The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhisthan (VBSA) Bill is statutorily paving the way for centralisation and commercialisation. It will result in extreme privatisation of higher education. The state governments need to immediately intervene in this matter. The All India Peoples’ Science Network (AIPSN) believes that the VBSA Bill will allow decision making on higher education institutions (HEIs) to become unidimensional as the Bill promotes hyper globalisation rather than national innovation for self-reliance and social justice. AIPSN notes that the implementation of the Bill will lead to one-sided and highly centralised ways of regulation, determination of standards, and accreditation processes. The VBSA Bill has been brought in because the Union government wishes to withdraw from the obligation to promote education as a publicly funded enterprise for common good. It is our understanding that through the determination of standards, accreditation, and regulations, the VBSA Bill will only be widening the gap between state HEIs and central sector HEIs. The VBSA cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. AIPSN welcomes the formation of a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) and seeks a meeting with the JPC members. The AIPSN notes that the Standing Committee of the Ministry of Education recommended to the ministry to bear the costs of NEP compliance. The VBSA Bill envisages a commission without a specialised education grants council. The last five Union government budgets reflect that the leadership is yet to come forward with a solution.The VBSA Bill covers state as well as central sector HEIs. It seeks to govern them through the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). The AIPSN believes that HEIs should be governed by academics, teachers, professionals, educationists, and social forces who are engaged in local economic, educational, and social development and advancing the agenda of national innovation for self-reliance within the industry and enterprise sector. In the VBSA, the higher education grants function remains under the control of the ministry of education. But the Bill centralises the other three important functions such as regulations, accreditation, and standards. The VBSA Commission lacks not only federal representation but also enabling mechanisms for the centre and state collaboration for the joint implementation of standards, accreditation, and regulations. An alternative to the VBSA needs to be proposed to save the future of higher education in the state sector and central sector institutions for democratic transformation.Alternative proposed by AIPSNConstitutionally speaking, education is a concurrent subject. The coordination of standards, accreditation, and regulations with respect to higher education needs to be legislated as a shared responsibility. The Union government as well as the state governments should have a role in the determination of standards, accreditation, and regulations. Currently the VBSA Bill does not treat this task as a shared responsibility of the Union and the states. The determination of standards, accreditation, and regulations cannot be a top-down affair. The current Union government is trying to amass power through VBSA over the state governments. The Union government cannot be allowed to coerce the state governments through the VBSA and have an undue control over the HEIs. The VBSA, as it stands, should be rejected. It should be replaced with a suitable alternative wherein the states will have to be treated as partners. The state higher education councils (SHECs) must be made full-fledged partners in the governance of higher education. The states cannot be treated as peripheral members in the commission. The SHECs will have to be full-fledged members of the commission. Each state will have to be represented on the commission. The alternative legislation should provide for collaboration, joint planning, and democratic decision-making on the strategic coordination of the future of higher education. This coordination challenge should be pursued as a matter of consensus and a shared responsibility between the Union and the states.There is an increasing trend of viewing higher education in India as two separate spheres: a) one that is private and some select government institutions with better faculty and resources, and b) the majority of HEIs which cannot keep pace with the former. The HEIs funded through state government budgets are severely constrained as a majority of the funds are spent on salaries and pensions, leaving little room for infrastructure and capital expenditure spend. Most of the HEIs are run by state government funds. Presently, the Institutions of National Importance or INIs (IITs, NITs and IIMs) collectively absorb 18.2% of the higher education budget and these institutions have enrolled less than 0.76% of students. Needless to state that the emerging social divides should not be allowed to widen. Per capita public expenditure on a student studying in an IIT, NIT or IIM exceeds the national average by a factor of eighteen even when state universities which host two-thirds of students and several central universities that are already multi-disciplinary or even inter-disciplinary, operate under acute fiscal constraints that depress infrastructure, quality, research output, and faculty strength. The state-sector HEIs account for over 86% of students enrolled in higher education. While the Union Government sets the goals under the NEP, the expenditure for the NEP compliance is being borne by State governments. The NEP compliance requires substantial spending on the part of the state government for dual degree, biannual admissions, four-year degree, and multidisciplinary university. The PM-Uchattar Shiksha Abhiyan (USHA) per se cannot do the job and be expected to meet the cost of NEP compliance requirements of the state sector higher education institutions. Publicness, equity, and reservationCurrently it is the individual states that primarily fund their higher education systems. Block grants need to be provided for teaching and research in an integrated way. The Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), as established, does not provide for block grants. It follows hub-and-spokes model, supports those who already have an advantage. It does not offer social and inter-regional equity. Finally, the alternative Bill will have to provide for bridging the gap to ensure quality and access to education for all sections of society. Private sector HEIs do not provide for equity and social justice. The alternate legislation should provide for the enforcement of affirmative action. The AIPSN is of the view that given the nature of the deficit in the funding arrangements, the state of available faculty, and infrastructure for research-based higher education, the current gap is too large to be filled through PM-USHA.The AIPSN notes that the NEP unduly emphasises and privileges the INIs and Tier-I institutions.The AIPSN notes that students of INIs enjoy the freedom to leave the country after completing their studies. They should be enabled to contribute to the country, or else they should pay back the public component of the cost of their higher education to the Union government.The recommendation that a reasonable increase should be made in the budget of PM-USHA over the next few years with the goals of NEP in mind is insufficient. There is no specialised arrangement for open, need-based, and criteria-based transparent funding of higher education from the Union Government for state sector institutions and central universities.The adverse consequences of NEP for equity, excellence, relevance, and national innovation will only be reinforced through the VBSA, because it does not include the required enabling mechanisms.The VBSA Commission and the proposed verticals for standards, accreditation, and regulation need to be democratised; the proposed alternative to VBSA does this in a balanced and constitutional way.Alternate framework for HEI governanceThe SHECs need to be represented on the commission. The commission should provide for consensual decision-making to pursue a joint strategic direction, advise central and state governments, and advance national and internationalisation objectives.Much of the existing infrastructure and facilities for R&D in the country are located at national laboratories and Tier-1 universities, like the IITs, IISc, and TIFR. Infrastructure upgrading is required at Tier-2 and Tier-3 institutions to provide an array of commons at the regional and local levels that can be accessed by civil society, state governments, industry, and community-based societal institutions without having to build from scratch for project-based and continuing S&T activities. Non-elite institutions (like Tier-2 or Tier-3 universities) are unable to access relevant infrastructure.Inadequate funds and lack of innovative financing models across the innovation lifecycle – from fundamental research to translational research, and knowledge communication and utilisation in markets and other social spaces available for innovation – are major hurdles.The disparities in state-level investment are a key factor in the uneven quality and access to higher education across India. Public universities at the state level in tier-2 and tier-3 cities often struggle due to limited funding, lack of infrastructure, and inadequate faculty support for research.The inaccessibility and unavailability of scientific and technological infrastructure (broadly including physical facilities, equipment, and hardware and software tools required to pursue R&D) outside of elite academic and government institutions is presently a harsh reality defining India.The ANRF is inadequate and is moving in the direction of pursuing a second generation of extreme centralisation and privatisation of research funding.Enable joint implementationIn the alternative legislation, there should be a separate higher education grants council (HEGC) to disburse the funds presently available at the command of the Ministry of Education. In the alternative Bill, the HEGC will be given the responsibility of providing not only regular funding to Central Sector institutions, including INIs and Central Universities, but also a provision for special funding for upgrading higher education institutions to bridge gaps, structural voids, and deficits.The nation owes it to the mass of students studying and the faculty teaching in these HEIs that they also join the INIs in playing their due role and contribute.The AIPSN also recommends that not only should the SHECs have representation on all the councils, but the SHECs should also have a clear mandate and space for influencing the future of HEIs in India.The VBSA Bill proposes three specialised councils without any role for SHECs and HEIs themselves. The approach to regulation cannot be prescriptive. It should be deliberative, process oriented, not output but outcome and impact centric.The state governments have established SHECs to enable HEIs at the state level when funds are disbursed from the state government to state sector HEIs. University-level decision-making bodies will have to be enabled, supported, and encouraged to join hands.Campus democracy should be legislated to seek the participation of students, faculty, and local stakeholders residing in the vicinity and collaborating with the HEIs. There is no such vision visible in the provisions created in the VBSA for:Viksit Bharat Shiksha Viniyaman Parishad (VBSVP), a regulatory council responsible for institutional recognition, governance oversight, financial probity, degree-awarding authorisations, and regulation of foreign and cross-border education; Viksit Bharat Shiksha Gunvatta Parishad (VBSGP), an accreditation council tasked with outcome-based accreditation, supervision of accrediting agencies, public disclosure, and enforcement mechanisms; andViksit Bharat Shiksha Manak Parishad (VBSMP), a standards council mandated to define learning outcomes, qualification and credit frameworks, and minimum academic standards.The regulatory council (Viniyaman Parishad) is envisaged as the primary enforcer of governance and institutional norms in the VBSA. The alternate bill should not give it a free hand and make it solely responsible for formal recognition, authorisation, and closure of institutions.The VBSA empowers it to impose graded financial penalties for regulatory violations. This should be treated as a joint function. No institution should be closed without getting the consent of the state government where the concerned institution is located.The accreditation council (Gunvatta Parishad) in the VBSA provides for technology-driven quality assessment, and the focus will not be on physical inspections. The outcome evaluation in the VBSA is essentially providing for assessment of institutions based on educational outputs (learning levels, employability, research), which may not have much to do with the desirable outcomes.The accreditation council will be outsourcing the task of accreditation to a network of third-party accrediting institutions to circumvent the deliberative process and sideline the desirable outcomes that society expects HEIs to contribute to.The satandards council (Manak Parishad) sitting in Delhi cannot be expected to define standards and graduate attributes for all types of higher education – be it academic degrees, vocational integration, Bharatiya knowledge systems, or student mobility.The NHEQF will have to be shaped sector-wise, state-wise, and region-wise to attain innovation based on relevance and meaningful excellence. The internationalisation of standards has pushed HEIs to adopt models that are structurally, nationally, and socially alien. The balance has tilted from nation-building to HEIs serving the agenda of the corporate sector.Determination of standards, accreditation, and regulationThe alternate Bill should give 50% weight to the process to be carried out by the SHECs. Neither of these councils nor parishads can be given full power to determine everything, nor should 100% weight be given to the above-mentioned councils in the alternate bill.The process should be executed as a shared responsibility. The SHECs can be assigned the responsibility of state-specific standards determination, accreditation, and regulation. The state governments can and should be expected to take care of priorities such as contribution to school education, environment, climate, local resource rejuvenation, and local economic development.The priorities would be different state-wise, and the weights prescribed may differ.The AIPSN believes that the Union government-determined process of standards determination, accreditation, and regulation should be given the other 50% weight and focus on goals such as inter-regional equity, linguistic and cultural autonomy, social justice, national-level innovation, fundamental science, new technologies, global excellence, and other responsibilities of the Union Government Ministries, such as health, industry, foreign affairs, defense, energy security, and so on.In the alternate Bill, the central council (commission) and the three verticals are the arms of the Union government. It should provide for a federal approach, and the reporting function should be shaped as a system of reporting to Parliament.The institutional structure for standards, accreditation, and regulation would need a funding mechanism to be incorporated in each vertical, for which approval should be taken from Parliament. As this apparatus will have to pursue the responsibility of creating enabling funding mechanisms, collaboration, and handholding among state sector and central sector HEIs as a joint collaborative process, it should not report to the PMO but to the Central Council (Commission) to be established as a federal mechanism.The alternate Bill should also consider incorporating provisions for regional councils to plan for ecological and socio-technical system planning and offices, in addition to the central councils for deliberations.A separate HEGC should be established, wherein all state governments could be represented. Corpuses need to be created for special needs. Reliance on loans must be reduced, and special needs must be met through grants.SHECs’ role and contribution should be legislated to enable the alternate bill to realise the vision and strategy of joint implementation of standards, accreditation, and regulation through the proposed verticals in the form of three separate councils. The three councils should have their own separate budgets.The SHECs should be duly funded by the HEGC to enable the process to become a shared responsibility. The HEGC should be legislated to receive and disburse Central Sector schemes and Centrally Sponsored Schemes of the Ministry of Education for transparent and open governance.All cesses presently provided for the implementation of shared responsibility should be at the disposal of the HEGC. In the alternate Bill, the HEGC will statutorily receive all cesses collected for education over which the states have a right, and it is a right of citizens to receive constitutionally compatible higher education.The public purposes of higher education should guide fund allocation, and the HEGC will use funds to upgrade central and state sector institutions.Dinesh Abrol, Chief Scientist (Retd), CSIR-NISTADS, Professor (Retd), Institute for Studies in Industrial Development, Delhi, Delhi Science Forum, All India Peoples’ Science Network.