March 3, 2011 in Articles by admin
Education and the Diasporic community
Times have changed. And, India too is changing at a meteoric pace in every area of the nation’s endeavor. So, India’s economy is also booming. With bagsful of dollars and eyes glued on fast emerging vast opportunities to spin quick buck, foreigners are jetting to India’s least developed, underdeveloped or developing cities and small towns in West Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand, and even to far flung areas in progressive states such as Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Maharashtra to set up variety of new ventures, including industrial plants and manufacturing units.
While there are investment opportunities galore in trade and industry— manufacturing, oil exploration, mining, automobiles, retail consumer goods outlets and education, particularly higher education, are not far behind.
The Government of India has discovered, according to the dynamic Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Mr. Kapil Sibal, that the best and probably the most crucial measure in this direction would be to immediately “invest in institutions of higher education which cater to excellence.” He firmly believes and is profusely convinced that “quality learning which caters to excellence to our young…in higher education will transform India into a knowledge power.”
An elaborate programme and extended network of vocational and industrial institutes to train over 10 million young people is in pipeline
Though India boasts of having the third largest enrolments in higher education globally speaking, after China and the USA, there’re still a vast areas to be covered in this regard. For, the number of students entering colleges and universities after they graduate from schools is simply abysmal—mere around 12 per cent against about 24 per cent world average. In fact, this figure in developed countries of the west is around 67 per cent.
India has undoubtedly taken very rapid strides in setting up of new educational and research institutions for higher learning and research since independence in 1947. For example, the number of colleges and universities has multiplied several fold: universities in 1947— from 20 to around 500, colleges from 500 to over 20,000, and number of students from about 0.1 million to about 13 million, according to the latest available figures from India’s national university funding body, University Grants Commission.
India’s spirited education minister has very recently and cogently spelled out country’s emergent future educational development needs: “We need to have education system which encourages creativity and tests the raw intelligence… need to move away from rote system of learning to methodologies which expand horizons of knowledge… the content of education must be transformed.” Clearly, to construct and ingeniously install such a system in India in the immediate future “needs massive investments in higher education.” The task is indeed daunting, and brooks no further delay.
While the Government of India has not listed any details of urgent areas for future educational expansion, but gauging the nation’s needs of educational development, research, training and local people’s aspirations – roughly on American or British patterns—NRIs, with the help and advice from HRD ministry and state governments, can decide as to which academic disciplines are most sought after and the towns and cities these can be located in gainfully. For example, MP, Bihar, Rajasthan and Orissa could perhaps be the most appropriate sites for setting up medicine and its innumerable allied branches; business management and its unlimited emerging fields, umpteen areas of new sciences and technology studies, engineering and its vast and rapidly developing branches, telecommunication, and space sciences institutions. The possibilities are un-imaginable and even the sky is not the limit.
Therefore, to begin with, the most urgent imperative for all streams of India’s higher education is the “transformation of their curricula and methodologies.” It is in this context that the Pravasis can lend their helping hand. The Government of India has announced setting up of 30 new Central universities, five new Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, eight new IITs, 11 new IIMs and 20 new Indian Institutes of Information Technology. In addition, an elaborate programme and extended network of vocational and industrial institutes to train over 10 million young people in various trades and skilled vocations have also been planned.
Looking at India’s current needs in skill development and training needs, it’s obvious that what is immediately required is way and means of producing young men and women who can be instantly provided gainful employment. Vocational training is the need of the hour for most of the boys and girls who can’t and won’t want to go in for higher education. Right now, approximately 50 per cent students who pass out from higher secondary schools drop out and want to go in for jobs. However, if provided brief training and orientation in the newly emerging simple occupations in hospital and, hotel management, business and media management, accounting, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, engineering, aviation, naval, computer and telecommunication including electronics, the areas of such training and skill development are enormous.
What is instantly needed is unbridled will to come forward and grab the opportunity. As Mr. Sibal has averred is “globally collaborative enterprise” both public and private. Most aptly, he opines: “The futures of the nation depends on how successful we are in making India the global hub of knowledge creation. India has natural advantage – a massive human resource… The future is ours to grasp. If we are unable to do so, it will be a historic blunder.” And undoubtedly, the Pravasis can hugely assist in this nation venture of progress and prosperity of our poor people. They can come forward in large numbers to invest in conceiving and establishing innovative projects which can help explore new knowledge and open up vast scope for creating employment and buoying the country’s booming economy. If India loses this chance to develop and embark upon a great task of the nation’s economic advancement, the posterity will not excuse the present generation.
