Time to focus on human capital development

One of the core tenets of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is starting the education journey for a child much younger and it is important that the Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) be formalised and rolled out across all formats of school education. This would mean apart from curriculum development, a holistic development of teachers and educators. There should be incentives for tech-augmented, continuous and contextual training programs for teachers starting right from foundational programs.

It is also time that the budget allocation and measurement of success move from input driven parameters to outcome led ones. Learning outcomes have been much talked about and emphasised – but the key measurements are all predominantly input driven – like infrastructure, attendance, distribution of welfare measures, etc. While these are important, we should also look at including outcome parameters for fund allocation and success measurement – slowly they should become the central goals. Also important is bringing in experiential learning through wider and deeper expansion of Atal Tinkering Labs.

Research, innovation and asset creating should take centre stage in our higher education (HE) institutions. Prime Minister’s Research Fellowship (PMRF) has been a successful model and it should be widened and driven more purposefully through large scale adoption. Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANFR) should be strengthened with more directed research in sunrise areas such as clean energy, semiconductors, AI, quantum computing, etc. A holistic AI adoption by our HE institutions should be funded and encouraged. It should become a mandatory criteria in the next year and should be part of all evaluations, accreditations and rankings.

Funding for HE institutions – especially run by private sectors – new as well as expansion of existing institutions – need to have easier and cheaper access to funds. We should treat this an investment like in the case of Infrastructure. A relaxation of GST norms to all direct / indirect expenses by these institutions and also a much more liberal outlook for how the surplus is managed should be taken up. It is sad that even those institutions that can generate surplus (which is critical for expansion) cannot put that to good use because of some old regulations that have a cookie-cutter approach to managing surplus money. It is time we have a pragmatic look at these and allow the much-needed capital to flow into this sector.

PM-SETU has provided the direction for the much sought after industry involvement in vocational education and skill development. The success of this program would make this attractive for Industry and pave way for a wide-scale acceptance and adoption. Government should consider tax incentives and complete independence for operators in the proposed scheme. It should also be linked to the apprenticeship programs – including AEDP (apprenticeship embedded degree program).

We should also look at having sufficient allocation for building apex institutions for skilling – along the lines of IITs and IIMs. These should be set up as Institutions of National Importance (INIs) and be given the mandate of making vocational, employment-linked education, a sought-after option for our youngsters.

Our aspiration to be a ‘Vishwa Guru’ requires two important focus areas:

Our existing Indian institutions should become global in their outlook. While expanding physical presence abroad, we should focus on strengthening existing campuses to have global standards. An important aspect would be to have our assessment standards to be acceptable across the globe. Especially for vocational education, we should encourage (and hence have budgetary allocation) for international assessment cells in our skill development centres.

Simultaneously, we should create an environment to attract the best of foreign education players to India. Regulatory approval could be the first important step – wherein we should look at areas such as permanent residency criteria for those who we need to attract. Equally important is to provide an enabling environment for those who are going to migrate for these institutions.

The human capital of India is shaped through our education and skilling institutions. This budget could provide the much-needed impetus for it.