OPERATIONALIZING NEP 2020'S DIGITAL AGENDA WITHIN INDIAN UNIVERSITIES: A DUAL-LENS ANALYSIS OF ICT READINESS AND STUDENT DIGITAL LEARNING EXPERIENCES

The research paper is a systematic exploration of how the Indian higher education sector has been implementing the digital agenda of the 2020 National Education Policy (NEP-2020). It achieves this through the examination of the readiness of the institutions to information and communications technology (ICT) and the digital learning experiences of the student teachers and research scholars in the government, private and the university-deemed contexts. Using a thoroughly tested Likert -scale questionnaire, which involves dimensions of infrastructure, pedagogical engagement dimension, barriers dimension and policy awareness dimension, the data show a significantly low degree of implementation. The results are defined by acute lack of infrastructural support, lack of exposure to digital tools by students, and a large disparity between knowledge of policy provisions and practice achieved despite moderate awareness of what the policy is all about. As the analysis confirms, there are foundational failures, which hinder the operationalisation of NEP2020 platforms like SWAYAM and DIKSHA. Consistent sabotage of infrastructure will limit pedagogical innovation and widen the institutional inequalities. The findings indicate some universal constraints such as untrustworthy internet connectivity, insufficient faculty training, and lack of device access, which compromise the policy implementation in different settings of higher education. Connection audits and the construction of supporting infrastructure should be given priority by the institution in the short run before investing in the training programmes. It is suggested that policymakers should come up with structures of implementation that go beyond the development of platforms. The study provides an empirical prerequisite that records the displacement between NEP 2020 idealism and the fact on the ground thus offering evidences that are critical towards repositioning digital education policy into a practical realm to quantify.