From Governance Reform to Knowledge Transformation: Evaluating the Impact of the Modi Government

Since 2014, the Government of India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pursued a twin-track strategy of governance reform and digital expansion whose cumulative effect on the country's research ecosystem has been substantial yet unevenly examined. This paper evaluates how the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the restructuring of higher education regulation, and the establishment of the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) under the ANRF Act, 2023 have interacted with flagship digital initiatives — Digital India, SWAYAM, DIKSHA, the National Digital Library of India and e-ShodhSindhu — to reshape the conditions for multidisciplinary research in Indian higher education institutions. Employing a qualitative, document-based policy analysis supplemented by secondary institutional data, the study traces a shift from siloed, discipline-bound research administration toward an integrated knowledge ecosystem organised around cross-domain missions such as ANRF's Mission for Advancement in High-impact Areas (MAHA) and the Partnerships for Accelerated Innovation and Research (PAIR) programme. The paper argues that governance reform has provided the institutional scaffolding — credit-based flexibility, Multidisciplinary Education and Research Universities (MERUs) and a unified national research foundation — while digital public infrastructure has supplied the connective tissue that allows researchers across the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities to collaborate at scale. At the same time, the analysis identifies persistent structural constraints: uneven state-level readiness, a digital divide between well-resourced and resource-poor institutions, a continuing STEM-centric bias in funding allocation, and capacity gaps in humanities and social science research infrastructure. The paper concludes with policy recommendations for deepening multidisciplinary convergence, particularly the need to mainstream the social sciences and humanities within ANRF's mission architecture and to extend digital research infrastructure equitably to tier-two and tier-three institutions such as those in Rajasthan.

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