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NITI Aayog’s ‘Three Year Action Agenda’
A closer scrutiny of the NITI Aayog’s “Three Year Action Agenda” for education and skill development agenda makes it appear a mere technical exercise towards developing a set of unfounded strategies. The overemphasis on learning outcomes, obsession with technical education, and preference for skills over basic education have missed the broader and more meaningful vision of inclusive quality education.
The author acknowledges the comments given by the anonymous reviewer.
India’s developmental planning, which started in 1951, came to a conclusion in March 2017 with the end of the Twelfth Five Year Plan. After the dissolution of the Planning Commission, the government decided to set its development priorities and instrumentalise those priorities through the NITI Aayog. One of the major mandates of the NITI Aayog is “to design strategic and long-term policy and programme frameworks and initiatives.” In this direction, the NITI Aayog was advised to prepare a 15-year vision document, a seven-year strategy, and a three-year action agenda. Towards achieving this end, the NITI Aayog formulated a “Three Year Action Agenda, 2017–18 to 2019–20” in August 2017. The document proposes a set of action points for policy and institutional reforms in various sectors of the economy (NITI Aayog 2017).
Under the broad theme of “Social sector,” Chapter 20 of the document presents the vision and a three-year strategy for “Education and skill development.” The overarching goal of the action agenda for education is employability for India’s youth. According to the document, as the current system is ill-equipped to provide the required education and skill, the action agenda has explored some alternative actions and strategies to reap the maximum benefits from the country’s “demographic dividend.”
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