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SDG 4-Education 2030 – One and a Half Years On – Reflecting on the Challenges of Implementing Agenda 2030 in India

Wed, March 8, 9:45 to 11:15am, Sheraton Atlanta, Grand Ballroom B (South Tower)

Proposal

It can be argued that the success of the SDGs will very much depend on the success of the SDGs in India. So one year on, what progress has been made in India to implement the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in general and SDG 4 in particular? The sheer size of India makes the issue even more pressing, noting that in the frame of the « Make in India » campaign, for instance, India plans to train or retrain over 400 million people over the coming six years.

The Government of India has entrusted a government think tank, NITI Aayog, (National Institution for Transforming India) with coordinating the Agenda 2030 in India, with the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation designated the role of defining indicators and locating them in the national context. There is also action at the state level, with states asked to put forward their plans for implementing the SDGs to NITI Aayog. In parallel to the design for SDGs implementation in India, NITI Aayog is also leading the formation of a 15-year development plan for India. The timeline of the 15-year plan is aligned with the SDGs timeline but it is yet to be seen how much the two processes will be integrated.

NITI Aayog has set the ball rolling and achieved some modest momentum, but as NITI Aayog is an institute at its nascent stage of formation, the processes of how NITI will coordinate with the states and how activities will be conducted jointly is currently ambiguous.

Of equal concern is the attitude of many ministries who see the SDGs as purely aspirational in nature and as very much a global North-driven agenda– and therefore not something that they need to be concerned about. This eventually underlines the question posed about the SDGs being a ‘Northern Tsunami and a Southern Ripple’ (see NORRAG working paper 4, 2013).

Although NITI Aayog is charged with transforming India and Agenda 2030 with transforming our world, there are problems to be analysed in how these two agendas are aligned. In particular, their explicit commitment to combat inequality will be analysed. But specific attention will be paid to how the SDG 4 pledge on free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education is perceived within the NITI Aayog ambitions.

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