Congress leader Sonia Gandhi has launched a scathing attack on the Modi government’s education policy, accusing it of pursuing a “three Cs” agenda—centralisation, commercialisation, and communalisation.
Writing in The Hindu, the Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson described these as the key threats to India’s education system and demanded an end to what she termed its “carnage.”
Gandhi asserted that the introduction of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 had masked what she described as the government's “profound indifference” towards the education of India’s youth.
“The Union Government's track record over the last decade has convincingly demonstrated that in education, it is concerned only with the successful implementation of three core agenda items—the centralisation of power with the Union Government; the commercialisation and outsourcing of investments in education to the private sector, and the communalisation of textbooks, curriculum, and institutions,” she stated.
She denounced what she termed “unchecked centralisation,” noting that the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) had not been convened since September 2019.
Despite the far-reaching impact of NEP 2020, she said, the government had failed to consult state governments on its implementation.
“It is a testament to the Government's singular determination not to heed any voice other than its own, even on a subject that is squarely in the Concurrent List of the Indian Constitution,” Gandhi contended.
The Congress leader further accused the Modi government of using coercion to impose the PM-SHRI (PM Schools for Rising India) scheme, claiming that it withheld grants due under the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) as leverage.
Gandhi also criticised the draft University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines for 2025, calling them “draconian.”
She alleged that these measures had excluded state governments from the appointment process of vice-chancellors in state-run universities.
“The Union government has given itself—through the governors who are typically designated as chancellors of the universities—near-monopoly power in the selection of vice-chancellors in state universities,” she asserted, describing it as a “grave threat” to federalism.
'Commercialisation of education'
Gandhi accused the government of systematically commercialising education, in alignment with the NEP’s provisions. She alleged that the poor were being pushed out of public education and forced into an expensive, poorly regulated private sector.
In higher education, she pointed to the introduction of the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) as a substitute for the University Grants Commission’s traditional system of block grants, arguing that this shift had exacerbated inequalities.
'Communalisation of curriculum'
The Congress leader further accused the government of advancing a communal agenda by altering school curricula in line with the ideological positions of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“The Union government's third thrust is on communalisation, the fulfilment of the long-standing ideological project of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party, of indoctrinating and cultivating hatred through the education system,” she wrote.
She claimed that the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks had been revised to erase portions of history deemed inconvenient, including details about Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination and sections on Mughal India.
The omission of the Preamble to the Constitution from textbooks, she added, had only been reversed following public outrage.
“In our universities, we have seen the large-scale hiring of professors from regime-friendly ideological backgrounds, no matter the comically poor quality of their teaching and scholarships,” Gandhi remarked, further alleging that key leadership positions in premier institutions such as the IITs and IIMs had been reserved for “pliant ideologues.”
Over the past decade, she said, the education system had been stripped of its essence of public service, and concerns over quality and accessibility had been sidelined.
“The consequences of this single-minded push for centralisation, commercialisation, and communalisation have fallen squarely on our students. This carnage of India's public education system must end,” she concluded.
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