**4. Digitalization and commercialization**

The promotion of smart classrooms and online education is a disadvantage to the students of marginalized communities and rural areas where both electricity and

#### *Higher Education in India: New Educational Policy – 2020 and Educational Issues... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101592*

internet connectivity are unstable and costly also. The test of a policy on education has to be on the basis of the four key ideas of equity, quality, access, and efficacy. India's NEP 2020 fails poorly in its total advocacy of online education as they neglect the following realities: a) the digital divide of – access (class, caste, gender, region, rural/urban, and affordability for the affluent/poor; b) the dilution of distinguishing and specialty of degree programs; and c) impact on working conditions of teachers with imbalance workload which will lead to loss of employment and casualization/ contractualisation. The policy documents do not take any responsibility for the quality of the degree in terms of their meaningful composition and employability.

The new administrative and governance structure proposed by NEP will further hand over service conditions of teachers and non-teaching staff in the hands of the Board of Governors (BoG). Each HEI will be under a BoG – a self-renewing management body once the Government constitutes it for the first time. The BoG will have the following powers, which are now under the mandate of the UGC: a) Course to offer, a number of students to admit and educational outcomes; b) number of teachers & other employees to recruit; c) terms and conditions of employment including remuneration, increments, promotion, and continuation in service. There will have an obvious effect on the academic environments of the institutions with rampant commercialization and privatization ([25], pp. 1–3).

The notification issued by the Ministry of Education in 2015 provided the guidelines and interpretations of MOOCs (*GoI 2015*). The name chosen for the platform launched was SWAYAM, which is a Sanskrit word and can be roughly translated as "a complete and self-sufficient entity." In the official document, however, it is the abbreviated form of "Study Web of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds." The SWAYAM is based upon mainly three components: freedom to access learning on an anytime-anywhere basis; credits earned will be counted for awarding degree, and industry and industry groups are involved in designing course content and evaluation system. The hidden agenda is that the campus is virtual and thus free from politics, and thereby allows the process of learning to remain undisturbed by sociopolitical dynamics. In short, the prescription is for a campus-free education that curbs human interactions [26].

The 1980 Mandal Commission report which relied on the 1931 census to suggest 27 percent reservation to OBCs (other backward castes) on the basis of socioeducational backwardness estimates that OBC constitutes around 52 percent of the population, making them an undeniable part of the country's social fabric, with lack of access to employment opportunities, social welfare, and educational institutions. The VP Singh government, India had created 27 percent reservation for OBCs in 1990. Finally, 27 percent reservation for OBCs in educational institutions was permitted after the enactment of Central Education Institutions Reservation in Admission) Act in 2006. The National Family Health Survey – 2016 data revealed that the caste-based gap in educational spheres is wider than ever ([27], p. 10).
