Nandan Nilekani Committee is welcome, its mandate must be expansive

The more than a month-long protests by the country’s youth have brought long-overdue political attention to education reform. The Centre’s decision to constitute a high-level task force, barely a day after Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation, is a necessary acknowledgement of the crisis of confidence in a system that determines the fate of millions of young Indians. The committee’s composition — technology and education experts and former bureaucrats — suggests that the government is looking beyond immediate crisis management. Such an outlook is welcome. It is also heartening that the panel will be chaired by Nandan Nilekani, whose stewardship of Aadhaar and India’s digital public infrastructure combined technological innovation with changes in institutional architecture on an unprecedented scale. His proven ability to bring together government, industry and civil society around far-reaching reforms should stand the task force in good stead as it confronts one of the most consequential public policy challenges the country faces.

The recent agitation may have been triggered by repeated examination failures, but at its heart lay a larger question: Does the country’s education system open doors at a time when the world of work is undergoing profound transformations — AI is reshaping white-collar employment, automation is altering the skill-related demands of employers, and India’s IT and outsourcing industries are entering a period of technological disruption. The youth face a double uncertainty — an examination system whose credibility has repeatedly been called into question and a labour market whose contours are rapidly changing. This is where Nilekani’s presence on the panel assumes significance. He has maintained that investments in digital infrastructure, skilling and continuous learning can make AI a job multiplier. He has also argued that AI will reshape India’s outsourcing industry, making it imperative for professionals to move towards higher-value expertise. Such insights can help the task force become a forum for sustained engagement with the changing knowledge economy.

For that to happen, the government should resist the temptation of framing the task force as a supra National Testing Agency (NTA) and instead treat its work as the starting point for broader reform. Its recommendations must be accompanied by clear timelines and measurable milestones. The government must be careful, too, to eschew the prevarication that followed the submission of the K Radhakrishnan committee report in 2024 — most of the major measures, including accountability, institutional restructuring and technological upgrades suggested by the panel formed after the NEET failure that year, have been unevenly implemented. The outrage that spilled onto the country’s streets last week should be warning enough that the old ways will work no more.