Analysing the New Educational Policy in the Context of Higher Education: Where is Gender?

Abstract

This article offers a preliminary analysis of the New Education Policy document 2020 (NEP 2020) that was released by the government after considerable delay. Since 2016, the government has been trying to bring out a policy document on education, and NEP 2020 is at the end of several attempts that fell by the wayside. The context for the present discussion is that of the unprecedented expansion in higher education among students in recent decades. Within the emergence of a heterogeneous student body, the presence of women students—which has even reached parity in mainstream disciplines at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels—has somehow escaped public attention. The NEP document, especially the section concerning higher education, has to be read with care in order to go beyond its welcome aspects, such as those of multi-disciplinarity and holism. What is disturbing is evidence of a tiered differential structure that is likely to have negative effects on the kind of access that women have achieved. The hard question before us is whether the unprecedented entry of women across social groups that recent decades have witnessed, however poorly recognised or understood, will see a reversal in the wake of the lack of interest in questions of equity that the NEP vision document demonstrates. With the important exception of issues of sexual harassment on campuses, the overall neglect of the meanings and purpose of women’s increased claims on higher education bodes ill for the future.