The Government will be focusing on some of their core themes especially Make in India and Smart Cities to push forward growth especially in the manufacturing sector. This should give a huge boost to job creation. Another area where they should also focus is on enabling the K&VI sector and help them rise like how ‘similar industries’ in Europe rose after getting the right support. This Budget should help the sector compete by providing them technological support and assistance in obtaining Trade Mark, GI tag, Patent and all other kinds of IPRs. Real job creation and easing of burden on cities will not happen unless this sector rises.
| Divyan Gupta, founder & CEO, Artanddecors.com
Data Science is a key area of future Growth and the Central Budgets may be directed to sanction and support such an Institute of Data Science to meet the data needs of the country as well as growing economies in the coming decades.
| Dr KJS Anand, executive director, IMS Noida
Teachers are the single biggest influencers on students and hence hold a pivotal position in the education eco-system. The teaching profession itself needs to be made more attractive for young professionals so that it is a career of choice — this could be done through increase in outlays for teacher salaries, incentivising them on the basis of student performance and outcomes or even with launch of a mass media campaign. Alongside, it is equally important to focus on the professional development of teachers and educators. This keeps them up-to-date on student related research, technology tools for classrooms and curriculum related aspects. A large-scale intervention targeted at training of teachers and educators, delivered through the public-private-partnership model, can provide the much needed impetus to classroom learning outcomes across schools, colleges and professional institutions.
| Sivaramakrishnan V, MD, Oxford University Press India
The Government needs to place full confidence in private universities and actively promote research at their campuses by making available significant funding opportunities. In most advanced nations, private universities are major shareholders in the exceptional quality of their higher education. If India is to build a world-class higher education system, the Government in the upcoming Budget should seriously look at freeing top private universities from excessive regulatory control, so that they can innovate and adapt to the needs of a rapidly growing, information-centric population.
| Dr P Venkat Rangan, VC, Amrita University