The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away (Judicial Policymaking)

This chapter describes the personality and politics of Murli Manohar Joshi who was the Minister of Human Resource Development (MHRD) during the NDA Government (1998–2004), first truly non-Congress Party Government at the Centre with an idea of India which was starkly at variance with that of Nehru. It also describes the achievements of Joshi such as enacting the Constitutional Amendment to make Right to Elementary Education as Fundamental Right, and launch of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) as well as the controversies which enveloped the NCERT School History textbooks, the National Curricular Framework (NCF), 2000. It briefly outlines the competing schools of pedagogy, critiques NCF, 2000, and its proposal to incorporate education about religions in school curriculum. It also describes the growth of private universities as a result of the liberalization of regulations for deemed universities as well as permissive State Laws, the issue of UGC regulations on private university, and the landmark Supreme Court judgment in Yash Pal case which spawned a powerful New UGC that was a species different from that created by the UGC Act, 1956.