Regulatory Council (Viniyaman Parishad) is envisaged as the primary enforcer of governance and institutional norms. The Bill should not give the Union government a free hand and responsibility for formal recognition, authorisation, and closure of institutions. It now provides for graded financial penalties for regulatory violations. No institution should be closed without getting the consent of the government of the State where the concerned institution is located. Under the Bill, the accreditation council will outsource the task of accreditation to a network of third-party accrediting institutions to circumvent the deliberative process and sideline the desirable outcomes that the society expects the HEIs to contribute to. The Accreditation Council (Gunvatta Parishad) provides for technology-driven quality assessment. The approach to regulation should be deliberative and process-oriented; it cannot be prescriptive. 

The University is a viable unit for upgrading the HEIs’ contribution. Output-based evaluation (patents and publications) and assessment of institutions based on educational outputs (learning levels and employability) may not have much to do with the desirable outcomes. Evaluation should be outcome- and impact-centric. The Standards Council (Manak Parishad), sitting in Delhi, cannot be expected to define standards and attributes for all types of higher education – be it academic degrees or vocational integration or Bhartiya knowledge systems or student mobility. The standards will have to be shaped industrial sector- and State-wise. The internationalisation of standards has been shifting the HEIs to structurally embrace the agenda of corporate sector. 

Shared responsibility of Centre and States

Constitutionally speaking, education is a subject under the Concurrent List. The VBSA Bill’s provisions are applicable to all State governments. The State governments should have a role in the determination of standards, accreditation, and regulations. The determination of standards, accreditation, and regulations cannot be a top-down affair. Currently, it is the individual States that are the primary financers of their higher education systems. The Bill does not offer social and inter-regional equity. Under it, private sector higher education institutions do not provide for equity and social justice. The State governments can and should be expected to take care of priorities such as contribution to school education, environment, climate, local resources rejuvenation, and local economic development. The priorities would be different State-wise and so should be the weightage given to various aspects. 

The amended Bill must give 50% weightage each to State Higher Education Councils (SHECs) and the Union government’s councils in the process of regulation, accreditation, and determination of standards, so as to focus on the goals of space for inter-regional equity, linguistic and cultural autonomy, social justice, national-level innovation, fundamental science, new technologies, and global excellence. The Bill should also consider incorporating a provision for regional councils to accommodate emerging ecological and socio-technical aspects in their planning and deliberations.

Concluding remarks

The amended Bill should provide for an alternative framework for governance of higher education as a shared responsibility to build enabling mechanisms into the structures to be developed for transformative governance. The Bill must have a separate higher education grants council (HEGC) to disburse the funds available to the Ministry of Education for the integration of teaching, research, and outreach. The HEGC will have to provide not only regular funding to Central institutions, including institutes of national importance (INIs) and Central universities, but also generous funding to laggards run by the States to bridge the historical discrimination, structural gaps and voids, and deficits arising out of lack of support for research and outreach. 

SHECs’ role and contribution should be legislated to realise the vision and strategy of joint implementation of standards, accreditation, and regulation through the proposed verticals in the form of three separate councils. The councils for regulation, accreditation, and standards determination should be maintained by academics and professionals and have their own separate budgets. The SHECs should be duly funded by the HEGC to enable the process to become a shared responsibility. All the cesses that are presently provided for the implementation of the shared responsibility should be at the disposal of the HEGC. Who should regulate what should be explicitly stated in the amended Bill. The public purposes of higher education should be specifically mentioned to disburse allocations for the outcomes proposed for consideration. 

Dinesh Abrol is faculty at Transdisciplinary Research Cluster on Sustainability Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.