As Slow as Molasses in January

As I write this towards the end of February 2026, it's been a little over five and a half years since NEP 2020 was rolled out. The NEP states that education needs to move away from rote learning towards "competency-based" education.

A great thought.

Also, completely f***ing useless without execution infrastructure.

Half-baked doesn't begin to cover it. I don't think the Boards were asked if they were ready to overhaul their assessment systems. And if they were asked, they were either too shy to say "we can't do this" or too incompetent to execute. Both are system failures. Both are letting students down. Yes, there have been some changes, given.

CBSE has moved to 50% competency based questions in board papers. Two exams a year for Class 10. Incremental shifts that took five and a half years to arrive. It is not the destination that baffles me. It is the pace.

An entire generation of students passed through the system while the committee was still meeting.

In the summer of 2007 or 2008, it had just been declared a drought year, I was in conversation with a colleague. He came from a rustic background and said something that stuck with me: "Yahan pe to sirf nalke se paani kam aayega."

When I asked him to explain: In rural India, the monsoon decides the crop. The crop decides if their child will get married that year. If the rains fail three years in a row, no marriages happen. No marriages mean no children. An entire generation gets skipped.

That's what happens with delays in implementing national education goals.

We're skipping a generation.

Contrast education policy timelines with AI development. In AI terms, a month is a light year. There's a new Nano Banana version, a Claude Code version, a ChatGPT variant fighting for dominance. Every month, the tools our students will compete with get sharper, faster, cheaper.

Our kids are competing with that.

We're moving at government committee speed. They're moving at silicon speed.

Five and a half years into NEP 2020, here's what's changed on the ground. Teachers still teach to the test. Assessments still measure memorization. Worksheets are still generic busywork. "Competency-based learning" is a PowerPoint deck, not a classroom reality.

Meanwhile, AI is eating knowledge work. The jobs our students are being prepared for no longer exist. The skills NEP 2020 correctly identifies, critical thinking, creativity, application, analysis, are exactly what we're still not teaching.

Because we gave teachers a vision with no infrastructure.

The monsoon has failed. The crop is dying. And no one's building irrigation.

Next up: The Miracle Demand, what NEP 2020 actually asks teachers to do (and why it's impossible without systems support).