The Union government is set to introduce the Higher Education Commission of India (Repeal of University Grants Commission Act) Bill in the Winter Session of Parliament. If passed, the 68-year-old University Grants Commission will cease to exist, replaced by a new, unitary regulator—the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI). On paper, the move promises “less government, more governance,” fewer overlapping regulators, and sharper focus on academic outcomes. In practice, it continues a familiar pattern: the systematic dismantling of institutions that bear the unmistakable imprint of Jawaharlal Nehru’s idea of a modern, secular, and self-reliant India.
A Brief History of the UGC: More Than a Funding Tap
Established by an Act of Parliament in November 1956, the UGC was never just a disbursing agency. Modelled partly on the University Grants Committee of the United Kingdom but consciously adapted to Indian realities, it was entrusted with a sweeping mandate: determination and maintenance of standards, coordination among universities, and equitable distribution of grants. In the first two decades of Independence, when state governments were cash-strapped and private philanthropy limited, the UGC became the principal instrument through which the Centre nurtured higher education.
Between 1956 and 1975, the UGC funded the establishment of new universities (from 29 in 1950 to 131 in 1976), set up dozens of postgraduate departments, introduced the three-year degree course uniformly, launched the Centres of Advanced Study, and initiated faculty improvement programmes. It was the UGC that insisted on minimum library holdings, laboratory facilities, and teacher-student ratios—standards that, however imperfectly enforced, created a national baseline. It also protected university autonomy by acting as a buffer between the political executive and the academe, a role Nehru repeatedly emphasised.
Even its critics acknowledge that the UGC’s golden period coincided with the era of state-led development. By the 1980s and 1990s, bureaucratic bloat, political interference, and the proliferation of sub-standard private colleges had tarnished its image. Yet, successive governments from 1991 to 2014 attempted reform within the UGC framework—pay revision committees, academic staff colleges, and the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) were all UGC initiatives. The institution was flawed, but it was not irredeemable.
HECI: Centralisation Masquerading as Deregulation
The proposed HECI is presented as a clean-up operation. The UGC, AICTE, and NCTE will be dissolved; a single regulator will set standards, mentor institutions, enforce accreditation, and punish defaulters. Funding, we are told, will be routed directly through the Ministry of Education, freeing HECI to focus on “academic aspects.” The language is seductive—until one notices what is missing.
First, the buffer is gone. The UGC, whatever its shortcomings, was a statutory body whose members were appointed for fixed terms and drawn largely from the academic community. HECI will be chaired by a government appointee, with a vice-chairperson, and members serving at the pleasure of the Centre. Its advisory council will have ex-officio secretaries from half-a-dozen ministries. The message is clear: academic policy will now be made in North Block, not in Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg.
Second, the separation of funding from regulation is a sleight of hand. Every university vice-chancellor knows that money is power. When the Ministry directly controls grants, the scope for arm-twisting expands exponentially. Institutions that question government ideology or host inconvenient seminars will discover that “outcome-based funding” can be a remarkably precise instrument of discipline.
Third, the promise of “light but tight” regulation rings hollow against the draft bill’s penal provisions. HECI will have the power to impose fines up to ₹5 crore, recommend imprisonment up to three years, and order closure of institutions. These are magistrate-level powers vested in an unelected body whose members owe their positions to the ruling dispensation. The risk of misuse against dissenting institutions—particularly in states ruled by opposition parties—is obvious.
The NITI Aayog Parallel: Institutional Amnesia as Policy
The replacement of the Planning Commission by NITI Aayog in 2015 offers a chilling precedent. The Planning Commission, another Nehruvian creation, was criticised for its rigid five-year plans and centralised allocation. Yet it provided a formal platform where chief ministers could negotiate resource transfers and challenge the Centre’s priorities. NITI Aayog, by contrast, is an advisory body with no financial powers and no statutory mandate to allocate funds. State governments now discover their plan outlays in the Union Budget speech, not across a table in Yojana Bhavan.
HECI threatens to replicate the same hollowing-out. Like the Planning Commission, the UGC symbolised a compact between the Centre and the states on higher education. Dissolving it without creating an equally robust federal alternative is not deregulation; it is recentralisation.
The Larger Pattern of Erasure
Since 2014, almost every institution associated indelibly with Jawaharlal Nehru has been either abolished or radically restructured. The Planning Commission became NITI Aayog. The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library at Teen Murti was converted into the Prime Ministers’ Museum. Nehru’s name was dropped from the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s golden jubilee celebrations in 2019. Even the Nehru Science Centre in Mumbai faces periodic demands for renaming.
The abolition of the UGC fits this pattern. It is not about administrative efficiency alone; it is about removing the last institutional reminders of a vision that placed knowledge, secularism, and university autonomy at the heart of nation-building. The NEP 2020 document mentions “Nehru” exactly once—in a footnote quoting his 1947 speech on universities as temples of learning. The irony is biting.
A Better Path Exists
Reform of higher education regulation is overdue. Multiple, overlapping regulators have produced chaos; accreditation remains weak; private players routinely flout norms. But the answer is not to swing from over-regulation to authoritarian centralisation.
A genuinely federal solution—perhaps a National Higher Education Council with equal representation from the Centre, states, and academia, backed by an independent grant-making body—would have honoured the spirit of cooperative federalism that Nehru himself championed.
Instead, we are witnessing the quiet burial of yet another institution that helped build modern India. When future historians trace the decline of Indian universities into mediocrity and ideological conformity, they will mark 2025 as a pivotal year. The UGC may have been imperfect, but it was ours. HECI risks becoming theirs alone.
Hasnain Naqvi is a former member of the history faculty at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai
~Hasnain Naqvi is a former member of the history faculty at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai
