Kashmir & the Case for IGNOU

A story of files that stalled, meetings that went nowhere, and one question that refused to fade until Kashmir was heard.

- Prof M. Aslam

In that watershed year of 1989, I was posted in Kashmir with a key education responsibility on my shoulders.

Back then, Indira Gandhi National Open University was still a new idea in the country. But the concept of an open university felt right straight away.

Education that came to people, instead of asking them to leave home, seemed designed with places like Kashmir in mind.

But even at that early stage, I sensed that the idea was not reaching the valley in the way it was meant to.

IGNOU had been created in November 1986 with a clear social intent. It spoke about reaching people who had stayed outside formal higher education because of distance, money, or circumstance.

It began with diplomas in management and distance education and gradually expanded into certificates, degrees, and doctoral programmes.

Teachers from regular universities stepped in as counsellors, enrolment grew quickly, and the system appeared solid in design.

But living inside Kashmir's education landscape, I could see the cracks. Throughout the 1990s, IGNOU worked in the valley through study centres run from outside.

By 1999, nine centres were handling students from Jammu and Kashmir along with Punjab and Haryana. Official records called this an efficient setup, but students lived a different reality, with counselling held far away, slow administrative responses, and a growing sense of being enrolled without real support.

I saw students arrive with hope and leave with unanswered forms and doubts, and those encounters stayed with me.