Knowledge in Vedas, Puranas to earn students credits under new NCrF report

IKS is now included in the list of "special achievers" in the final report, even though it wasn't in the draft version that was made public in October.

Students will now be able to receive credit for their knowledge of various aspects of the Indian Knowledge System (IKS), such as Vedas and Puranas, according to the final report on the National Credit Framework (NCrf), which was released by the University Grants Commission (UGC) on April 11.

The guidelines under the framework will now be implemented in all higher education institutions across the country.

As per the final report, the Indian Knowledge System (IKS) can now be "creditised" under the NCrF on par with other fields of endeavour, including performing arts (dance, Indian classical music), games and sports (Olympics, federation games, Asian Games, etc.), master craftsmen of heritage and traditional skills, social work with high impact or in priority areas, and more.

The NCrF, launched under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, advocates that there should be "no hard separations" between vocational and academic streams.

It also clarifies that learning objectives, criteria for exceptional accomplishments, and methods of evaluation to measure/establish the attainment of the desired results must be predefined in each case at the appropriate national credit framework levels.

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The draft NCrf document was released for public comment in October 2022, and the higher education regulator, UGC, notified it on Tuesday after it had received all final comments. The components of IKS for obtaining credits under it have been included to the draft's final version.

"The IKS tradition mentions 18 major vidyas, or theoretical disciplines; and 64 kalas, applied sciences or vocational disciplines, crafts. The 18 vidyas include — the four vedas, the four subsidiary vedas (Ayurveda – medicine, Dhanurveda – weaponry, Gandharvaveda – music, shilpa – architecture), Purana, Nyaya, Mimamsa, Dharmsastra and Vedanga, the six auxiliary sciences, phonetics, grammar, metre, astronomy, ritual and philology — these formed the basis of the 18 sciences in ancient India," the report said.

IKS is now included in the list of "special achievers" in the final report, even though it wasn't in the draft version that was made public in October.

This is one of the many steps the government has made to promote and incorporate IKS within the educational system. To encourage interdisciplinary study on elements of indigenous knowledge, the government has already been running an IKS division under the AICTE since 2020. The division has established centres for conducting research and creating courses for students in several IKS subjects.