Being an optimist teacher from a family of teachers for four generations, I am conveying greetings to the fraternity on the occasion for needo-teaching towards needo-education mandated in National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. We have to be honest without pretending to be good, great, successful, and happy teachers.

Teachers play crucial roles in society and are called national builders. On 5th September every year in India (Teachers Day) teachers are called Assets of the country, however, on any other day, they are treated as assets without ‘t’ i.e. asses. As teachers, it becomes our moral duty to introspect on this important observation, and should come out with remedial steps to face the challenges in the implementation of NEP 2020.

We have to read the Gita and Anu-Gita to become relevant for Swarnim Bharat in 2047. Teachers deserve honour and respect as children of Sarswati in the knowledge economy of today as good teachers if not great teachers like Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan whose birthday is celebrated as Teacher’s day in Bharat.

There was an era in which the adage,” Jack of all trades master of none” was popular. In the course of time, it was replaced by “Jack of all trades but master of one” justifying specialization. Now, the scenario is inclining towards “Jack of all trades and master of all” which makes a strong case for generalization of education instead of specialization.

This is perfectly in tune with the HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skills) with creativity, innovation, and critical thinking necessary to ensure needo-employment and needo-entrepreneurship under NEP 2020.

The biggest challenges include flexible curriculum development for needoeducation that leads to desirable human resources for the Indian economy.

To become reflective, we need face-to-face teaching for wisdom and online education just creates interest for that and cannot be a substitute for the classroom. We have to work out the strategies for overcoming the limitations of e-teaching and e-learning for implementation.

To compete with foreign universities, we need to accept the challenge with the spiritual training of teachers based on sermons from Gita and Anu-Gita for enlightened global citizenship in Hinglish if not English language.

The fraternity of teachers has to be ready for all the challenges by becoming street-smart teachers (simple, moral, action-oriented, responsive, and transparent) with effective leadership qualities.

We need to reduce the scarcity of teachers by encouraging shadow teachers out of senior students under the earn-while-you-learn scheme.

To ensure quality research, we have to encourage the scholars to make analysis before covid (BC), during covid (DC), and after covid (AC) for drawing the policy implications.

I wish to emphasize that for every ill in the Indian education system existing today, there are Vedic pills and Bhagavad Gita is the panacea as a sermon delivered in Kurukshetra.

To my mind, Kurukshetra as a place needs to be recognized as the first-ever University on the planet because the universal truth and philosophy of life was given by Lord Krishan as Avtar of Vishnu in person in the form of the Gita. Kurukshetra University can legitimately claim to be the very first University in the world and needs to be marketed in a big way at the international level.

It is believed that the river Saraswati has dried because the totality of knowledge was complete and given with no more to come but the spiritual river is now flowing so maybe the Sarasvati river flow again in order to quench the thirst for proper knowledge which is required urgently for the international community. It is believed that the period of consciousness has already started.

 To create a work culture in educational institutions in India, there is a need to convert holiday culture into holy-day culture. It is firmly believed by the writer that the rate of progress in spiritualism is faster than the rate of progress in materialism, therefore, there is a need to accept spiritually guided materialism (SGM) strategy to implement  Gita-based ‘needonomics’  as a solution of various problems in Bharat to be made Swarnim towards 2047.

To make it happen we should adopt an evolutionary approach and should not expect miracles. We must believe that Gita is a treatise on welfare economics and be accepted as a Sacro-secular epic for the entire humanity including the teachers – the most crucial manpower for needo-education.

* The writer is former Vice-Chancellor known as Propounder Needonomics School of Thought superannuated from Kurukshetra University.