A thorough examination of the systemic issues plaguing India’s educational framework reveals a worrying state of putrefaction that has developed over several decades.
We have seen the strange spectacle recently of an education minister in the central government putting in his papers owing to popular demand through street protests asking for his removal. Only a dozen or so ministers at the centre have resigned midway in their terms. Three of them demitted office, taking moral responsibility for lapses or disasters in their ministries or in bodies connected with these ministries. The rest left in more dubious circumstances. The present case is therefore unique. Students have felt increasingly betrayed by a government that has gradually seemed to be impervious to their genuine concerns and grievances: leaking of question papers in competitive examinations where success rates hover between 1 and 2%, failure to secure admissions in colleges and universities because of an ugly and quixotic system of caste reservations, rampant corruption among authorities in teaching institutions, and obsolete syllabi that bear no relationship to employability of the graduates who are turned out of institutions. The palpable anger and deep-seated frustration among the students were impossible to overlook, and yet their concerns were being met with a disconcerting silence from the government. This silence seemed to convey a deliberate indifference, as if to imply that if they chose to ignore the students’ plight, then nothing required attention or action. Gradually, a feeling started developing that this government would only pay attention to them if they took to the streets— which they did with a surprising degree of success. Education stands as the cornerstone for the growth and development of young men and women, taking precedence right after their basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter are fulfilled. It is education, when imparted effectively, that leads to a more fulfilling and prosperous life. The relationship between education and employment is critical, and the latter leads to financial stability, granting individuals the means to live with dignity and respect. Ideally, the quality of education received should reflect in the calibre of employment obtained. However, this ideal has become increasingly illusory in contemporary India, where education standards have been compromised while the demands of the job market, although changeable, seem to be reasonable.
A thorough examination of the systemic issues plaguing India’s educational framework reveals a worrying state of putrefaction that has developed over several decades. The roots of this rot can be traced back to a series of shortsighted policies, politically motivated decisions, and a pervasive institutional neglect that have collectively undermined the very foundation of learning throughout the nation. Central governments have wilfully pushed education to the back burner. They have systematically undermined the public schooling and university systems. The underlying motive appears deeply cynical: keeping citizens structurally uneducated, especially minority populations, ensures their permanent reliance on political patronage and locks them in as perpetual vote banks. In this strategy, the political establishment has succeeded magnificently, preserving mass illiteracy and institutional decay, masking structural failures behind populist promises.
The education ministry has, over the years, become a place which no politician wanted to handle, a stepchild of the executive as it were. This cynical agenda reached a watershed moment with the implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations, which prioritised competitive identity politics over institutional expansion, triggering widespread student anguish. The Rajiv Goswami and Rohith Vemula cases exemplify how deeply entrenched political opportunism, administrative hypocrisy, and identity quotas have cannibalised Indian universities. Indian educational governance has consistently sacrificed institutional quality for vote-bank arithmetic, leaving the public education framework completely broken. Reservations have eaten into our education systems like cancer.
The results are evident for all to see. Instagram has become the new court of justice for modern India, not our legislative, judicial and executive bodies, the structures of which have been laid out in our Constitution. A new handle on Instagram that calls itself “Reservations Hatao” has attracted upwards of 5.7 million followers in a few days with just over 100 posts. Simultaneously, the systematic destruction of state universities has contributed in no small way to the collapse of the Indian education system. Once the primary drivers of higher education and regional intellectual life, these institutions have been crippled by severe underfunding, political interference, administrative inefficiency, and flawed recruitment practices, leaving them virtually hollowed out. This collapse of foundational schooling and statelevel higher education has driven the nation into an unhealthy reliance on hyper-competitive entrance tests. These have given rise to an aggressive, exploitative coaching industry that probably rides on finances in the thousands of crores. In attempting to force children through this meatgrinder of test preparation, countless families face immense financial strain, severe psychological distress, and the destruction of normal domestic life.
The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has been much touted by the present Central government with much official hype. One of the claims made by the government praising the minister who has just resigned is that he was one of the architects of the implementation of NEP 2020, which promises a sweeping overhaul of both school and higher learning, but fundamentally misdiagnoses the realities at the ground level, with respect to finances and methodologies of implementation. At its core, NEP 2020 attempts to replicate the developing countries be sceptical? Not because the grievance is fake—compute is concentrated in a handful of jurisdictions, and the risk of a permanent AI underclass is genuine. The Belt and Road Initiative taught hard lessons about renegotiating a port. A national compute layer, a government services platform and a model stack are stickier than a port, and there is no equivalent of a debt restructuring for a country whose administrative apparatus runs on someone else’s inference. WAICO arrives with no independent redress mechanism—no inspection panel, no ombudsman, no channel through which an affected community can contest a project standardized under its auspices.
An intergovernmental body headquartered in, staffed by and funded by a single dominant member, with no external accountability architecture, is not multilateralism. It is a franchise with a flag. The founding membership is drawn substantially from states with acute domestic surveillance requirements, revealing the underlying purpose. If WAICO is ultimately to resemble its stated purAmerican Vannevar Bush model of the 1940-1970 era, which was an ambitious, high-finance, top-down vision for research and institutional growth. NEP 2020 will be a non-starter because the India of 2026 lacks the massive financial investment, administrative autonomy, and infrastructure required to make such an architecture function. It is condemned to remain a purely theoretical document. NEP 2020 substitutes empty political slogans for structural reform, leaving the nation trapped in self-congratulatory mythmaking while falling further behind global benchmarks. Grand proclamations about achieving “Viksit Bharat” status dominate public discourse, effectively masking the absence of a viable execution strategy. Our situation does not match up to the healthy state funding, academic rigour, and academic achievements found across the West, China, Japan, and even much smaller nations that have quietly built world-class systems. India in 2026 compares poorly as regards its education policies when compared with Japan in 1920 and China in 1980. It is no wonder that the students have erupted. One cannot keep kicking the can down the road, not when there is no can and no road.
* Gautam Desiraju is Professor Emeritus, Indian Institute of Science, and Dean, SASTech School of Technology, Rishihood University, Sonipat.
