Abstract

The National Education Policy 2020 in India is a significant change toward rote-oriented education to a multidisciplinary, skill-based, and experiential one. The policy shift has significant consequences on the development of entrepreneurship, especially for women and youth in rural areas, because they are economically vital to national development but tend to be inhibited by institutional disparities, poor access to quality education, institutional support, and unequal prospects. This is a systematic literature review that investigates whether and how NEP 2020 can be perceived as a catalyst framework of entrepreneurship development between these groups. The paper reviews literature on NEP 2020, entrepreneurship education, women entrepreneurship, rural youth entrepreneurship, vocationalisation, experiential learning, and inclusion in India using a structured review logic, which is based on identification, screening, eligibility, and thematic synthesis. The review concludes that NEP 2020 provides an excellent conceptual base towards entrepreneurship; it focuses on vocational exposure, flexibility, local relevance, creativity, critical thinking, experiential pedagogies, and inclusion. Nevertheless, the literature demonstrates that policy intent cannot be put forward as a guarantee of entrepreneurial performance. The ongoing obstacles like gender norms, financial marginalization, inadequate rural infrastructure, lack of institutional capacity, digital inequalities, and insufficient market connectivity are continuing to determine entrepreneurship patterns. The review finds that NEP 2020 has high catalytic potential, and its transformational effect will rely on the quality of implementation, the alignment of the ecosystem, and sensitive contextual institutional design.