2.2 Operational Mechanisms and Inter-State Credit Compatibility
The structural framework of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 positions educational equity and mobility as paramount imperatives for national development. Applying this mandate to the realm of undergraduate mobility, the policy establishes that quality education must remain accessible to all learners regardless of geographical location, providing marginalized and regional student cohorts with tangible pathways for social and academic advancement ("India National Education Policy (NEP) 2020", 2020). Within this analytical paradigm, the Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) functions as an essential digital infrastructure designed to operationalize this vision. As a centralized virtual repository, the ABC system manages the registration, accumulation, verification, and redemption of academic credits across higher education institutions ("National Education Policy 2020 and the Academic Bank of Credits System in the Context of Educational Development in India", 2023). This architecture formally validates learning across traditional and digital modalities, granting undergraduate students the flexibility to design multidisciplinary pathways and preserve accumulated credits across institutional boundaries ("National Education Policy 2020 and the Academic Bank of Credits System in the Context of Educational Development in India", 2023). Consequently, the integration of ABC mechanisms addresses long-standing jurisdictional rigidities by converting disparate state-level curricula into verifiable, portable assets. However, achieving genuine cross-state fluidity demands that higher education institutions establish uniform credit evaluation protocols and robust technical synchronization. Without uniform institutional adoption, regional variations in credit recognition risk undermining the decentralised flexibility envisioned by the national policy.