The NEP will allow students to choose between subjects in Arts, Commerce, and Science programmes. The idea is to have well-rounded development of the students by helping them chose which combination of subjects they wish to opt for.
This is a good step. As quoted above from Mahatama Gandhi “Literacy in itself is no education. Literacy is not the end of education or even the beginning. By education I mean an all-round drawing out of the best in the child and man-body, mind and spirit.” In real life, one needs to know stuff from as diverse fileds as possible for overall developement. As research shows, innovations happen when different disciplines come together.
This is a good step. As quoted above from Mahatama Gandhi “I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible”. Whereas Indian education has lots of strengths, it can learn from the strengths of foreign universities. A level playing field of competition, should result into overall quality of Indian heigher education.
And as quoted above from Mahatama Gandhi “Live as if you were to die tomorrow; learn as if you were to live forever. ”In this fast changing world, more internationalization of Indian education both by Indian institutions going abroad and foreign institutions coming to India, is a good way to make sure we have best of educational resources and inputs to learn.
One concern though is that I am a die-hard optimist and positive thinker, I need to also play the devil’s advocate to make this article realistic. And that is an issue of implementation and the inclusion of regular review and update. Policy formulation is not easy but it is the implementation where the real fun begins. For example, we have seen that on paper we have probably the best constitution in the world but it mostly remains on paper due to lack of proper implementation. So my concern is about proper implementation of good ideas in the right spirit. I hope and pray this is how implementation happens.