Three years of teaching in Rajouri district - one of Jammu and Kashmir's most geographically remote and tribally diverse regions - have taught me something that no policy document can capture. A reform is only as good as the student's ability to understand it.
Working closely with first-generation learners from low-income households, I have witnessed how the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, visionary as it is, has quietly left behind the very students it most hopes to uplift.
The students I work with carry genuine ambition. Despite limited academic support systems and restricted access to educational infrastructure, they arrive at college thresholds with resilience and a real desire to learn. What they often lack is not ability, but information.
With NEP 2020's rollout in Jammu and Kashmir, undergraduate education has been restructured around concepts like Major, Minor, Multidisciplinary, and Skill Enhancement Courses - a flexible, choice-based framework designed to align Indian education with global standards. But for a student stepping out of a higher secondary system built around fixed streams of Arts, Science, or Commerce, these terms are not intuitive. They are confusing and trigger uncertainty.
This is not a failure of intelligence. It is a failure of orientation.
A large number of students entering college have little understanding of what a Major subject means for their academic specialisation, how a Minor complements it, what purpose a Multidisciplinary course serves, or how Skill Enhancement Courses build employable competencies.
Arriving at the admission desk without this knowledge, they default to whatever the committee suggests. And admission committees, however well-intentioned, operate under real institutional pressures - faculty availability, workload distribution, infrastructure constraints. The result is that students are frequently allocated subject combinations that have little to do with their interests, aptitudes, or ambitions.
Initially, the joy of securing admission overlooks this mismatch. For many, especially those who are the first in their families to enter higher education, simply getting in feels like the destination. But as the semester progresses, the cracks appear. Students struggle to engage with subjects they did not consciously choose. Motivation dips. Comprehension suffers.
In the worst cases, this disengagement can harden into passivity, resulting in students aiming merely to pass rather than to learn. Some will drop out altogether.
The intervention this situation demands is a structured academic counselling at the higher secondary stage, specifically designed around the framework and philosophy of NEP 2020. This means more than general career advice.
Students need interactive sessions, aptitude assessments, and clear explanations of how subject combinations connect to real-world outcomes - how Political Science, Sociology, Economics, and History together can strengthen a civil services pathway, or how skill-based courses directly improve employability. Senior students and local community figures can be as effective here as professional counsellors.
In areas like Rajouri, where the absence of informed guidance routinely leads to the underutilisation of educational opportunity, this awareness work is not supplementary; it is foundational.
Institutions, too, carry responsibility. Colleges must develop more transparent, student-centred admission processes and invest in orientation programs that allow students to understand, and where possible, adjust their course structures early.
Schools and colleges can collaborate through joint workshops and outreach campaigns to smooth the school-to-college transition. Digital platforms and local language resources can extend this reach to the most remote corners of the region.
The stakes are larger than individual academic outcomes. When students study subjects, they have chosen with understanding and intention, they engage more deeply, perform better, and are more likely to persist in higher education. In tribal and underserved communities, that difference compounds across generations. It translates into higher enrollment and retention, greater employability, and the kind of socio-economic mobility that NEP 2020 aims to catalyse.
NEP 2020 is a genuinely progressive framework. But its promise will remain theoretical for too many students unless the gap between policy design and ground-level comprehension is actively closed.
Education is not merely about access. It is about meaningful engagement. In Jammu and Kashmir, where education remains one of the most powerful levers for social transformation, guiding students to choose with knowledge and confidence empowers communities through education and creates a generation of informed and confident individuals.
Learning should be a process of discovery, not a burden. That should be the NEP 2020’s pivot – both in its conceptualization and implementation.
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