Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhikshan Bill: The Catastrophic Implications for Higher Education in India

The Union Cabinet’s approval of the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhikshan Bill—formerly known as the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) Bill—marks a watershed moment in Indian education, and not in a positive sense. Presented as a reform to streamline the “fragmented” regulatory landscape, this legislation threatens to deliver the final blow to an already crumbling higher education ecosystem.

By replacing the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) with a single super-regulator, the government claims to be promoting autonomy, reducing red tape and fostering excellence. The reality, however, is far more sinister: unprecedented centralisation of power, systematic destruction of institutional autonomy, forced commercialisation through debt-based funding, and the effective subjugation of India's universities to direct political control.

This is not educational reform. This is an authoritarian takeover of India’s intellectual infrastructure, designed to ensure that no university, faculty and student can question, critique, or challenge the government’s ideological agenda without risking institutional survival. The implications for academic freedom, social equity and India’s democratic future are catastrophic.

Centralisation Disguised as Consolidation

On paper, the bill merges the UGC, AICTE and the NCTE into a single regulator—an idea that, in isolation, could have helped reduce overlapping mandates. But the architecture of the new body reveals the true purpose: consolidation of power in the hands of the Central government. The commission is designed to be dominated by secretaries of major ministries, government-appointed heads of regulatory bodies and vice-chancellors chosen through government-controlled processes. Out of 12-15 members, only two or three will be independent academics—and even these will be appointed by the government.

This is a sharp regression from the UGC Act, which at least attempted some balance between bureaucratic and academic representation. Now, academic voices stand marginalised entirely.

Parliament’s own Standing Committee warned in February 2025 that this would amount to “excessive centralisation” and tokenistic state representation. This warning was brushed aside.

The crucial clause—Section 15(3)(g)—removes any ambiguity: the commission “shall be bound” by central policy directions, and if disagreements arise, “the Government’s decision shall be final.” With one stroke, the bill destroys the fiction of an “autonomous regulator.” Every aspect of higher education—curriculum, accreditation standards, fee norms, institutional recognition—becomes an extension of government will.

The Death of Institutional Autonomy

The government insists that the new regime will “promote autonomy” and “reduce interference.” The bill does the opposite. It dismantles even the limited space for self-governance that universities currently possess under the UGC framework.

Today, universities—however constrained—retain certain academic freedoms: creating syllabi within broad norms, hiring on the basis of scholarship, determining research directions and managing administrative affairs without seeking permissions for every detail. Under the new dispensation, virtually all of this disappears.

The proposed commission will have the authority to set prescriptive norms for every function, from fees to curricula; grant or revoke permission to operate, giving it existential power over every institution; impose criminal penalties, including imprisonment, for non-compliance; order immediate closure of institutions deemed “non-compliant,” with weak appeal safeguards; impose uniform professional standards regardless of institutional context or mission.

This is precisely the kind of regulatory overreach criticised by both the Yashpal Committee (2010) and the National Knowledge Commission (2009), which argued that micromanagement by the UGC undermined autonomy without improving accountability. The new bill does not correct those failures; it hardens them by placing all such powers in a politically aligned super-regulator with expanded punitive tools.

The consequences are obvious. A university attempting curricular innovation may be penalised for deviating from rigid templates. A rural college struggling with structural deficiencies may face closure instead of support. A faculty body publishing research critical of government policy could trigger a “compliance review,” leading to derecognition. When survival depends on regulatory mood, universities will tend to avoid innovation, dissent, or risk-taking entirely.

Defenders of the bill claim it merely “reinstates” the UGC’s graded-autonomy model of 2017. This is disingenuous. The earlier framework differentiated between institutions—granting more freedom to those with strong academic records. The new regime eliminates differentiation altogether: everyone is placed under a single, centralised command structure, with the government as final arbiter.

This is not autonomy. It is the systematic erasure of it.

Disguised Privatisation

The most consequential shift is not in what the bill creates, but in what it eliminates: a statutory grant-giving authority. By dissolving the UGC’s funding role, the bill severs the link between public purpose and public funding.

The Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) becomes the de facto mechanism. Under this model, even basic infrastructure and faculty hiring require institutions to take loans and repay them with interest. HEFA’s logic—borrow now, generate revenue later—forces universities to behave like commercial enterprises.

To service debt, institutions will be pushed towards sharply increased fees, proliferation of high-cost, self-financed programmes, commercialisation of campus services and abandonment of disciplines that cannot generate revenue.

This will be catastrophic for equity. Public universities are the only accessible route for SC, ST, OBC and poorer students. As fees rise, they will either drop out or be forced into private debt—the education-loan model the government prefers. In a job-scarce economy, these loans become traps.

Disciplines with low market value—humanities, social sciences, arts, pure sciences and regional languages—will be hollowed out. The commercial imperative will reshape entire academic ecosystems, privileging market-driven programmes at the cost of critical knowledge.

This restructuring is not incidental—it is ideological. Making higher education expensive limits access and keeps knowledge production under the control of elites.

States Reduced to Spectators

Education is a Concurrent List subject; states have historically shaped regional universities, linguistic priorities, and research agendas. The bill sidelines them almost entirely. State representation on the commission is negligible, and states will have no meaningful role in standards, accreditation norms, or funding decisions.

Former Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Isaac warned that eliminating UGC grants could push states toward a 60:40 Centre–state funding model, eroding fiscal autonomy. The bill moves precisely in that direction.

States like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal and Karnataka—which have built strong public universities—now risk being governed by Delhi-centric mandates devoid of regional context. The loss is not merely administrative; it is cultural and intellectual. Regional languages, local histories, and context-sensitive research will be sacrificed to uniform national templates.

A government that speaks incessantly of “cooperative federalism” is in practice creating a command-and-control educational apparatus completely indifferent to India’s federal fabric.

Solving None of the Real Problems

The real crisis in Indian higher education stems from causes entirely unrelated to regulatory multiplicity:

• Chronic underfunding: India spends barely 3.1 per cent of GDP on education—half the long-standing 6 per cent benchmark. The consequences are visible everywhere: faculty shortages, dilapidated infrastructure, poor laboratories, and obsolete libraries. Institutions collapse from lack of resources, not from insufficient supervision.

• Political capture of appointments: Vice-chancellors increasingly owe their posts to political loyalty rather than scholarship. Once leadership becomes a function of ideological affinity, institutional collapse is predictable.

• Casualisation of academic labour: The replacement of regular positions with precarious contractual hiring has devastated the intellectual climate. Underpaid and insecure teachers cannot sustain serious research or long-term pedagogic commitments.

• Erosion of research funding: Government funding stagnates even as regulatory burdens grow. Faculty are drowning in compliance paperwork instead of producing knowledge.

• Attacks on academic freedom: Disciplinary actions, FIRs, sedition cases and administrative retaliation have silenced faculty and students. A climate of fear cannot coexist with real research or intellectual life.

• Data suppression: Educational and employment data inconvenient to the government simply disappear—the National Sample Survey being the most notorious example. Evidence-based policymaking becomes impossible in an environment of statistical opacity.

Instead of solving these structural problems, the bill institutionalises political control, strips universities of autonomy, and leaves the financial precarity unaddressed. This is not reform; it is state-engineered deterioration.

Extinction of Critical Knowledge

The bill’s market-driven orientation and revenue-pressure framework create predictable hierarchies among disciplines. Fields aligned with state industrial priorities or capable of extracting high fees—engineering, management, computer science, applied sciences—will thrive. Everything else will be pushed to the margins.

Humanities, social sciences, pure sciences without immediate commercial value, philosophy, political science, history, regional languages, arts and interdisciplinary studies will face systematic defunding. These are precisely the fields that produce critical thinking, ethical judgement, historical memory, social literacy and the capacity to question power. Starving them is not collateral damage—it is strategic.

The Yashpal Committee had warned that innovation often emerges at disciplinary intersections. The bill’s regime of standardisation, compliance and market alignment will annihilate those intersections. Indian higher education will churn out technicians rather than thinkers, credentialed workers rather than critically informed citizens.

The government justifies these reforms through vague references to “international best practices.” The comparison is hollow. Globally successful universities—MIT, Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, ETH Zurich—operate with robust autonomy. Political interference is minimal. Research is protected from ideological pressure. Faculty are hired on academic merit, not political loyalty.

Even countries with centralised systems have moved toward autonomy. The UK’s buffer-body model and the Bologna Process affirm that institutional freedom is the foundation of excellence.

What India is constructing resembles the educational systems of authoritarian states where universities function as extensions of the government.

This is not ignorance. It is intention.

The Way Forward: Genuine Reform

Real reform should increase funding to 6 per cent of GDP; prioritise grants for infrastructure, faculty, research and student support; protect institutional autonomy from political interference; empower academic representation; ensure federal balance with meaningful state participation and respect for regional diversity; support, don’t punish institutions; replace coercion with capacity-building; preserve public character by maintaining affordable, grant-funded higher education; respect academic freedom; shield faculty and students from political interference; base policy on evidence with reliable data and independent research; include stakeholders in governance, not impose top-down control.

The Bill does none of these. It centralises control, reduces autonomy, commercialises public goods and subordinates education to political objectives.

The bill poses an existential threat to democratic education. The consequences are severe:

• Students: Higher fees, debt, reduced access, and a credential-focused system.

• Faculty: Loss of freedom, increased precarity, surveillance and administrative burdens.

• Institutions: Shift from public mission to commercial survival; political vetting of activities.

• Society: Erosion of critical knowledge, social mobility and regional diversity.

• Democracy: Universities lose their role as spaces of inquiry and critique, becoming instruments of state control.

The choice is stark: higher education as a right or a privilege, knowledge serving society or power. Historians will likely see this as educational subjugation, not reform. The bill should meet the fate of its 2018 predecessor: withdrawal and replacement with reforms that serve education, the Constitution and democracy.