The 21st century witnessed the global economy
changing fast where Knowledge substitutes mere physical capital as the
fundamental source of wealth. Technology is the major driving force with
Information Technology (IT), Bio-Technology (BT) adding to this
tremendous force to bring forth outstanding changes in our thinking and
our ways of living and working.
As knowledge takes the Driver’s seat Higher
Education naturally gets priority. All nations of the world have to take
their young men and women to superior Education of a higher standard. A
University degree becomes today perhaps the Basic Qualification for
skilled work. Therefore, the quality of instruction and contents of
knowledge taught in our higher institutions of Education become very
important. The Governments have to see that this is available to wider
reaches of the economy, as this step is really crucial to national
competitiveness, which is the hallmark of progress today.
The World Bank’s significant Task Force on Higher
Education and Society (2000) entitled Higher Education in Developing
Countries - Peril and Promise rightly underlines this aspect. This
poses a serious challenge to the developing world. Since the 1980s, many
national governments and international donors have assigned higher
education a relatively low priority. Narrow- and, in our view,
misleading - economic analysis has contributed to the view that public
investment in universities and colleges brings meagre returns compared
to investment in primary and secondary schools, and that higher
education magnifies income inequality.
Funding Resources, Governance and Curriculum
Development pose a real challenge to the Developing nations.
In the fast emerging knowledge economy, highly
motivated specialists, with special training along with broadly educated
generalists will be on demand and both these sets of people should
continue to learn, as everyday, their working scenario and environment
widens.
I would like to quote here Malcolm Gills, the noted
President of Rice University USA,
"Today, more than ever before in human
history, the wealth - or poverty - of nations depends on the quality of higher
education. Those with a larger repertoire of skills and a greater
capacity for learning can look forward to life times of unprecedented
economic fulfilment. But in the coming decades the poorly educated face
little better than the dreary prospects of lives of quiet
desperation".
The emphatic fact we have to realise here and now is
that today our wealth is seen less and less in the old sources of
factories, land, tools and machinery. The new sources are knowledge,
skills and response born out of resourcefulness of people, which go to
constitute their dynamism.
It has been clearly established that the Human
Capital in USA is three times more important than mere physical
capital. A mere 100 years ago this was not the case.
The fast developing world has therefore given
rightful political priority to develop Human capital through Education.
Naturally Education has been recognised as a major force of development.
This means bringing into existence really high quality educational
institutions. Quite a few developed countries have witnessed a
significant rise in the number of students seeking higher education.
Life long learning techniques feed continuing education channels.
The developing countries also should face the
challenge equally if they want to climb into a developed status. These
developing nations are also alive to the problem. For example I can cite
here President Benjamin W. Mkapa of Tanzania who is concerned that
higher education in Africa is becoming increasingly obsolete. He says
"higher education must produce men and women willing to fight an
intellectual battle for self-confidence and self-assertion as equal
players in the emerging globalized world". Tame graduates with
paper degrees can never ring in development.
The World Bank Task Force report clinches the
argument for the need to upgrade Higher Education levels when it records
"After all education is associated with better skills, higher
productivity, and enhanced human capacity to improve the quality of
life. Education at all levels is needed if economies are to climb from
subsistence farming, through an economy based on manufacturing, to
participation in the global knowledge economy".
I would like to quote here the 1998/99 World
Development Report entitled "Knowledge for Development". It
significantly records that "Knowledge is like light, weightless and
intangible, it can easily travel through the world, enlightening the
lives of people everywhere. Yet billions of people still live in the
darkness of poverty- unnecessarily".
Perhaps these unfortunate people live in darkness, as
they could not switch on the light of Knowledge which is nothing but
Education. We have the switch but we don’t know how to operate this.
Perhaps James D. Wolfonsohn, President of the World Bank referred to
this State of Affairs as "Poverty in the midst of Plenty".
If you analyse in depth the needs of a developing
knowledge society Higher Education inputs have never been so vitally
more important as it is today.
Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, Shri Atal Bihari
Vajpayee, has recently unveiled a five point agenda for India’s
Development as Knowledge Society. The Prime Minister stated "a
knowledge based society will enable us to leap-frog in finding new and
innovative ways to meet the challenges of building a just and equitable
social order and seek urgent solutions" in his inaugural address to
delegates attending the ASSOCHAM summit recently held on "India in
the knowledge millennium".
The five point agenda points to the following:
l
Education for developing a learning
society.
l
Global networking.
l
Vibrant Government-Industry-Academia
interaction in policy making and implementation.
l
Leveraging of existing competencies in IT,
Telecom, Bio-technology, Drug Design, Financial Services, and
Enterprisewide Management.
l
Economic and business strategic alliances
built on capabilities and opportunities.
The agenda for shaping India as a Super Knowledge
Power is not merely a dream but it is a real vision.
Already sure signs are visible that India is scaling
heights.
India’s IT market today has grown from $1.73
billion in 1994-95 to $16.5 billion in 2002-03. The country’s software
exports grew at 26 to 28% during the last fiscal year ending March 2004.
As if in response to this striking growth we are
beginning to hear the expected anti globalisation noises from the West.
The result of the fear of our monumental growth is the proposed
introduction in the so-called developed world of Legislation seeking to
clamp down on outsourcing. This also is a sure indication of the growing
weakening of American confidence in the strength of the dollar. Gopal K.
Agarwal states that "the US has been running up a higher and higher
deficit which has crossed half a trillion dollars this year".
But these protective legislation may not be able to
stem the tide there. Even Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the U.S.
Federal Reserve has gone on record that "efforts to protect US jobs
through legislation could end up in a serious damage to their
economy".
The Outsourcing Research Council has estimated the
global outsourcing market to be of the order of 5 trillion dollars even
in 2002 and 20% of the total business is done by the TT and TTES market,
which grows by 15% per annum. Of this India gets only about 2%. This
indicates the huge opportunities that are available and indicates the
future potential, which is great.
Our Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are doing
superb work in this knowledge era. Many people are not perhaps aware of
the fact that the IIT Delhi excelling in the rare area of drug design.
Researchers at this premier IIT have developed a comprehensive
indigenous Bio informatics software called SANJEEVINI for Drug Design.
They have also developed novel methodologies for Protein structure
prediction and Genome analysis. These software and methodologies will
help pharmaceutical companies and R&D Units in Drug discovery and
development.
Thus in frontier areas we are forging ahead but from
Yojana Bhavan I could still feel we can do better in the Higher
Education front.
I quote an episode in the life of Ashoka the Great.
When young Prince Ashoka asked his father his blessings on standing at
the top of his school the emperor replied to his son "Very well my
dear boy, you could still do better".
For a nation as big as India with more than 300
Universities, 13000 Colleges, 350000 Teachers and about 8 million
students we are doing extremely well today but still these are areas
where we could excel. For example our catering to foreign students needs
to be upgraded.
The WTO has recognised 12 sectors of services for
foreign trade, which includes Education also, and so the urgent need
arises for us to hone up our Education efforts.
EDUCATION today is an Internationally tradable
commodity. We must make our commodity salable.
As a result of this WTO announcement the UGC has
identified 10 Universities in the country to start with for the
promotion of India Higher Education abroad. These Universities have to
showcase their academic programmes and superior infrastructure
facilities during series of Education fairs to be held in developing and
developed countries.These select Universities are named as Ambassadors
of Indian Education by the UGC.
GATS has recognised four main modes of trade in
educational services: cross-border supply of services through distance
education; education of students abroad; setting up courses or
institutions in other countries and movement of people between countries
to provide education. Education of students abroad has been the most
common form of trade in educational services; So far, it has been a
one-way traffic for India. The number of Indian students going abroad
for studies has been increasing year by year and the number of foreign
students studying in Indian Universities has been declining steadily
since independence.
Thus the need for honing our higher Education efforts
to global standards is clear and urgent. But the grave problem facing
Higher Education today is the financial crunch. Every University in
India today feels it. China had come up very fast in science research in
the post-cultural revolution era. "They spend five per cent of
gross domestic product for science and eight per cent on education,
while we allot just three per cent on education".
We have to invest in a big way in schools and
colleges. Higher education alone needs a spend of 2-2.5 per cent. We are
alive to this issue and the Yojana Bhavan has taken a lead here.
According to a recent Goldman Sachs report,
"Over the next 50 years, Brazil, Russia, India and China - the BRIC
economies, could become a much larger force in the world economy"
and India could emerge as the world’s 3rd largest economy over
the next four decades". Peter Drucker has declared, "India’s
time for economic hegemony has come". These predictions will become
realities once you combine Vision and Action together and give a more
active role to Higher Education. Some countries in Asia have fixed
graduation as the minimum qualification to enter legislative bodies.
Let me conclude my address with what Dr. D.S. Kothari,
the celebrated Chairman of the Kothari Commission said in his Dr.
Dadabhai Naoroji Memorial Lecture on Education, Science and National
Development in April 1968. I was present at this memorable lecture.
I quote
"Let us now turn to the most significant thing
about education in the modern world. The modern world is science and
technology based, and this more than anything else, has made education,
as never before, the most important element in the life and progress of
a nation. Economic development, welfare and security are all closely
dependent on the extent and quality of education. Knowledge and survival
now literally go together".
This is the message I would also like to convey at this most
significant Higher Education and Development Summit, which rightly
visualises an amalgam of VISION and ACTION.
