I don't know about India, but having spent many years on university, first as a student, later as a research director and representative at all levels from the department to the university board, and the later as I watched my own children move through the process, I have seen dramatic changes in higher ed turning university ever more into highschool.

In the 'old' days it was basically up yo you. Assignments during the academic year were few and far between. Each course resulted in an exam at the end of the year. How you passed that was up to you.

This meant you were modtly free gor 90% of your time to attend classes or not. You could use the university as a knowledge buffet attending interesting lectures outside of your own field of study, get straight into the specialization topics that were the real reason you were attracted to field in the first place (AI in my case which was a very niche subject in those days) instead of just slogging through the generalist foundation courses (80% math in those days, physics, economics and some CS).

These days students are bombarded with assignmments all year, with exams pepered throughout. This inflicts nearly full class attendance requirement and constant deadline pressures. Yes, it makes it so credit can be acquired piecemeal instead of pass/failing in one massive shot, but it reduces autonomy to near 0.