On Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in a tweet that the Union cabinet had approved a scheme that would be a “game-changer for Indian academia and for youth empowerment”.

The “one nation, one subscription” project will allow higher education institutions managed by the Central and state government as well as Central government research and development institutions to access high-quality academic journals on a single portal, rather than buy their own subscriptions.

The scheme will benefit “nearly 1.8 crore students, faculty, researchers and scientists of all disciplines”, an accompanying press release noted.

Though the government has claimed that the “one nation, on subscription” scheme is “a timely step towards establishing India in the global research ecosystem”, faculty members from institutions across the country told Scroll that they were concerned that it could actually constrain their work. They told Scroll that the government had not explained how the scheme will function. Some fear it could even limit their academic freedom.

“Different institutions will have different needs. What if they say, we can only access certain journals from certain countries?” said C Lakshmanan, who had retired as an associate professor from the Madras Institute of Development Studies. “What if they limit the number of journals we can access from a country and say, maybe, that we can only access five from the USA or some other country?”

Academics noted that the government had not yet explained how journals would be chosen, and how it would ensure that the specific needs of different institutions were met.

“There are no guidelines that the government has regarding the selection of journals, no clarity on whether any inputs were taken before this scheme was introduced,” said E Venkatesu, a professor in the University of Hyderabad’s department of political science. “The circular we have received is very brief. So we don’t know what norms are in place, and what we do if a paper we want to share with students is not available in the journals subscribed to by the government.”

Teachers are worried that they “will not have a say in what journals the institution has access to”, said N Sukumar, a professor in Delhi University’s department of political science. He added that it was for the moment unclear if the government “will put together a committee that will make recommendations”.

Lakshmanan explained that currently, faculty with years of experience decide what journals and publications are necessary for their institutions. “How will a person sitting in Delhi know what my institution needs?” he said. “They may have never even heard of some of the journals we access. This infringes on our academic and intellectual freedom.”

The scheme

The one nation one subscription scheme was first announced by the Central government in 2022. Though it was set to be implemented in April 2023, it was delayed to this year.

On November 5, the ministry of education issued a government order to all “CFTIs/HEIs”, that is, centrally funded technical institutions and higher education institutions, directing them not to renew their subscriptions to academic journals until they had received further instructions from the ministry.

A press release explained that the government had approved the scheme and that it had allocated Rs 6,000 crore for operations in the first three years.

It noted that the scheme will be coordinated by an “autonomous inter-university centre” known as the Information and Library Network, or INFLIBNET, and will be “administered through a simple, user-friendly and fully digital process”.

The initiative will cover more than 6,300 institutions, the release stated. Further, it noted, the central portal will provide access to 30 major international journal publishers and “all of the nearly 13,000 e-journals” that they published.

No need for intervention

But some academics told Scroll that they had never felt the need for this kind of intervention from the Centre, and that most institutions already had systems in place for accessing the papers and journals that they needed.

“There was simply no need for this one nation, one subscription scheme,” Lakshmanan said. “Even if we don’t have institutional access to a certain journal or paper, we have large institutional networks through which we can reach out to other institutions to seek access.”

Lakshmanan gave the example of the New Delhi-based Developing Library Network, of which more than 9,000 institutions are a part. “In case there is a paper we don’t have access to, we reach out to somebody through the network and access the paper,” he said. “Also there are global sites like JSTOR through which we can access a large number of journals. There was simply no need for the government to interfere with our process.”

Lakshmanan also explained that institutions had internal processes to determine what publications they needed to access. He recounted that he had spent many years as a library committee member at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, and that the committee took stock of the institution’s resources every two years and ensured that they were kept updated. Further, he said, faculty members in institutions were given grants to invest in resources.

The government allocated funds for these subscriptions and grants, Lakshmanan said – in his view, this method of providing support to institutions was sufficient. “Central and state-run institutions get funds allocated to it anyway,” he said. “The deans of the library department decide how to utilise these funds. This is a well-established system and ‘one nation one subscription’ is an unfair interference in our academic freedom.”

Lazarus Samraj, a retired professor from Pondicherry University concurred that decisions about what journals to access should be left to institutions. “This is an attempt to deny rightful freedom of choice to the institutions,” he said.

Fears of censorship

Sukumar said that he was apprehensive that the government might seek to filter out publishers and papers that provide perspectives that it may not agree with.

Specifically, he said, he feared that “secular, critical, anti-caste, anti-racist, left perspectives, multiple other ideas and perspectives will be under threat. The academic quality of our journals could be compromised and we could be forced to read biased work.”

He added, “It is a worry that they are suggesting what we read. Soon they will tell us what to write and what to teach.”

Lakshmanan, too, expressed concern that the government might seek to control access to publications with critical perspectives, particularly in the social sciences. “My apprehension and assumption is that with social sciences, publications from Western and other countries that have liberal, feminist, progressive ideas will not be welcome by the government,” he said. “Any political power interfering with education will prevent progress in the country.”