As the introductory to the Special Issue reviewing the Draft National Education Policy (NEP), 2016, the article seeks to provide a theoretical framework of critical political economy in examining the context, compulsions, quality implications, and social consequences of the policy document. It mentions certain social theories that compliment the framework of critical political economy by explaining subtleties in the inter-relationship between the economy and educational policy. As background factors essential for a critique of the policy document the special demographic situation, features of national socio-economics, the problem of low GER, dominance of Techno-capitalist Knowledge Economy on the educational policy, and the possible consequences have been summarised. A very brief statement of the purport of articles that make the Special Issue is given at the end.
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