Answer: B

Explanation:

The endorsement of multidisciplinary spaces reflects the policy's curricular vision. NEP 2020 mandates that all undergraduate programs incorporate multidisciplinary breadth: science students engage with humanities, arts students study quantitative methods, everyone develops computational thinking. This curricular integration requires spatial integration. A student working on a project about climate change might need to access scientific equipment, geographical data visualization tools, historical documents, and policy analysis resources—all in the course of a single inquiry. Separate disciplinary laboratories, each isolated in its own building, create friction that discourages such integration. Integrated spaces that collocate diverse resources enable the intellectual boundary-crossing that multidisciplinary learning requires.

The emphasis on experiential learning similarly demands reconfigured space. Traditional classrooms optimized for lecture—rows of desks facing forward—cannot accommodate the hands-on investigation, collaborative projects, and community engagement that experiential pedagogy requires. NEP 2020 envisions students conducting experiments, building prototypes, engaging in artistic creation, and undertaking community service as core components of learning, not as extracurricular add-ons. This demands maker spaces, project areas, exhibition spaces, and community engagement facilities—not more lecture halls.

Option A's separate disciplinary laboratories represent precisely the siloed structure that NEP 2020 critiques. While specialized equipment has its place, the policy's vision is integration, not isolation. The goal is students who can draw on multiple disciplines to address complex problems, not students who master a single discipline in isolation from all others.

Option C's library-centric, textbook-based model is antithetical to NEP 2020's rejection of rote learning and passive knowledge transmission. The policy explicitly calls for reduced reliance on textbooks, increased emphasis on primary sources and real-world problems, and shift from content coverage to competency development. Libraries certainly have value, but as sites for inquiry and research, not as temples of textbook-based instruction.

Option D's standardization directly contradicts NEP 2020's emphasis on flexibility, local autonomy, and responsiveness to context. The policy recognizes India's vast diversity—linguistic, cultural, geographical, economic—and argues that education must be adapted to local conditions rather than imposed uniformly. Standardized physical infrastructure would replicate the one-size-fits-all approach that the policy seeks to dismantle. A school in rural Rajasthan has different needs and resources than an urban institution in Kerala; NEP 2020 gives both the autonomy to design learning environments appropriate to their contexts.

The infrastructure vision of NEP 2020 is not incidental to its pedagogy—it is integral. Multidisciplinary, experiential, student-centered learning cannot occur in spaces designed for disciplinary isolation, passive reception, and teacher-centered instruction. The policy recognizes that how we build shapes how we teach, and how we teach shapes how students learn.

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