Will umbrella body to integrate, harmonise higher education stomp out diversity, dissent?

As the Union Government prepares its overhaul of the higher education regulatory framework in India, several key challenges remain in realising the ambitious vision that the Education Ministry has laid out in its Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025. The Bill, modelled on the recommendations of the National Education Policy 2020, proposes to do away with bodies like the University Grants Commission, All India Council for Technical Education, and National Council for Teacher Education, and set up a single apex Commission called the VBSA. The government’s reasoning for this is to reduce the multiplicity of regulatory bodies, functions, and compliances. Further, the Bill proposes to separate the functions of regulation, standards setting, and accreditation, arguing that under the current system, multiple bodies perform many of these functions at the same time, leading to issues like conflict of interest. This is an attempt to make the regulatory landscape “light but tight” in the words of the NEP 2020, the same philosophy that has also led the government to provide for fines as high as ₹2 crore for violations and even powers to shut down institutes. The Bill was introduced in Lok Sabha to vigorous objections from Opposition MPs, who argued that it represented “executive overreach”; subjected higher educational institutes to “pervasive executive control, graded autonomy, intrusive compliance requirements, severe penalties, and closure powers”; and went against the principles of federalism. The government soon decided that the Bill be sent to a joint committee of Parliament with 31 members from both Houses. One of the main challenges will be that of dealing with objections from State governments, which have historically opposed the idea of creating a single apex regulatory body for higher education over concerns of State autonomy being encroached upon. Even when a more rudimentary version of this Bill was brought in 2018, several States had opposed it on the same grounds, arguing that over 90% of higher education students study at State institutes and not Central. With assurances that the autonomy of States and institutes will not be affected by the new regulatory structure, government officials have in fact, argued that this new proposed structure provides room for State representation “for the first time”. Government officials have stressed that State representatives have been included in the Regulatory, Standards, and Accreditation Councils proposed. However, there is no such provision to include State representatives in the apex body of VBSA, but it does make room for State institute representatives, however, to be nominated by the Centre. Additionally, with the Bill proposing a Standards Council for all institutes that are to be under the VBSA architecture, the challenge for the government will be to ensure standardisation does not fuse into “averagisation” of the quality of education, as argued by Professor Arun Kumar, who formerly taught at JNU. Another challenge that emerges from the proposed Standards Council is that of how broad these Standards will be. Although this remains to be seen, a concern expressed by several academics and teachers is that the Centre...

Preview: ~500 words