Eduvoice | The Voice of Education Industry

Tag: NITI Aayog

  • Internationalisation Of Indian Higher Education System Need Of The Hour, Multi-Pronged Approach Required For It: NITI Aayog CEO

    Internationalisation Of Indian Higher Education System Need Of The Hour, Multi-Pronged Approach Required For It: NITI Aayog CEO

    Internationalization of the Indian higher education system is the need of the hour and a multi-pronged approach is required for it, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said on Monday (14 December) in a session titled, ‘Internationalisation of Indian Higher Education System’ at the India Pavilion in EXPO2020 Dubai.

    “The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 envisions internationalising of Indian higher education system and establishing India as a Vishvaguru. However, we must acknowledge and introspect about the current challenges and trends in order to achieve this vision”, he said while addressing the session virtually.

    It has to be understood that the higher number of outflow of Indian students to foreign universities and inflow of a substantially lower number of students to Indian universities reflect the sub-optimal quality of education in India as compared to the foreign universities,

    Said Kant, according to an official release

    Elaborating on the multi-pronged approach to internationalising the Indian higher education system, Kant said, “All higher education institutes must create an institutional development plan with a vision to be the best in their fields as recommended by the NEP 2020. The universities may like to use the National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF) rankings and analyze the areas where there is the scope of improving their rankings.”

    Along with this, he said that we must leverage our competitive advantages and traditional knowledge systems of India by integrating them with modern-day studies like sustainability studies, architecture, medicine, etc.

    “Short-term diplomas and courses could be launched in collaboration with Ministry of Ayush and Universities to promote indigenous natural practices for international learners,” Kant added.

    He further said that all educational institutes participating in the India learning scheme must be ranked on the basis of ease of studying with a higher weightage given to feedback from foreign students as this will help participating institutes in improving their quality and getting more participation from foreign students.

    Indian higher education institutes must raise funds to raise their quality and Public-Private-Partnership could be one of the untapped areas to improve that and IIITs are one of the examples of this. The government recently modified the viability gap funding scheme to include social infrastructure projects that include higher education and universities must use this scheme to their advantage.

    To meet the funding needs, Kant said

    NEP has opened a window of opportunity to rejuvenate our higher education system. I call upon all our academicians to innovate and create world-class universities and make India a much sought-after education destination for students across all over the world.

    He further added,

    For More Such Articles, News Update, Events, and Many More Click Here

    [block id=”news-promotion”]

  • NITI Aayog Should Drive Competitive Federalism in the Reservation Policy

    NITI Aayog Should Drive Competitive Federalism in the Reservation Policy

    The NITI Aayog can play a crucial role in understanding the impact of reservations at a caste level and identify the most vulnerable castes through a metric-driven process

    Since 2014, empowering states and encouraging competitive federalism has been one of the policy hallmarks of the Union government. The NITI Aayog has periodically compared the states on multiple fronts — from innovation to public health to school education quality. This has helped the states learn from one another, and adopt the best practices which have led to better outcomes. Yet, competitive federalism is not encouraged in the most important social development program in India — reservations.

    Competitive Federalism In Reservation

    Competitive federalism works for those policies where the states have considerable leeway. In the reservation program, the states do have huge scope to modify the program as they see fit — from deciding which socio-economic groups deserve reservation, to building educational capacity, to the percentage of seats that can be reserved, and others. This empowerment has caused widespread variation between the states in implementing reservations.

    For instance, the Scheduled Caste, the Scheduled Tribe, and the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) lists are specified as per the directives of each state. Consequently, the percentage of the population eligible for reservations differs dramatically — from 97 percent in Tamil Nadu to 39 percent in West Bengal. The higher the percentage of the population eligible for reservations, the higher is the competition for a given number of seats. This directly impacts the ability of the most vulnerable communities to take advantage of reservations.

    In addition, each state has formed different rules to run the program. For instance, under The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 (Right to Education Act), the states can decide the allocation for the RTE reserved seats in non-minority private schools.


    In Odisha, 40 percent of the reserved school seats are allocated jointly to the SCs, the STs, and the socially and educationally backward classes (SEBCs). However, in Telangana, the SCs are exclusively allocated 40 percent of the RTE reserved seats, and 16 percent are exclusively for the STs. Similarly, Telangana explicitly includes religious minorities in the RTE reserved seats, while Odisha doesn’t.

    Further, the total educational capacity in each state varies, impacting its ability to meaningfully contribute to the uplift of reserved population groups.

    Thus, there are huge state-level variations in reservations and their impact. Hence, the NITI Aayog can play a crucial role in comparing the state outcomes through a standardized framework. This would help identify the better performers, the best practices, and drive reform at a large scale in this critical social development program.

    What Role can Data Play?

    Comparing the states would require measuring outcomes, i.e., the socio-economic progress of each group. The role of reservations is to provide equity to under-represented communities, and, hence, the equitable distributions of reservations at the caste level is an important outcome that needs to be tracked. Measuring equity entails knowing each caste’s population and mapping the reservation benefits provided to each caste.

    One route to building datasets on caste-group populations is by digitizing the caste certificates and linking them to Aadhaar. With a similar objective of understanding caste-wise population sizes, some political parties have recently demanded a caste-based census.

    A digitized caste certificate database would be vastly better, as it is a verified government document used across government programs. It would also be dynamic, reflecting year-on-year changes. Some states such as West Bengal and Maharashtra, have already started initiatives to digitalize caste certificates. Linking Aadhaar to caste certificates would help track beneficiaries, and decode the accrual of reservations benefit to each caste, and provide data on equitable distribution of reservation benefits.

    Some studies indicate that India may have a problem with the lopsided distribution of benefits, with a huge number of castes having received zero reservation benefits. The NITI Aayog can play a crucial role in understanding the impact of reservations at a caste level and identify the most vulnerable castes through a metric-driven process.

    For instance, some metrics that can be tracked for each caste are the number of graduates per capita in each caste, the number of doctors per capita, the number of civil servants or equivalent high social status professions per capita, and so forth. These dynamic metrics can not only help identify the deprived communities, but can also help track their year-on-year progress. Interventions for that most-in-need can be designed on the lines of the programme of the aspirational district,

    The reservation program has immense scope for transformation through data-oriented outcome measurement, and the NITI Aayog is the ideal institution to enable the states to do that. Having successfully implemented competitive federalism in multiple arenas, the NITI Aayog can help guide India’s growth story in a crucial area of social development.

    For More Such Articles, News Update, Events, and Many More Click Here

    [block id=”news-promotion”]