Reading the NEP 13: Online, AI and the World
English

One of your students reads
her course material
on a phone the whole family shares.
It is hers for an hour after dinner.
Half my class works like that.
Now the same phone can write
their essays too.
Does the policy say anything about either?
It was approved in July 2020,
and the words generative AI do not appear
in it.
On page 58 there is a sentence
about that phone.
The benefits of online and digital
education cannot be leveraged unless
the digital divide is eliminated.
Chapter 23 supports technology
in education on one condition:
that it is evaluated rigorously
and openly before it is scaled up.
An autonomous
National Educational Technology Forum
is to give the Centre and the states
independent advice, based on evidence.
And the essays?
Does it tell me what to do about those?
No. It says computers
have largely surpassed humans
at factual and procedural knowledge.
And it says education burdens students
with that knowledge,
at the expense
of higher-order competencies.
It calls artificial intelligence
a disruptive technology.
The forum is to sort new technologies
by how far and how soon they may disrupt.
Universities are to aim for master's
and PhD programmes in machine learning,
and in AI plus X,
which joins AI to another field.
Data, it says,
is a key fuel for AI,
and education must raise awareness
of privacy and of the ethics of its use.
Chapter 24, on online education,
was written during the pandemic.
It says a good teacher
in a classroom will not automatically
be a good teacher online.
Online examinations have to cope
with network and power failures.
Performing arts
and science practicals go online only
in part.
And unless online learning is blended
with activity, it says,
it becomes a screen-based education.
So what does it propose?
Ten measures.
Among them are pilot studies
with published results,
lessons on television and radio
where digital access is limited,
virtual labs,
and training for teachers.
Institutions accredited
for it may run distance
and online programmes,
at the standard of their best programmes
on campus.
It calls such learning
a natural path to wider access,
and it prefers blended learning.
Since 2020, online courses
have entered ordinary degrees.
Under UGC rules, a student may take up
to 40 per cent of her credits from SWAYAM,
the government's online course platform.
A ministry note of July 2026 says
about 450 universities have adopted this.
In February 2025,
Parliament's standing committee
on education said that fewer
than 4 per cent of students enrolled
since 2017 had completed
their SWAYAM courses.
In July 2025 the UGC stopped online
and distance degrees in psychology
and other allied health subjects.
These now come under
a separate health commission.
On generative AI,
we found no binding national rule
for university assessment,
as of October 2026.
The rule
your students follow is your university's,
or your own.
In 2025 the Union government set up
an AI centre of excellence
for education at IIT Madras.
And the foreign universities
everyone keeps talking about?
That is chapter 12.
It wants more international students
in India, with an office
for them on every campus that hosts them.
It hopes courses in Indian languages,
yoga, music and history will draw them.
Strong Indian universities are encouraged
to open campuses abroad.
Selected foreign universities,
for example from the world's top 100,
are to be helped to operate in India.
The policy promises a law for this.
Credits earned
at a foreign university may count
towards a degree here,
as each institution decides.
Foreign campuses came through regulations:
for Gujarat's GIFT City in 2022,
and from the UGC in November 2023.
The UGC looks for a rank
in the world's top 500,
and each campus sets
its own fees and admissions.
As of October 2026,
at least four campuses are teaching:
two in GIFT City,
one in Gurugram and one in Mumbai.
One research firm counts
13 foreign universities admitting students
for 2026–27,
with about 2,730 places in all.
It puts the average
published undergraduate fee
at 13.3 lakh rupees a year.
India hosted
about 58,000 foreign students in 2023–24.
About 13 lakh Indians were studying abroad
in 2024, and IIT Madras has taught
in Zanzibar since 2023.
Thirteen lakh rupees a year.
That is not for my students.
So who are these campuses for?
M. Jagadesh Kumar,
then chairman of the UGC,
spoke in April 2023,
before any campus had opened.
The campuses, he said,
would give Indian students world-class
education within the country.
They would teach
the subjects most sought after for jobs,
such as technology and management.
Some, he said,
would keep fees lower
for Indian students and draw students
from neighbouring countries.
Aarti Srivastava, a professor
at the National Institute of Educational
Planning and Administration,
spoke in June 2026,
when the first campuses
were already teaching.
They go, she said,
to existing economic and academic centres,
while demand is increasingly concentrated
in states such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
Whether the campuses help depends,
in her view,
on whether they stay so concentrated.
Fine.
But our college internet drops
every afternoon.
What can I do from here?
Ask before you assign.
In the first week,
find out who has a device,
data and a quiet place to study.
Then give every online task
an offline twin:
a history teacher can print the reading
and keep the video optional.
And before you recommend
an online course for credit,
try a week of it on a phone.
Ask whether your university has a rule
on AI.
If it has none,
write three lines for your course:
what is allowed,
what must be declared,
and how you will check.
Explain them in class.
A nursing tutor can add one more:
no patient's details in any tool.
And bring the world in on paper.
A commerce class
in a state university can study one case
from another country each month.
Three lines on AI I can write tonight.
Whether my students will declare
what they used, I do not know.
Some will.
The full text
and our sources are linked below.
Next time, who regulates and who governs.