Equitable Access to Higher Education: An Analysis of India’s National Education Policy (2020) in a Post-Pandemic World
| Author | Paramita DasGupta,Saurya Bhattacharya |
| DOI | 10.1177/23220058211042475 |
| Published date | 01 January 2022 |
| Date | 01 January 2022 |
Article
Equitable Access to Higher
Education: An Analysis of India’s
National Education Policy (2020)
in a Post-Pandemic World
Paramita DasGupta1 and Saurya Bhattacharya2
Abstract
Of the various less-than-comfortable narrative strands of the status quo that the COVID-19 pandemic
has succeeded in showing up in stark relief—our rather troubling (if somewhat half-hearted)
complacence about the systemic blind-spots that continue to colour the prevailing culture of a clearly
inequitable higher education policy-framework—easily features among the most worrying, and thus,
among those precise pulse-points that carry tremendous potential to help build the post-pandemic
reset better, stronger and palpably fairer.3 In this piece, the authors endeavour to elaborate upon this
and supplement the same with a brief analysis of India’s year-old National Education Policy, 20204—and
how this nation (India) of more than 1.3 billion,5 supposedly poised on the cusp of a massive self-
reinvention—is attempting to embark upon this journey.
Introduction: Higher Education Policymaking and Inherent
Societal Vulnerabilities
Nothing could be more crucial to democracy than the education of its citizens. Through…education, young
citizens form, at a crucial age, habits of mind that will be with them all through their lives. They learn to ask
questions or not to ask them; to take what they hear at face value or to probe more deeply; to imagine the situation
of a person different from themselves or to see a new person as a mere threat to the success of their own projects;
to think of themselves as members of a homogeneous group or as members of a nation, and a world, made up of
many people and groups, all of whom deserve respect and understanding.
—Martha C. Nussbaum (2006)6
1 Lecturer (Law), West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (India), Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
2 Partner, M/s. HSA Advocates, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
3Views expressed herein are personal and are not to be construed as legal advice.
4Ministryof HuMan resource DevelopMent, national eDucation policy 2020 (2020).
https://www.education.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/NEP_Final_English_0.pdf
5 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=IN
6 M. C. Nussbaum, Selected Papers from the Fifth International Conference on the Capability Approach & International
Conference of the Human Development and Capability Association, 2005, 7 J. HuM. Dev. capab. 3, 385 (2006).
Asian Journal of Legal Education
9(1) 86–98, 2022
© 2021 The West Bengal National
University of Juridical Sciences
Reprints and permissions:
in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india
DOI: 10.1177/23220058211042475
journals.sagepub.com/home/ale
Corresponding author:
Paramita DasGupta, Lecturer (Law), West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (India), Kolkata,
West Bengal 700098, India.
E-mail: pdasgupta@nujs.edu
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