You Can’t Build a Strong India on a Weak Math Curriculum. UGC’s New Mathematics Curriculum Needs to Be Scrapped
Mahan Mj | 02 October 2025 | The Indian Express
M Jagadesh Kumar’s article, “UGC’s draft curriculum pairs contemporary Mathematics with civilisational literacy” (IE, September 26), defending the UGC’s Learning Outcomes-based Curriculum Framework (LOCF) for Mathematics, has factual inaccuracies and misleading statements. It fails to take cognisance of the principal thrust of the arguments that a petition signed by more than 900 academics, mostly mathematics teachers and researchers, has put forward.
The UGC LOCF claims to put forward a model curriculum that is flexible and integrates the rich Indian tradition into the subject. We start by identifying the questions any such potential model curriculum needs to address. What are the core mathematics courses for an undergraduate mathematics programme? What would be an appropriate set of electives, and what disciplines are they supposed to synergise with? How does one integrate this with historical sources, in particular, mathematics developed in India?