Reclaiming India’s minds |
During a recent national television panel discussion on the ongoing NEET and NET examination crisis, a refreshing and long-overdue perspective emerged. Amidst the din of political rhetoric, partisan posturing, and media grandstanding, the anchor brought to the fore the actual stakeholders: two affected students who had cleared the cancelled examination but were caught in the aftermath.
Their testimony was illuminating and very striking. They made it clear that they did not view their plight as a political agitation, but as a plea to the authorities to understand their situation. Crucially, they articulated how their platform had been hijacked by political activists and opportunists who dominate the spotlight only to vanish when trouble starts, leaving young candidates to face police batons.
The panellists across the political spectrum were visibly taken aback. Yet, when pressed for solutions, none could offer a concrete structural way forward, save for a passing, uninformed reference to Dr. S. Radhakrishnan’s post-independence framework. There is a profound historical irony at play here. The very political forces orchestrating today’s agitations are the same ones that spent decades nurturing and sustaining the fossilized, exam-centric colonial framework.
This legacy gave birth to a predatory, multi-billion-dollar coaching industry, the undisputed epicentre of the current NEET scandal. Rather than addressing these structural roots, these political actors reflexively oppose systemic reforms like the National Education Policy (NEP 2020) out of partisan habit, dismissing its framework without ever engaging with its substance. To understand how Indian education became so deeply trapped in this toxic cycle of high-stakes testing, shadow coaching, and political exploitation, one must trace the long, unravelling trajectory from Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s post-independence idealism to the crises of the present day.
When India attained independence in 1947, it inherited an educational machinery shaped largely by Thomas Babington Macaulay’s 1835 Minute on Indian Education. Designed to produce compliant civil clerks for imperial administration, Macaulay’s model was a utilitarian, examination-driven framework that prioritized memorization and conformity over original inquiry. To reimagine this system, the government appointed Dr. Radhakrishnan to head the University Education Commission (1948-49).
Grounded in Advaita Vedanta and modern humanism, Radhakrishnan rejected the notion that higher education should merely be a credentialing factory. He argued that true education must be “man-making”, a process designed to cultivate intellect, character, and ethical purpose. Dr. Radhakrishnan warned against technical specialization isolated from moral........