The student today is not a learner in the true sense of the word. She is a combatant: not in pursuit of knowledge but in flight from meaning; not in dialogue with her world but at war with it – and with herself. Her classroom is a glowing screen. Her community is an algorithm. Her soul, a site of slow implosion. In the absence of real bonds, real questions and real care, she spirals inward: into depression, into anxiety, into violence, into drugs, into suicide. What was once education has now become an abyss – device-bound, atomised, and meaningless. https://thewire.in/education/after-the-nep-verdict-education-is-no-longer-the-union-govts-weapon
This is the condition Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls the Burnout Society – a world where individuals, freed from external coercion, destroy themselves in the name of freedom, productivity, and optimisation. Students today are not oppressed by a tyrant. They are devoured by a system that demands performance, multitasking, and perpetual availability.
The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is not the beginning of this crisis. It is merely the policy expression of it It promises flexibility but delivers fragmentation. It preaches empowerment but enforces submission. Its obsession with “21st-century skills and employability” is not futuristic. It is feudal. Even the chairperson of the NEP drafting committee, K. Kasturirangan, proudly claimed the policy is designed to impart “employability skills like communication, creativity, and problem-solving” while creating a “workforce aligned to the needs of the market.” It wants docile minds in corporate cubicles and obedient bodies in uniform. It wants a nation of performers, not questioners.
by Anilkumar Payyappilly Vijayan
20/05/2025