The education system in India is at a crossroads. The end result could be devastating. The stakeholders – teachers, educational institutions, the student community, and the people at large – are silently bearing the brunt and are unwilling to protest. That a prominent national opposition leader chose to identify the evils of the education system is refreshing.

Sonia Gandhi, chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party, in her article The 3Cs that haunt Indian education today, in The Hindu, March 31, 2025, says that in education, the Modi government is enforcing three core agenda items, namely centralisation, commercialisation and communalisation. The essence of the article is summarised here as the issues identified will determine the nature of the education system and the future of the younger generation.

Centralisation
The unchecked centralisation has been the hallmark of the Modi government's functioning during the past 11 years. Its most damaging consequences have been in the domain of education. The NEP 2020 has hidden the reality of a government that is profoundly indifferent to education. The Central Advisory Board of Education, comprising Ministers of Education of both the Union and state governments, has not met since 2019. Even while adopting and implementing a paradigm shift in education through the NEP, the Union Government has not thought it necessary to consult the state governments and yet expects them to implement the NEP. It is a testament to the government's singular determination not to heed any voice other than its own.

The lack of dialogue is accompanied by a bullying tendency, coercing the state governments to implement the PM-SHRI scheme of model schools by withholding the grants due to them under the Sanmagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). It is a blatant violation of constitutional morality. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports, in its 363rd Report, has recommended the unconditional release of the SSA funds to state governments.

The Centre has brought the draconian draft UGC guidelines 2025, which have entirely written out state governments from appointment of Vice Chancellors of Universities, established, funded and operated by them. The Governors, aligned to the political ideology of the ruling party, exercise monopoly in the selection and appointment of Vice Chancellors. This poses the greatest threat to the federal structure of the Union of India, as envisaged in the Constitution.

The Ministry of Education and the Higher Education regulator, the University Grants Commission (UGC), exercise complete administrative and academic control over education in terms of resources, curriculum and decision-making. It is a top-down approach where the decisions are made by the Ministry and the UGC to have a stranglehold on the education system.

Commercialisation
The commercialisation of education is happening in full sight, in compliance with the NEP. As a constitutional guarantee for primary education, the RTE provided safeguards to ensure the accessibility of primary schools for all children – a lower primary school (Class I-IV) within one kilometre of every neighbourhood and an upper primary school (Class VI-VII) within three kilometres of every neighbourhood.

The NEP seeks to overturn the concept of neighbourhood schools by introducing school complexes. This is resulting in the large-scale shutdown of public schools and unchecked privatisation of school education. Since 2014, nearly 90,000 public schools across the country have been shut down, and at the same time, around 43,000 private schools have been established. "The country's poor have been forced out of public education and into the hands of a prohibitively expensive and under-regulated private school system, outsourcing of investments in education to the private sector."

In higher education, the government has introduced the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA), replacing the UGC's system of block grants. The universities are forced to seek loans offered at market interest rates from the HEFA, which they are obliged to repay with their revenues. In the 364th Report on the Demand for Grants, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education found that between 78% and 100% of these loans are being repaid by the universities through students' fees. In other words, the price of the government's retreat from financing public education has been borne by students facing fee hikes.

The commercialisation of education has been exponentially growing. That is because the Centre treats educational service as a commodity rather than a public good, prioritising profit over access and quality, reducing public funding, and focusing on market-driven outcomes.

The increasing prevalence of corruption in our education system manifests in this commercialisation. From the bribery scandals in the NAAC to the tragically inept NTA, the public education system and agencies are increasingly under the spotlight for financial malfeasance and maladministration. And "this growing venality and cynicism in our public education system is linked to the government-sponsored politicisation and commercialisation of education."

Communalisation
The Union Government's third thrust is on communalisation – the fulfilment of the long-standing ideological project of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party "of indoctrinating and cultivating hatred through the education system." The textbooks of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) – the backbone of the school curriculum – have been revised with the intention of sanitising Indian history. Mahatma Gandhi's assassination and the section on Mughal India have been dropped from the curricula. The Preamble to the Indian Constitution was dropped from the textbooks until public backlash forced the government to commit to mandatory inclusion once again.

In universities, we have seen the large-scale hiring of professors from regime-friendly ideological backgrounds, regardless of the comically poor quality of their teaching and scholarships. The leadership positions in key institutions – even in the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru so evocatively described as the temples of modern India – have been reserved for pliant ideologues.

The UGC's ongoing attempts to dilute the qualifications for professorships and vice-chancellors are only the latest ploy intended to enable the influx of educationists driven by ideological considerations rather than academic ideals. Over the last decade, our education system has been systematically cleansed of the spirit of public service, and education policy has been sanitised of any concerns about access to and the quality of education.

The consequences of this single-minded push for centralisation, commercialisation and communalisation have fallen squarely on our students. And "this carnage of India's public education system must end."