Dissent is blasphemy in Indian centres of excellence; there is need to establish centres of learning where ideas are nurtured and grown
Knowledge is power, said Francis Bacon long ago. Sadly enough, our repositories of knowledge seem to let us down if recent global surveys — that have rated centres of higher education — are anything to go by. In fact, we don’t find ourselves in the top 200 names. This, despite the fact that there was a time several centuries ago when universities in the subcontinent were globally acknowledged as centres of excellence attracting students from far and wide. The drift certainly is a cause for concern. More so because our graduates from IITs and IIMs are valued internationally and find place in leading corporations, universities and research organisations. Why this paradoxIJ
Higher education and research go hand in hand. Recognition of centres of higher education globally depends on research output. It is the research output that has given universities like Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, Kellogg and Oxford the kind of recognition they enjoy today. More than two millennia ago, universities of the sub continents, like Takshila and Nalanda, were recognised as world class centres of learning. We need to find out why with such a rich heritage of education and research we are out of reckoning in the present times. There is thus a need to understand why our research output is not being valued internationally.
The problem lies perhaps in the culture of our institutions of higher learning, which does not permit free flow of ideas as the Baconian cannon has been turned on its head. Our centres of higher learning believe that power is knowledge. It may not flow from the barrel of the gun as the Chinese strongman Mao had said, but it certainly has its roots in the seat of authority. Naturally, dissent is blasphemy in Indian centres of excellence and the boss is always right. But in such a corporatised ambience, innovation cannot flourish. There is thus a need to establish centres of learning where ideas, ideas and ideas are nurtured and grown.
We need universities which advance frontiers of knowledge through research and allow fresh knowledge to germinate and develop, but howIJ Rabindranath Tagore had given us a clue long ago.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, where knowledge is free, where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls, where words come out from the depth of truth, where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection, where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit, where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action, into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Only in this kind of an ambience can excellence in research be expected and our universities can regain the glory of the past.
The writer is a professor, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad (Jharkhand). He can be reached at ppathak.ism@gmail.com