The working landscape of India is being changed through transformational reforms and also according to how technology is shaping up in the third decade of the 21st century. While the first two decades of the century were driven by jobs being done by people falling in the age group of 25-35, since last couple of years, the world has rightly shifted its focus on nurturing young minds (age group 15-25) and on the endorsement of developing a skill-based and tech-oriented mindset among youth. As the work culture evolves rapidly around the globe and as more and more people switch to gathering domain knowledge and intellectual finesse, India’s implementation of NEP 2020 is going to be a key factor in its aim to equip manpower to lead unprecedented industry change.
National Education Policy 2020, one of the landmark and transformative ideas in higher education policy promoted by the Narendra Modi government, lays emphasis on inquiry-based, discovery-based, and analysis-based ways to help children learn. Under NEP 2020, a well designed framework is all set to bring deep educational reforms which focus on development of both technical and soft-skills among scholars. Employability is also in fact one of the parts of the policy. Indian students have for so long failed to get decent and appropriate employment opportunities on the basis of their earned professional degrees. The NEP fixes this as it envisions to empower students through encouragement of a set of vocational, employable & entrepreneurial skills provided to them at different stages of training & education. This will also inspire talented youth to become self-employed professionals.
In addition to this, engaging with them on a mass level through various educational and vocational training programmes has been a good thing to start with, bringing the kind of momentum students and seekers need to find their spots in the fast-evolving educational landscape, which is both practical and agile.
Efforts are also being made to further get the change rightly incorporated in the minds of the students on a very early stage, one of the initiative being the Pariksha Pe Charcha programme. There is a phenomenal response from the students, parents and teachers alike over the programme which is moderated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Lakhs of people have shared their valuable insights towards this year’s ‘Pariksha Pe Charcha’ too. PM Modi is going to interact with students, teachers, parents in a hybrid mode from Talkatora Stadium in New Delhi on 1st of April.
This is the 5th edition of Pariksha Pe Charcha. Earlier, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan called upon students, teachers and parents to make PPC 2022 a public movement. Underlining the importance of initiatives like PPC in building the knowledge-based economy of 21st century, Pradhan said that PPC is becoming a formal institution through which Prime Minister interacts directly with students. India has ushered in a new era of educating Indians as well as the international community through multi-modal ways and digital platforms to create One India, Excellent India. Indian students have been going abroad for pursuing higher education for so long. With new changes, the country now seeks to reverse the process by having a world-class flexible education system and is already on the task.
Today, India is well on its way to having a decisive decade of growth in the 2020s, backed by a reformist government that has consistently provided policy support to boost the economy. The country has emerged as a favoured investment destination, giving boost to industries, creating new jobs, attracting latest technology, and providing fillip to new and upcoming sectors. Core to all of these is reforms in the education process, being led from front by NEP.