India's National Education Policy 2020 promises transformative reform toward inclusive, equitable education aligned with Sustainable Development Goal 4. This article critically examines the policy's framework through six intersecting dimensions: caste-based exclusion, gender and transgender recognition, the 6% GDP financing commitment, multilingualism, the digital divide, and privatization. Drawing on recognition theory and critical pedagogy, the analysis reveals that while NEP 2020 expansively identifies marginalized groups and proposes access-oriented interventions, it remains tethered to a participation framework that leaves deeper structures of exclusion untouched. Critical omissions between the draft and final policy—particularly the dilution of provisions against commercialized private institutions and the reduction of expenditure commitments—reveal political compromises that constrain transformative potential. The policy successfully diagnoses symptoms of exclusion but fails to engage with how educational institutions themselves produce and reproduce marginalization through curricula, pedagogies, and institutional cultures. Sustainable development requires not merely integrating marginalized students into existing structures but fundamentally transforming those structures. This article argues that without confronting these deeper dimensions, NEP 2020's alignment with sustainable development remains partial, and its implementation risks reproducing the inequalities it seeks to overcome.
Kanke et al. (Wed,) studied this question.