Archimedes’ Eureka moment came when he realised that the buoyant force on an immersed object was equal to the weight of the water displaced by it. The New Education Policy’s (NEP) Eureka moment will come if the implementation force of the regulatory reforms equals the weight of the words printed in the policy document.
While the weight is tellingly heavy in the print format, equal force needs to come from the implementation winds of change.
The NEP has an architectural plan for a central regulatory body, the Higher Education Council of India (HECI). This foundational HECI supported by four strong vertical pillars with distinct roles central and single-point regulation, meta-accreditation, finance and funding, and standards-setting not only needs to be policy-perfect but also implementation-realistic. Borrowing from the NEP in its own words, the HECI with its foundational super-structure must be free from the existing “mechanistic and disempowering” regulatory ecosystem acro