The most important prerequisite for pushing the nation’s progress forward through development of research and development is the distancing of the Government, which has a tendency to regulate and control, from the higher education sector, Dr Chandan Mitra, Editor, The Pioneer has said.
Delivering the Convocation Address on “Future of India and its Youth” as Chief Guest at the fourth PGDM convocation at Rajagiri Business School, Kakkanad, Kochi, Dr Mitra said, “The total R&D spending of India is less than that of certain corporate houses.
Education should provide the thrust for R&D, and deregulation of college education is necessary for this.”
“Government should have no role in college education. Education in the private sector will be costly but the advantage is that it will push R&D forward. We are the largest arms buyer in the world. This is not something to be happy about,” Dr Mitra said, adding that what was needed for preparing the ground for a surge in India’s own R&D was a reorientation of the mindset.
“India has a great historical legacy. We are the world’s brain trust. look at our rich past. look at how our predecessors had excelled in what they did: We had our engineering and medical systems, we had great personalities like Aryabhatta, Charaka, Dhanwantari… India’s USP is this brain power and we deserve to be the world’s brain trust,” he said.
Dr Mitra said that India should ensure the growth of centres of excellence keeping in mind that just producing degree-holders was not enough. “Quantity alone would not achieve what we are
striving for. What we need is quality,” he said, adding that deregulation of the higher education sector was a must for ensuring quality.
Pointing out that India could become the most populous state in the world in two decades, Dr Mitra said that this presented a dialectical situation for the country, 65 per cent of whose population was constituted by the youth. “Are we going to pick up the democratic dividends or are we going to face a demographic disasterIJ” he asked.
A huge disaster was brought about by the policy of nationalisation and the over-dependence on Government jobs, he said, pointing out that India was compelled to adopt liberalisation two decades back but there was no fixed direction for this liberalisation. “So real liberalisation did not happen,” he pointed out.
Stating that if India could not ensure a steady 8.5 per cent GDP growth for the next ten years, there could be huge job problem, he said “We have to create lucrative, alternate strategies. We had done this in IT. India could become an IT superpower.”
He said this was made possible because the Government had nothing to do with it. “In fact, the Government did not know this was happening. If it had known, it would have regulated it,” Dr Mitra said.
Bijou Kurien, president and chief executive officer of Reliance lifestyle Holdings ltd, was the guest of honour at the convocation ceremony presided over by Fr Jose Alex, manager, Rajagiri Group of Institutions.