Can Tagore’s education model guide implementation of NEP 2020?

The National Education Policy (NEP)-2020 captures the nation’s imagination in terms of bringing a systemic change to liberate the drudgery of erstwhile academic interventions in the primary, secondary and tertiary levels. It’s indeed an important endeavour of the govt. to have set a lofty goal of increasing the gross enrollment ratio (GER) to 50% by 2030 from the present 30%. 

Though I am not critiquing the agenda of looking forward, I believe if we could have poised and pondered a bit, we could have identified there’s already a couple of successful models worth inspiring – one being Tagore’s Visva Bharati. Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s school of learning at Santiniketan breathes a fresh air initially subjected to criticisms and later went on become an iconic example in the firmament of education across India.

Most of the times the name of the reticent poet is referred to, the mention of his writings, plays, poems and songs clutter our little minds. We talk the least about the academic administrator and innovator in him who gave us an alternative to regimented education imported from the West.