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@article{205854,
        author = {Ayusmita Sarkar},
        title = {NISHTHA Beyond Professional Development: Governing Pedagogy at Scale in India},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {13},
        number = {1},
        pages = {9249-9261},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=205854},
        abstract = {What does it mean for a state to systematically influence what transpires inside millions of classrooms it cannot directly observe? In India, this question has acquired renewed urgency alongside the expansion of large-scale continuous professional development (CPD) initiatives, most prominently the National Initiative for School Heads and Teachers' Holistic Advancement (NISHTHA). While NISHTHA is widely described as among the largest teacher training efforts globally, reaching over nine million educators across successive phases, this paper contends that such a characterization is analytically incomplete. NISHTHA is not merely a training programme; it constitutes a broader, systemic attempt to govern pedagogy across a structurally complex and politically decentralized education system. Drawing on policy enactment theory, systems thinking, digital governance scholarship, and Foucauldian governmentality, this paper proposes the Pedagogic Governance Framework (PGF) as an integrative conceptual tool for understanding how professional development can function as a governance mechanism at scale. The PGF identifies three interconnected processes-knowledge standardization, administrative mediation, and digital monitoring-that interact through DIKSHA, India's national digital infrastructure for education, to shape teaching practice. Situating NISHTHA within comparative international evidence, the paper demonstrates that while the programme has achieved unprecedented reach, its transformative depth is mediated by structural tensions between scale and substance, uniformity and context-sensitivity, and monitoring and professional meaning. By reconceptualizing professional development as a form of pedagogic governance rather than a neutral capacity-building intervention, the paper contributes theoretical and empirical insights to ongoing debates on educational reform, digital governance, and teacher professionalism in large, diverse democracies.},
        keywords = {NISHTHA; teacher professional development; pedagogic governance; DIKSHA; policy enactment; digital education governance; India; National Education Policy 2020},
        month = {June},
        }