Understanding the Aims of India’s National Education Policies

This paper examines an important aspect of India’s national education policies: the aims and goals stated in the national educational policies of independent India. To set the background, a brief account is given of the history of national education policies when education was broadly managed by states, and continues to be so. India’s national educational policies are evolutionary in nature due to which their goals change perceptibly depending upon the context and democratic polity (political party in power), particularly at the Centre. The National Policy on Education 1968 aspired to build the education system of Independent India that India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru envisaged—an educational system that lead to a socialistic pattern of society in which no one person or entity dominates in the affairs of the working of the society, promotion of national integration and establishing a national system of education. Considerable progress has been made in this regard in both school and higher education, and economic and cultural development of the country. The first two policies and the impact they had on the largest young democracy in the world needs different theoretical tools.