From Kothari Commission to NEP 2020: The Evolution of Indian Education Policy
To understand NEP 2020, it helps to look at where Indian education policy has been. NEP isn’t India’s first attempt at a comprehensive vision for schooling — it’s the latest chapter in a conversation that started not long after Independence, and tracing that line shows how much of today’s policy is built on decades of earlier debate.
The Kothari Commission (1964–66): The First Real Blueprint
Set up in 1964 under Dr. D.S. Kothari, this commission produced what many consider India’s first serious, comprehensive attempt to define a national education system. Its recommendations fed directly into the National Policy on Education, 1968 — the country’s first formal education policy. The Kothari Commission’s ideas were ambitious for their time: a common school structure across the country, a stronger push for science and vocational education, and — notably — a target of spending 6% of GDP on education. That 6% figure, remarkably, is the exact same target NEP 2020 sets more than half a century later, and it remains unmet.
National Policy on Education, 1986
The next major overhaul came in 1986, under Rajiv Gandhi’s government, with a Programme of Action following in 1992. This policy emphasised equity — reaching historically disadvantaged groups, rural areas, and girls’ education — and introduced structural ideas like Navodaya Vidyalayas, residential schools meant to identify and nurture talented rural students regardless of family income. It largely retained the 10+2+3 structure that Indian students would recognise for the next three decades.
The Long Gap and the Case for Change
For nearly 34 years, Indian education operated under the 1986 policy with amendments rather than a full rewrite — a remarkably long gap given how much the world, and the job market Indian students were entering, changed over that period. By the mid-2010s, there was broad consensus that a new policy was overdue. A committee under former Cabinet Secretary T.S.R. Subramanian began consultations in 2015, followed by a drafting committee led by scientist K. Kasturirangan, whose report ultimately shaped much of what became NEP 2020.
NEP 2020: Continuity as Much as Rupture
Seen against this history, NEP 2020 looks less like a sudden break and more like the fulfilment of ideas that Indian policymakers have circled for sixty years: the 6% GDP target from Kothari, a continued emphasis on foundational learning and equity from 1986, and a renewed attempt — again — to blur the line between vocational and academic education, something every major policy since Kothari has tried and only partially achieved.
What’s genuinely new in 2020 is the scale of structural change (the 5+3+3+4 model), the emphasis on multidisciplinary and flexible higher education, and a much stronger role for technology and digital learning infrastructure than any previous policy could have imagined.
Why This History Matters for Teachers Today
Knowing this history is useful, not just academic. It explains why funding targets keep slipping (they’ve been ambitious and underfunded since 1966), why vocational-academic integration keeps resurfacing as a goal without ever being fully achieved, and why every major policy shift in India takes far longer to reach classrooms than it takes to reach headlines. NEP 2020 is not the end of this story — if the pattern of the last sixty years holds, it’s simply the current chapter.
Abhishek Kumar teaches English and Science at NRK Public School, East Champaran, Bihar, and is pursuing his B.Ed. and M.A. in English.