Quest for Inclusivity and Access Equity in NEP-2020: Looking through the lenses of Political-Economy

Abstract

Contemporary educational policy recommendations are too much inclined to and involved with the organizational efficiency to determine what actually comes out fruitful and the process by which the results can be reproduced. But it is a matter of concern that cognition to the fact that the institutions give out a range of personal and community purposes, is absent. The evaluation of the outcomes of education system has a compatibility linkage with the social and cultural norms greatly governed by socially and politically determined ethos.

Twenty first century researchers argue persuasively that the present public education policies are shaped up by a, “politics of educational productivity,” in which the “schools increasingly are asked to produce students who can perform well on rigorous tests”. Researchers have put forward variety of reasons instrumental for poor educational attainment in India such as lesser value put by uneducated parents to the children’s education, the low financial returns from education or the poverty and the economy of child labor etc. In such a backdrop, ‘NEP 2020’ came up with some neo-liberal trailblazing alteration in education policy after 34 years.

In this paper, an effort is made to gauge some crucial policy changes in ‘NEP 2020’ through the lens of Political Economy with an objective to review neo-liberal economic philosophy in the light of experience of last 30 years and some normative standpoint, too.

DOI - https://doi.org/10.65525/SVUP.9788199651562.2026.50-65