Unscholarly: Editorial on India’s Alarming Decline in Academic Freedom
The Editorial Board | 08 August 2026 | The Telegraph
International ranking by the Varieties of Democracies’ latest Academic Freedom Index project places India’s academic freedom among the lowest 10-20% of 179 countries and territories the world over. Academic freedom today is even lower than in the years of the Emergency, and the lowest since 1900. The parameters used to assess academic freedom used by the V-Dem index were freedom to research and teach, institutional autonomy, academic exchange and dissemination, campus integrity, and academic and cultural expression. Although India’s academic freedom was never perfect, the parameters used by the index show the sharpest decline between 2013 and 2025 — during the rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party-headed government at the Centre. India scored 0.14 overall in 2025, 0.269 points lower than in 2015.
The thrust to centralise education is part of the government’s strategy to realise the aim of the National Education Policy, 2020 — of one coherent ecosystem of education. Higher educational institutions emerging out of separate academic needs and historical traditions are being brought under uniform regulation and governance principles. The Vikshit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill promises to make the process official. Changes are being made in institutions such as the Indian Statistical Institute and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, among others, to subvert their self-governance systems. Institutional autonomy is thus being eroded. Centralised tests for admission into HEIs continue in spite of corruption and signal failure. Recent regulations for the selection of vice-chancellor direct that the appointee need not be a scholar with a decade’s experience as professor; a person with 10 years’ experience in industry, public administration or policy may be considered. This dominance of non-academic persons and principles is increasing with selection committees and governing boards being filled with representatives of the Centre, diminishing the role of not only teachers but of the states too. It matches the thrust towards anti-intellectualism: scientific thinking is downgraded while changes are made in text-books to suit the dominant party’s ideas of history and culture, something called Indian Knowledge Systems is inserted in syllabi, and the greatness of ancient mythology is emphasised.