Indian research sector heading for collapse

The Centre and the states have to take drastic action because the Indian education sector was facing a crisis and heading for collapse, C N R Rao, the Linus Paulin professor at Bangalore's J N Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (CASR) warned.

The country's global share of published research and meaningful development was declining and fewer and fewer students were pursuing knowledge, he told members of the Bengal Initiative, a think-tank which had organised a seminar on 'Education in India: Moving Forward' here.

First, the government would have to support education, to the extent of 6 per cent of GDP, as developed nations were doing, and it was suicidal for developing nations like India to even think of discontinuing support to education.

Rao said, "The second problem was parents, who were forcing their children to go in for jobs very young in the hope of seeing their children become IT millionaires by the time they are 30!".

Third, the education system could be greatly improved at little cost by allowing full flexibility in choice of subjects, "like allowing the same student to study both physical and biological sciences, without which projects like cracking genetic codes cannot be done".

He was responding to the point made by Bengal Initiative chairman Amiya Gooptu that change had to be tangible and immediate in a situation where resources were limited.

Rao blamed the universities and colleges for the crisis, claiming that the school system continued to produce excellent raw young minds who were spoilt at the post-school level. He advised education sector decision makers in West Bengal to take the lead in adopting a system of flexible subject choice.

Speaking at the same meeting, Roopen Roy of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said industry was keen on reversing the decline in education through public-private partnerships so that better skills were available.

Aling with Rao, he said education was not just numbers - it had to be backed by passion and a sense of 'Indian-ness'.

Meenakshi Mukherjee of Jawaharlal Nehru University warned that China was recruiting English teachers from India and would soon catch up in terms of language skills. Indian English language skills would have to developed in India to retain the leadership in the language in view of its global acceptance.

The hegemony of English as spoke in the United Kingdoms was declining and the world would see strong regional influences in the use, writing and speaking of English, she predicted.

Amrik Singh, former vice-chancellor of Patiala University, struck a discordant note and said a lifetime of work in higher education had convinced him that support for the primary education system was crucial.He said government support meant interference and this hurt the quality of education, so a shrinking government role was preferable.

S Datta Gupta of the S N Bose Centre for Basic Sciences and Surendra Munshi of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) also spoke on the crisis facing education, while top city doctors spoke of reworking syllabi to grow the medical services outsourcing sector.