Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday said that university campuses, in the last few years, have no longer remained inclusive spaces that safeguard freedom of expression and individual liberties, and stressed on the need to replace narrow-minded identities with a willingness to embrace differences. Initiating the discussion on demands for grants of the Education Ministry in Lok Sabha, he said the budget for the ministry is characterised by a "bizarre series of cuts" and any hope for positive development in the country's primary and higher education ecosystem has been effectively handicapped by the allocations. Tharoor also pointed out that the pandemic has exposed a serious digital divide and he cited instances of students taking their own lives due to lack of access to smartphones when classes moved online. He also pitched for having a national computer curriculum.