Building Standards With Freedom

India’s latest higher-education reform, the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, is best understood not as an administrative reshuffle but as a philosophical recalibration of how a modern state relates to knowledge. For decades, India has governed its universities through a patchwork of regulators, approvals, and inspections that prioritised procedural compliance over intellectual consequences. The Bill marks a clear departure from that inheritance, replacing regulatory excess with functional clarity and outcome-based accountability.

At its heart lies a simple proposition: autonomy and accountability are not adversaries but complements. By separating regulation, accreditation, and academic standard-setting into distinct institutional functions, the Bill dismantles the structural confusion that previously forced universities to answer multiple masters for the same academic act. The result is not centralisation, as critics allege, but coherence—an essential prerequisite for any system that seeks both scale and credibility.

What distinguishes this reform from earlier attempts is its explicit rejection of permission-centric governance. Instead of micromanaging inputs, the framework insists on transparent disclosure, nationally synchronised minimum standards, and credible consequences for persistent failure. This shift reflects a mature regulatory philosophy: quality emerges not from constant surveillance, but from clear expectations and a serious enforcement approach.

Importantly, the Bill’s conception of academic standards is neither uniformitarian nor culturally evasive. By allowing institutions the freedom to exceed benchmarks while maintaining a common national floor, it accommodates diversity without diluting comparability. This space is particularly significant in a country where knowledge traditions have historically been multilingual and multi-epistemic. Indian Knowledge Systems—spanning philosophy, mathematics, medicine, linguistics, and the arts—have long evolved through diverse intellectual lineages rather than a single canonical mode. A standards-based, non-prescriptive framework is precisely what allows such traditions to engage contemporary disciplines on equal scholarly terms, rather than being marginalised by rigid curricular templates.

The same logic applies to language. A higher-education system that aspires to mass excellence cannot remain linguistically exclusionary. While the Bill does not legislate pedagogy, its emphasis on institutional autonomy, outcome transparency, and curricular flexibility creates enabling conditions for teaching, learning, and scholarship in Indian languages—without compromising academic rigour or international comparability. In global terms, this is not parochialism; it is cognitive inclusion. Advanced societies increasingly recognise that intellectual depth and linguistic plurality are mutually reinforcing.

Accreditation, too, is reconceived as an ecosystem rather than a bureaucratic bottleneck. By supervising multiple quality-assurance pathways instead of monopolising them, the framework aligns India with international best practices where accreditation functions as a trust infrastructure, not a gatekeeping ritual. This is essential if Indian institutions are to be read credibly by global partners, ranking agencies, and research collaborators.

The Bill’s enforcement architecture deserves equal attention. Regulation without consequence invites indifference; consequence without due process invites fear. The proposed framework avoids both. It embeds proportionality, procedural fairness, and escalation, signalling that chronic non-compliance is a failure of governance rather than a paperwork lapse. In doing so, it restores moral seriousness to the idea of regulation itself.

Concerns regarding governmental policy direction should be viewed through the lens of constitutional realism rather than ideological suspicion. Higher education is intrinsically linked to national priorities, including equity, scientific capacity, cultural continuity, and global engagement. A complete firewall between policy and regulation would be neither feasible nor desirable. The Bill’s challenge—and its promise—lies in ensuring that policy guidance remains strategic rather than intrusive, enabling rather than prescriptive.

Ultimately, the significance of the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill lies in its quiet confidence. It assumes that Indian universities need not be governed through distrust, redundancy, or excessive proceduralism. Instead, it places faith in standards, transparency, and institutional responsibility. In an era where knowledge power defines national capability, this is a timely assertion: that a developed India must also be an epistemically self-assured one—open to the world, anchored in its intellectual traditions, and governed by frameworks worthy of both.

Views expressed are personal. The writer is the Secretary, University Grants Commission, Ministry of Education