The case for returning education to states

Policy discontents have a way of simmering until they come to a boil. Indian education has reached that moment. The Constitution placed education under Entry 11 of the State List, embedding it in local context. School and university education required community engagement, regional language integration and contextualised pedagogy. The Centre had control over institutions of national importance, scientific institutions and the envisioning of standards in higher education. In 1976, the Indira Gandhi government used the 42nd Amendment to move education out of the State List into the Concurrent List. While there are no arguments for this move, it can be justified by an overarching Emergency-era logic of national coordination, signified by common standards and an all-India policy. Fifty years later, a huge mass of students is out on the streets, asking whether that bargain is still viable.We present a case for restoring education back to the State List or at least give the states their due autonomy while keeping it in the Concurrent List. The case for this reversal is not ideological nostalgia. It is logical. Kerala's educational priorities need not be identical to Bihar's. Tamil Nadu's industrial structure differs from Rajasthan's. Karnataka's technology economy differs from Assam's. Punjab's agricultural economy differs from Maharashtra's manufacturing and services economy. Education should be contextual and respond to these differences.Who actually pays for education in India? Not New Delhi. In 2021-22, the states and union territories spent Rs 7.3 lakh crore on education. The Union Ministry of Education spent about Rs 93,000 crore and even if we count every rupee that other Union ministries spent on education-related activities, the Centre's total came to approximately 25 per cent of the national spending while the states bore a whopping 75 per cent. But the Centre has a disproportionate say in what that money buys. The list includes national curricula, testing agencies, entrance examinations, accreditation frameworks and Centre-sponsored schemes with centrally set conditions. While states finance and operate most government schools and colleges, the Centre's policy authority has been expanding. This is an unfair federal setup.This systemic disparity manifests in the fraught politics around NEET, CUET and similar national entrance tests. Student grow through the state curriculum in the state schooling system following the state language policy and as they pass senior secondary, they are expected to excel at an exam designed nationally. The exam often rewards an entirely different set of skills that can only be acquired through additional coaching. Schooling and coaching thus pull in different directions. The tension between teaching and testing is not an implementation accident. It is what happens when the system that government finances and the system that controls its gateways are not the same.On top of this, education has been severely underfunded. Successive commissions and education policies have proposed 6% of GDP to be spent on education. Every major policy statement, such as those of 1968, 1986, the 1992 review and the National Education Policy of 2020 have reiterated that promise. However, by the Centre's own admission, education spending has hovered around 4.1%. Not 6%. Sixty years of consensus, and we are still short of the promise. This 4.1% figure itself is often misunderstood as it does not reflect the Education Ministry's budgetary allocation but an aggregate of state spending, ministry spending and education-related spending across other ministries. The Education Ministry's own allocation for 2026-27 is a meagre Rs 1.39 lakh crore, a fraction of that number.There is yet another accounting trap worth naming —'Research spending' on defence labs, space programmes, atomic energy, agricultural science, etc, which gets wrapped in the education spending and makes the shortfall seem smaller. Research has its own target and funding. Blurring the lines between the two results in underfunding while trying to give an impression of a respectable amount overall.A sensible restoration would shift school education, general undergraduate education, teacher recruitment, curricula and state universities' autonomy back to the government that finances and administers it. It would also keep technical, medical and professional education in a Concurrent, standards-setting role. It would allow the Centre to focus on institutions of national importance, setting and maintaining professional standards and providing equalising grants, particularly to states that lack the fiscal capability.None of this requires dismantling national institutions. Nobody would propose the CUs, IITs, IIMs, AIIMS, ISRO or CSIR becoming State subjects. The Constitution's initial 1950 design has handled it well. Thus, education may remain in the State List, with the Centre having a well-defined power vis-a-vis institutions of national importance, Central universities, technical and scientific education and the regulation of standards for a workable federal system.This is not a new or a partisan idea. The Janata Party government of 1977 attempted to reverse the 42nd Amendment and move education back to the State List. The Bill failed in the Rajya Sabha, decades before this debate re-emerged as a Private Member Resolution in Parliament in August 2024, to be dismissed inconclusively again. Education is particularly vulnerable to political castling because curriculum determines what future generations learn about. We should be cautious about placing excessive curriculum control in one political authority. Even though state autonomy does not guarantee ideological neutrality, it certainly prevents a particular ideology from acquiring curricular monopoly.The worrying concern with the current arrangement is not that the New Delhi has too much power. It is that authority, responsibility, finance and accountability have gone haywire. Education has thus ended up in a peculiar state, wherein it is constitutionally 'concurrent', administratively states' responsibility, financially states' liability but politically the Centre's agenda-setting power through legislation, national institutions, regulatory bodies, centrally sponsored schemes, funding conditions, nationalised exams, accreditations and national policies.Since, education is and remains a political act, its economics must also remain the fulcrum to determine the nature and future of the education system simply because the government has sloughed off its skin of as the guardian of the welfare state. Given the chance, the states may also be able to bridge the divide of asymmetrical education systems among peninsular, northern, eastern and western India. Education as a subject with states may accord it status of a poll issue, viz bijli, sadak and pani. Unless education becomes a poll and political concern, we will not be able to stop the 'leak' and downward filtration syndrome that plagues policy formulation and implementation in education in today's India.Navneet Sharma is Faculty, Central University of HP, Dharamsala, and Sushant Kishore is faculty, VIT, Vellore

The case for returning education to states

While states finance and operate most government schools and colleges, the Centre’s policy authority has been expanding. This is an unfair federal setup

Navneet Sharma and Sushant Kishore

The case for returning education to states

While states finance and operate most government schools and colleges, the Centre’s policy authority has been expanding. This is an unfair federal setup

Navneet Sharma and Sushant Kishore

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