The Promised Land: India’s National Education Policy 2020
The NEP 2020 was a long overdue assessment of the state of education in India. Crafted by a diverse group of experts, the NEP 2020 offered a radical overhaul of the system at all levels. Its adoption by Parliament in the thick of the pandemic left little room for critical evaluation and little scope for refinement.
In the past two years many institutions are realigning their educational goals with the NEP 2020. I will discuss some of the welcome changes the policy aims to bring about as well as the formidable challenges that it faces in implementation, mainly focussing on higher education.
Ram Ramaswamy
Ram Ramaswamy retired from the Jawaharlal Nehru University where he taught from 1986 till October 2018, in the School of Physical Sciences, and the School of Computational and Integrative Sciences. From 1983 to 1986, he was at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. Between 2011 and 2015 he served as Vice Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad.
Educated at Madras University, IIT Kanpur, and Princeton University, Prof. Ramaswamy’s research interests have, over the years, been in aspects of theoretical chemistry, statistical physics, molecular dynamics and computational and systems biology. He is the author of over 200 peer reviewed publications and has edited about 30 books and conference proceedings. He has mentored 35 Ph. D. students at TIFR, JNU, University of Hyderabad, and IIT Delhi.
An elected Fellow of TWAS, The World Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, and the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, he served as President of the Indian Academy of Sciences from 2016 to 2018. Currently, he is Visiting Professor in the Department of Chemistry at IIT Delhi.
