Ex-ISRO chief, K Kasturirangan, to head drafting committee of National Education Policy

NEW DELHI: The ministry of human resource development has set up a new committee to make the final draft on the National Education Policy (NEP) on Monday. The nine-member panel is to be chaired by former ISRO chief and Padma Vibhushan awardee K Kasturirangan.

Apart from Kasturirangan, other members of the committee include educationist Vasudha Kamat, vice-chancellor of SNDO University, Mumbai, retired bureaucrat K J Alphonse, Manjul Bhargava, professor of Mathematics at Princeton University, Ram Shankar Kureel, vice-chancellor of Baba Saheb Ambedkar University of Social Sciences, Mhau, T V Kattamani, vice-chancellor of Indira Gandhi National Tribal University, Amarkantak, K M Tripathy, chairperson of Uttar Pradesh High School and Intermediate Examination Board, Mazhar Asif, professor of Persian, Gauhati University and M K Shridhar, member, Central Advisory Board of Education and member secretary of Karnataka Innovation Council and Karnataka Knowledge Commission.

According to a statement from the ministry, “The council will start its work with immediate effect. In an exhaustive exercise carried for last 30 months, the HRD ministry has received thousands of suggestions from educationists, teachers, experts, students and other stakeholders from across the country.”

The NEP is a policy formulated by the Government of India to promote education amongst India's people. The policy covers elementary education to college education in both rural and urban India. The first NEP was promulgated in 1968 by the Indira Gandhi government, and the second by the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1986. The 1986 National Policy on Education was modified in 1992 by the PV Narasimha Rao government.

Modi-government in July 27, 2015 had initiated the consultation process of formulating a new education policy, when Smriti Irani was the HRD minister. A committee under the chairperson T S R Subramanium was constituted on October 31, 2015.

On October 1, 2016 the MHRD released the draft of NEP 2016 and suggestions were invited from the public based on the report submitted to the ministry on April 30, 2016. The policy was focussed at addressing gender discrimination, creation of educational tribunals, and a common curriculum for Science, Mathematics and English, but the recommendations never saw the light of the day.

And within a year of that report, the committee under Kasturirangan is being announced by HRD minister, Prakash Javadekar. Announcing the committee, the ministry stated that “Consultations were held at tehsil, district and state level. Regional conferences were organized where state governments have given their detailed opinion. Rajya Sabha debated the issues and a special education dialogue was organized in which 48 MPs from all parties participated. Many MPs have given their views in writing. On MyGov platform around 26,000 people gave their views online,” adding that all these and Subramaniam committee’s “detailed input” inputs will be considered by the committee.