PROJECTED as a reform to enhance quality and governance, the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025 is the legislative culmination of the NEP 2020 project. It centralises control over higher education, erodes federalism and institutional autonomy, facilitates corporatisation and commercialisation, and embeds a Hindutva-driven ideological agenda under the guise of Indian Knowledge Systems.

Over the last five years, the NDA government rolled out the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 through an increasingly intrusive process across the country. Far from being a neutral exercise, the mode and trajectory of implementation have vindicated the CPI(M)’s assessment, published in its critique on August 7, 2020. That document had exposed the NEP’s cultivated vagueness, which was not accidental, but strategic.

As the party document warned, the ambiguities in the policy, as well as those between the lines, pointed towards a push for further centralisation through a web of central agencies to govern and regulate education. Such centralisation would undermine federal principles and erode the autonomy of academic bodies, while also accelerating commercialisation, deepening inequities in access, and enabling the imposition of a Hindutva driven ideological framework. This project seeks to bulldoze the diversity of lived realities, most disturbingly by targeting impressionable youngsters.

At its core, it replaces rational inquiry with submission, scientific temper with obscurantism, and critical thinking with unreasoning compliance. It aims to mould the younger generation, not as autonomous, questioning citizens of a vibrant democratic republic, but as conformists, conditioned to uncritically submit to authority. Five years on, these apprehensions have materialised in forms far more aggressive and alarming than anticipated.

The scale of centralisation envisaged by the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill is evident from the new institutional architecture it creates – the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan, a powerful apex Commission supported by three centrally controlled bodies, the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Viniyaman Parishad as the regulatory authority, the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Gunvatta Parishad as the national accreditation body, and the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Manak Parishad as the standards-setting authority. A centrally administered Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Fund would finance and control these bodies through fiscal means. These institutions replace the existing regulatory framework and concentrate policy direction, regulation, accreditation, curriculum standards and financial control within one executive-dominated structure. The Bill also provides for the eventual repeal of the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), collapsing them into one centrally controlled structure dominated by executive appointments. This consolidation weakens federal principles, marginalises state governments, and reduces universities to subordinate units within a centrally governed system.

This initiative is the culmination of a process that began with the NEP 2020. What was initially presented as a vague and flexible policy has been converted into an architecture of centralised control. Far from being a neutral attempt to improve “quality” or “governance,” it represents a decisive shift in the character of higher education with a model that is anti-federal, hostile to institutional autonomy, pro-corporate, and deeply undemocratic. It also consolidates the ideological project of the ruling classes by embedding Hindutva-inflected “Indian Knowledge Systems” within regulatory frameworks.

Centralisation and the Assault on Federalism

Education is in the Concurrent List in recognition that a diverse society requires decentralised and context-sensitive educational governance. The Bill undermines this principle by concentrating virtually all substantive powers in centrally appointed bodies. The proposed Commission and its Regulatory, Accreditation and Standards Councils has authority over policy direction, regulation, accreditation, curriculum frameworks and even the right to confer degrees.

Although the Bill formally allows these bodies to “advise” state governments, states are reduced to implementers of centrally determined norms, compelled to comply through regulatory pressure and financial conditionalities. All the verbiage about cooperative federalism widely circulated in regard to NEP 2020 has turned into absolute administrative subordination.

Such centralisation is part of the neoliberal reorganisation of education. Uniform national frameworks facilitate market penetration, standardisation and corporate scalability, while state universities, catering largely to working-class, marginalised and deprived sections of students, are rendered increasingly vulnerable. Federal diversity is sacrificed for managerial efficiency and ideological uniformity.

Autonomy Redefined And Denied

The Bill repeatedly invokes “autonomy,” but offers autonomy without authority. Genuine academic autonomy resides in the collective self-governance of institutions through democratically constituted bodies such as senates and academic councils. The Bill marginalises these bodies. Universities are left with the limited freedom to manage resources, raise funds and comply with regulatory requirements.

This shift reflects a familiar neoliberal strategy: withdrawal of public funding combined with heightened regulatory surveillance. Institutions are expected to fend for themselves financially while submitting unquestioningly to centrally imposed standards. The result is a transformation of universities into administrative units executing externally determined mandates.

Corporatisation and Market Discipline

The Bill’s emphasis on outcome-based accreditation, performance indicators and standardised learning outcomes mirrors the language of corporate management rather than that of critical pedagogy. Knowledge is reduced to measurable outputs, education to an industrial procedure, and students to units of human capital.

While claiming to promote excellence and access,  the Bill favours private and corporate institutions. Public universities, chronically underfunded, are pushed towards self-financing courses, fee hikes and public-private partnerships.

Corporatisation here is not merely commercialisation; it involves the reorganisation of governance, labour and academic priorities. Contractual appointments, “Professors of Practice,” and industry-linked curricula weaken stable academic labour and subordinate knowledge production to market imperatives. The university becomes a supplier of labour-market skills rather than a site of critical social inquiry. Ironically, an explicitly stated duty of the regulatory council is to “develop coherent policies to prevent commercialisation of higher education.”

Penal Provisions and Authoritarian Regulation

One of the Bill’s most disturbing features is its coercive penalty regime. Institutions that fail to comply with directives face fines from Rs. 10 lakhs to Rs. 75 lakhs. It can even suspend degree-conferring powers.

Such provisions are especially punitive for public institutions already struggling with resource constraints. Non-compliance, often arising from material incapacity, becomes grounds for financial and academic sanction. This disciplines institutions into discouraging dissent, experimentation or resistance.

From the Indian people’s perspective, this represents the emergence of a penal- regulatory state in education, where coercion replaces consent and compliance replaces democratic deliberation. The threat of fines functions as a mechanism of ideological control as much as administrative enforcement.

Indian Knowledge Systems and Ideological Hegemony

While engagement with indigenous knowledge traditions is both legitimate and necessary, the Bill’s emphasis on integrating “Bharatiya knowledge and arts” and institutionalisation of “Indian Knowledge Systems” (IKS) are deeply problematic.

IKS is not presented as one intellectual tradition among many, subject to critical inquiry and debate. Instead, it is elevated to a privileged position within curriculum and standards-setting frameworks. This opens the door to the selective appropriation of history, philosophy and culture in line with the Hindutva ideological project.

In effect, the Bill strengthens the role of education as an ideological state apparatus. By embedding a particular cultural-nationalist worldview within regulatory structures, it seeks to shape consciousness, marginalise secular and materialist traditions, and delegitimise critical social science. The danger lies not merely in curricular content but in the narrowing of permissible intellectual horizons.

Democratic Deficit and Executive Overreach

The Bill exemplifies the democratic deficit that has characterised the implementation of NEP 2020. Key decisions affecting higher education are vested in bodies appointed by the executive, with minimal parliamentary scrutiny and no institutionalised role for teachers’ associations, student organisations or state governments.

Annual reports before Parliament offer only post-facto oversight, not democratic control. Universities and academic communities are excluded from decision-making, reduced to regulated entities rather than stakeholders in a collective intellectual enterprise.

This concentration of power is not accidental. Neoliberal and ideological restructuring of education requires insulation from popular pressure. The Bill aims to neutralise opposition through regulatory fiat rather than democratic negotiation.

NEP 2020 and the Logic of Capital

The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill is a major milestone set in motion by NEP 2020. Fragmentation of degrees, commoditisation of learning through credits, digital surveillance via national platforms, and centralised assessment mechanisms have already altered the terrain of higher education. The present Bill consolidates these changes into a permanent framework.

This trajectory reflects the logic of contemporary capitalism: the need for a flexible workforce, new markets in education, and ideological consolidation in a period of social crisis. The centralised state mediates this process by withdrawing from funding while tightening control, facilitating corporate entry while disciplining public institutions, and promoting cultural nationalism to mask deepening inequalities.

Conclusion: Education and Democratic Resistance

The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025 represents a profound threat to the democratic and public character of higher education in India. Its assault on federalism, institutional autonomy, academic freedom and secular knowledge is inseparable from its promotion of corporatisation and ideological conformity.

Resisting this Bill is therefore not merely a sectoral demand of the academic community but a democratic necessity. Education must be defended as a public good grounded in public funding, federal diversity, academic self-governance and critical inquiry. The struggle over higher education is, ultimately, a struggle over the future of our great nation itself.