India Should Pay Attention To What Narayana Murthy Says
By Dr. Vivek Kumar Srivastava
17 July, 2015
Countercurrents.org
Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy has said that there is no significant innovation in last sixty years in country and no Prime Minister except Pt. Nehru has concentrated much on the science. He said "Is there one invention from India that has become a household name in the globe? Is there one idea that has led to an earth-shaking invention to delight global citizens? Folks, the reality is there is no such contribution from India in the last 60 years." There has been some criticism of his statements in some quarters which is unwarranted. He is absolutely correct at his point. He has in fact brought in the open space the real status of the Indian scientific and research community.
Indian educational system is on decline. In fat it was never on summit but the point where it was, it has declined even from there. In the centers of learning including IITs, JNU the situation is on decline. In most of these institutions the brain is oriented towards the civil services preparations. This is their basic right about the selection of the career but is shows that students are not conditioned to go for research innovation but they want to go for as status full job, social milieu is more responsible for it.
In state universities the situation is pathetic. The syllabus is outdated having no research orientation,. Students are studying which has no relevance in the real world. The curriculum development is one very important task but in most universities this is at low level due to incapacities at the higher level where syllabus making is not well perfected. In many state universities guess papers and short question answer guide books are promoted. In many colleges the classes are not regularly organized. The level of students has declined too much. The outsourcing of research paper writing may also prevail.
The level of students can be observed by the fact that in Roorkee IIT students were expelled due to low marks. This is due to students’ inclination for short term methods to clear the examinations.
At the primary level situation is also too declined. It is observed that these poor performing students enter the higher level with weak bases. These are failed at the higher level. In this respect the ASER report is quite relevant. Recent Economic Survey states that “ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) findings have been reporting low levels of learning amongst the 5 to 16 age group in rural India since 2005. The worrying fact is that these are floor level tests (basic 2-digit carry-forward subtraction and division skills), without which one cannot progress in the school system.” Economic Survey further notes that “the Indian higher education system is one of the largest in the world in terms of the number of colleges and universities. From 350 universities and 16,982 colleges in 2005-06, the numbers have gone up to 713 universities, 36,739 colleges, and 11,343 diploma-level institutions in 2013-14 (and) The gross enrolment ratio (GER) in higher education has nearly doubled from around 11.6 per cent in 2005-06 to 21.1 per cent in 2012-13 (Provisional), with 29.6 million students enrolled in 2012-13 as compared to 14.3 million in 2005-06.” These developments although have not been translated into real gains due to already stated factors.
Now the need is to work for the improvement at every level of education and for the scientific innovations. For this we need to do go for-India and other developing countries should adopt Finland model for education in which faculty, teachers are focused. They are given high quality training. The focus on teachers easily percolates to the level of students.
Curriculum should be developed keeping in mind the new developments in the concerned fields.
Since undergraduate level research papers and assignment based teaching should be emphasized.
State universities should be reformed. The level of knowledge delivery is too low. The basic reason is that there is no accountability at this level. KVS model needs to be implemented where onus of improvement of the student lies on the teacher.
For innovations university system should be strengthened for free discussion. Research orientation is must for this.
India can learn the lesson from Finland which transformed itself into an industrial nation from a agricultural country. It concentrated the Science subjects in intensive manner. Today it has emerged as a strong nation in these subjects; English proficiency is also emphasized among the young ones.
The level of education needs to be improved in order to face the emerging challenges which have come in more potent form due to introduction of the neoliberal order in the global economy and politics. India has to improve its GDP in order to alleviate the problems of hunger, poverty and unemployment. If high level education is not imparted and innovations are not made then India can not earn from the global market. As a result it will remain trapped in vicious cycle of poverty (Nurkse).
Therefore criticism of Narayana Murthy is to be avoided. He has placed the pressure on all academicians to look into the realities which they can ignore at the peril of their country.
Dr. Vivek Kumar Srivastava is Assistant Professor, CSJM Kanpur University(affiliated College) and Vice Chairman CSSP, e mail-[email protected]
.
Comments are moderated