Expressing his disappointment at "some developments" in the academia, President Pranab Mukherjee today stressed the need for promoting innovation and research, saying Indian universities need to create an ambience which would help produce more Nobel laureates.
"I have been consistently calling upon institutions of higher learning to innovate and almost like parrot I have been expressing my disappointment over some of the developments that have been taking place in our academia," Mukherjee said while addressing the bicentennial celebrations of Presidency University.
"There is no doubt that our IITs, our NIITs are the best technical institutions in the world. While addressing the convocation of one IIT, I asked the director what the intake and campus requirement were. He said 100 per cent plus. Then I asked what is your ranking in the first 200 world class universities? He said no place. That struck me," the President said.
Mukherjee questioned what purpose was being served by selling "our top brains to the multinational organisations to promote and advance their sale proceedings"?
"Or we should use their talent and energies to be devoted in the laboratories, to engage themselves in innovation and research. After 1930 no Indian scholar working in Indian universities after C V Raman got Nobel Prize in original research work. It is more than 80 years. It is not because there is lack of talent. Amartya Sen, Har Govind Khurana, got it," he pointed out.
"All between 80's and 90's every one of them products of Indian universities. If they can get Nobel prize by working in foreign universities as scholars and teachers, then why can't we create that ambience in our universities?" he asked.
He observed that India required innovative ideas and solutions to its multifarious problems.
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