Full circle: It’s education ministry once again

NEW DELHI: As part of the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP), the Union cabinet on Wednesday de-cided to rename the ministry of human resource development, dropping the nomenclature which was employed 35 years ago.
It was the Rajiv Gandhi government which had rechristened the education ministry as HRD ministry after merging the ministries of culture and sports into it. P V Narasimha Rao, who later became prime minister, was the first to hold charge of the sprawling ministry.
The ‘human resource development’ tag fitted well with the school of thought which felt the education system needed to be reformed and become “job-oriented”. The approach came under sharp criticism from academics who viewed education as a pursuit aimed at enhancing the creative potential of humankind rather than viewing students just as a “factor of production”.
The expanded turfs of the ministries of human resource development and surface transport proved to be unwieldy. The realisation led to culture and sports being hived off from the HRD ministry to be restored as independent ministries.