The former vice-chancellor of Karnataka State Akkamahadevi Women's University, Dr Sabiha Bhoomigowda, condemned the new National Education Policy (NEP), claiming that it traps students with lower income and restricting their thought process by restricting them to certain ideologies, reports The New Indian Express.  

While addressing the district conference of the All Indian Students' Association (AISA) on Sunday, July 30, she said that most of the students in Karnataka, almost 80% of them pursuing higher education belong to economically-deprived classes or come from marginalised backgrounds. 

She also said that many of them are first-generation learners and they work part-time jobs to earn their academic fees. "The system is trying to lock these students within certain ideologies, unless we break these walls we cannot progress,” she said.

While development educationist Dr Niranjanaradhya VP, said that the policy, "uncritically mimics the imagined past of India". She further added that the historical past of India has been re-imagined by the policy makers, enforcing Indian values in textbooks and not using the framework of the Constitution.

"Its agenda is for centralisation, corporatisation, communalisation, privatisation and saffronisation,” she claimed.

Democracy in campus

Prajval Shastri who is an astrophysicist as well as a civil liberties activist, spoke on the issue of atrocities against marginalised students on college campuses. She added that these attacks on the universities not only limits their freedom and endangers democracy but also affects the students equally.

In light of the recent events at IISc (Indian Institute of Science), where a permission for a talk was revoked, and two professors were issued show cause notices for signing an open letter, and where the director of the Indian Institute of Population Sciences was suspended for his research, she emphasised on upholding democracy and halting any activities that would hinder its progress.