(N)ot an (E)asy (P)uzzle

NEP - Its a buzz word in education sector since a couple of years now. The stakeholders are slowly coming to terms with its implementation details, bottlenecks and nightmares. The crux and the core of the policy is really good, however, like it happens for any (fundamental) change, there was a strong pushback and reluctance on this policy. Stakeholders have their reasons like loosing control, financial investment and loss, management chaos etc. If govt. had a magical wand to get it implemented in a moment, this policy could have started yielding positive results in a decade. But in reality there is a long and challenging tunnel ahead before we see the light at the end. Government did absolutely nothing to improve the suffering education system in last decade and one fine day it comes up with this document called NEP which is their justification for years of inaction. Although the policy is visionary there are glimpses of unrealistic optimism in the way the implementation is proposed. If govt. had such visionary people, it should have started taking the fundamental incremental steps at the school level to build a suitable and sustainable foundation before bringing this policy in public. Once the schools are aligned for the NEP objectives, it would have been easier and straightforward to roll it out for higher education. Fiasco is that the implementation of NEP has been rolled out in haste and that too in top-down, higher education to schools, fashion which I will say is totally counterintuitive and disruptive. Its like building first floor followed by the ground floor.

Purpose of this write up is not to criticize the policy but to emphasize the fact that devil is in details (read implementation). One of the salient feature of the policy is to facilitate multidisciplinary education. There would be no formal distinctions between arts and sciences, curricular and extra-curricular activities, or vocational and academic programs. Students can choose from a variety of disciplines throughout the streams. Its definitely not possible for any college to offer all the possible streams and the answer to this is creating cluster universities by merging a maximum of five, minimum 2, existing colleges. According to the guidelines, in order to establish a cluster university, it is necessary to ensure physical proximity among the participating colleges. Stretch your imagination and try to visualize a cluster university with the colleges in your area and a student running around these colleges to attend the subjects of his choice. I think all the teachers would know the difficulties and complications in creating timetable for (single discipline) college.

Imagine the near to impossible task of coming up with a miraculous timetable that would allow a Super-student to attend his major say, Computer, lecture in college A, drive to college B to attend History, drive to college C to take Economics, drive to college D to try some sketching/painting and return back to college A for Computer practical. Wow! isn't that simply amazing!!!

You know what's the NEP's answer to this plight of students - Online classes! And I confide in your wisdom to draw your own conclusions where we are heading.