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May 18, 1998
SPECIALS
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How readers reacted to Shalabh Kumar's last pieceDate sent: Tue, 02 Jun 1998 12:32:43 -0400
I would like to submit that before we launch an expensive initiative to build "centres of excellence" we should try to utilise the people we train right now. For example, India trains engineering physics graduates at IIT when the country offers them few or no job opportunities. The same is true of many of ours civil, aeronautical, and biomedical engineers. We train thousands of people in the pure sciences -- math, physics, chemistry, etc. to no avail. Let us use the untapped talent and retrain them for corporate careers. SK Date sent: Tue, 26 May 1998 16:58:44 -0400
Mr Shalabh Kumar's article on rebuilding the glory of Indian education is excellent as it defines the steps to fulfil the promises our leaders have been making to improve our education system. He is right in pointing out that we need not only to give emphasis on primary education but also need to upgrade our higher education system simultaneously. This is important if India truly wants to become a superpower as the leaders have been shouting from rooftops after the nuclear tests. Our prime minister has been recently making the right kind of moves for our scientific and academic development: but the action has to come fast and without bottlenecks. I would like to support Mr Shalabh's views that we need to build institutes in the second rung after the IITs so that there is quality and standard education for many more deserving students than the few thousands who manage to get into such 'cream colleges'. But for this we need to improve the conditions of the teachers of universities (many of whom have PhD degrees) in particular and all teachers in general. There is a distinct feeling of helplessness and desperation among the teachers (even those in IITs) about the various hassles faced by them in their day-to-day duties, leave aside research and academic excellence. Bureaucratic obstructions and shortage of funds combined with lack of appreciation for good teaching in class not only makes the teachers apathetic towards research but also towards teaching in general (I have my experience as lecturer in an engineering college regarding this). Being an IIT alumni myself I wish to add that having good colleges requires discipline which is greatly found to be lacking in many colleges of repute: IITs do score on this issue as their session is followed rigorously and discipline given top priority; moreover the students have so much to do that they do not have time for nonsense. Curriculm revision in most colleges and university is minimal. In the age of the IT revolution, very few institutions have been able to re-orient their education system. Some private schools are better off in this matter. I do agree with him on giving admissions to foreign nationals but the cost should be worked out and they should be required to pay at least the real cost. Funding of universities and colleges could be helped by following such an approach. There is a need for having better post-graduate and doctoral education in the country such that the best students do not fly off to study abroad after their graduation. I hope the present government is open to a overhaul of the education system. Manish Sinha Date sent: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 22:09:03 +0900
Dear Shalabh, You've written something sensible but our policymakers will fight shy of implementing since it does not match their hidden agenda. I, as a countryman and father of a 12th grade child, can realise at this moment the need for a more dynamic and pragmatic education system in the country of Dr. Radhakrishnans and Raja Ram Mohan Roys. Is anybody in Parliament worried? Will they heed your suggestions?. Please do send your article to the people who matter. If it can happen, this is the time it can! I still have a lot of hope because we have still more educated people in absolute numbers than England, Australia and Sweden put together. Why is it that only China has shown what 'Basic Education Means". Yes, knowing English is an advantage, but then have we put our act right? India has not but China has. I can now say this with authority since I have seen my India for the last 43 years and am now sitting in China for the last one year. Can you suggest that our parliamentarians come here and understand how big countries like China have handled their educational and agricultural systems? Let us learn from our neighbours if not from our collective wisdom. Congratulations! Keep writing. God bless you. Navin C Bhatia Date sent: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 10:01:01 +0100
I read the article with interest. However, how can you think of an educational powerhouse when admission is largely based on your caste rather than merit, when in places more than 70 per cent seats are reserved, and where sometimes admission to higher education depends on how much money you can give and the kind of contacts you have? The dream is indeed a good one, but a lot of work needs to be done to change people's attitudes and a lot needs to change in India before we can even think about it. R.Venkatachalam Date sent: Mon, 13 Apr 1998 12:30:09 +0900
Dear Mr Shalabh Kumar, Nice to see an article on an important matter. As you said, we can "try" to catch up, but, it will take a few decades to do so. I want to restrict my comments to the higher education system only -- this is the only one I am familiar with. IITs, contrary to what they are supposed to be, are not always good. I studied in one of them and found them to be pathetic. The teachers do not have the commitment to teaching as they do for making a fast buck by taking up projects. Even there, often agencies funding the projects -- like the armed forces, the DRDO or the ISRO are taken for a ride by the professors. All this is my first hand experience. Secondly, the facilities at the IITs, barring the computing facilities and those related to computer science, are most often outdated. They still teach what was taught some 20 years ago. The tools for teaching are ancient. The examination system emphasises mostly on mugging up of the subjects and not understanding. Coming to research work -- it is never very good. There are people who do very good work, but the number is very small. So, the quality of research in general is not up to the mark. Last, there is politics. Why a particular professor gets something depends upon how close he is to so-and-so and not on his merit. If you don't believe this, visit some IITs and find out for yourself. Of all the IITs, the best is IIT, Madras. There, the professors have a religious approach to teaching -- it may be a coincidence that most such teachers are Tamilians. IIT, Kharagpur and Bombay are the next. The best qualified faculty is in Kanpur. The worst of all IITs is IIT, Delhi -- in every aspect. With such wide disparity in teaching attitudes between just five institutions, do you think we can do something like the US? Impossible. It is not easy to transform these teachers into a committed lot overnight. So, we need to look at how to restructure the existing system before we aim higher. Uday Date sent: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 18:20:05 -0700
Obviously, no one told Mr Shalabh Kumar that to call any set of "individuals" second rung is, perhaps, being insensitive. While his intentions of reinforcing Indian academia into something more than a prep-school for US universities is laudable, either he is incapable of thinking logically or, at the very least, is unable to think in the right language. SD Date sent: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 18:32:13 -0400
This is a great article. It looks like the author has done his homework before writing it. Attending classes for just one week in this university made me realise why the US is such an advanced country. These people take education seriously. And the number of Indian institutes which offer such kind of education are few. The author is perfectly right when he says that education and intellectual capital is the cornerstone of any strong and technologically advanced nation. Date sent: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 14:34:06 -0600
I agree with almost all points made by the author in this important article. I wish this article reaches the HRD ministry and as many Indians and people worldwide. I consider it as a duty and moral responsibility of every Indian to give serious thought to this issue and also to work towards a practical solution to this problem. I fully agree that India just needs a good start with proper plans, and the process will gain momentum automatically. Tuhin Chatterjee Date sent: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 23:15:29, -0500
I think this is a wonderful idea and could be a great forex earner for the country, not to mention the universities. As an NRI in the US, my hunch is that over time thousands of students from the developed world could begin coming to study in India. This will be not only to save on expensive education here, but also to learn more about international economy, politics, languages, etc. I wish the new government gives special emphasis to this idea and promotes it like it promotes tourism, and the software industry. Tony D'Silva Date sent: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 01:43:13 +0100
I think the article by Mr Kumar was fantastic. It cover all aspects of what has gone wrong with our system. I have two post-graduate degrees from India, and am pursuing another in the UK. I have always felt that how much ever we educate ourselves we always feel incomplete, since our education system is not geared to face the challenging future, but is just a remnant of the past. The most important thing one has to keep his mind open about is the privatisation of higher education in India. True, we may have a number of government-funded institutes, but I feel the big industrial houses should start technical and management oriented institutions to build and focus the energies of the youngsters who pass out in large numbers but have no coherent aim. Primary education is a must and, therefore, it is necessary that every child India has access to it. But there are many rich students who spend precious foreign exchange and leave for the US and UK because there are either no institutes that can provide them with the kind of education they want or because the institutes that exist operate on reservations and other flimsy criteria, denying them the chance to continue their education within the country. Therefore, the policy should be that those who can afford expensive education should be given a chance to join elite institutes inside India -- for a large sum, of course. Those who have merit on their side can then work their way anyway into the best institutes available. Venkatnarayan Date sent: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 21:48:21 -0500
I agree with Shalabh Kumar. While we need to strengthen and broaden primary education, we cannot neglect higher education, especially the technical kind. We need more IITs, more IIMs, more centres of excellence. In the US, a major chunk of defence research and development budget goes to the universities. There is the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the US army and the US Air Force that fund lot of research in the universities. In India, we have over 300 DRDO labs, many of them just sucking funds and not producing anything. For example, there is already a DRDO lab called Aeronautical Development Establishment but another agency was set up for the LCA project. Why? While, I do not know the amount spent on defence research and development, it must be substantial, and certainly more than the funding of all IITs, IISc and TIFR put together. Of these, only TIFR and IISc are to some extent involved in defence R&D. IITs hardly get any defence R&D projects. We definitely need to make primary education up to class five free and compulsory. Removing illiteracy is the solution to many of India's problems. We also need to set up more centres of excellence in key areas that should work in tandem with Indian Industry. They should not just try to develop technology which is already developed in the west, but also strive for a leadership role in the world. Why can't Indians do this in India, when they can do it elsewhere, I cannot understand. Rahul Jain Date sent: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 09:28:34 +1000
Before we "export" our education in India, let us first sort out the mess in the higher education sector, not to speak of the primary education sector. We don't have the finances to manage higher education. Universities and colleges are declining in academic standards and research, and are unable to attract good talent to academia. Let us first work on that plan before inviting other developing countries to enter the scene. The US is an immigrant country and depends on brilliance brought by these immigrants to enrich education and industry. India is not an immigrant country; it has enough intelligent people to feed, clothe, educate and get results from. Let us recognise this. Narain Date sent: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 14:44:30 EDT
This article does map out as to what should be done with the Indian educational system. One of the biggest curse, or should I say ineffectiveness, of the India education system is that its is hardly linked to the local industry. This is primarily because of the inability of the Indian industry to absorb and capitalise on the knowledge pool we have. It is also because of a lack of entrepreneurship in the Indian industry. Because of this, a lot of talent goes down the drain. Some engineering colleges do invite foreign students to take admission. These admission, though not based on merit, do help to pump lot of money in the college budget, helping it finance its programmes. I feel this should be encouraged, as this will help the cash-starved Indian educational system to grow. Date sent: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 13:14:25 -0400
This is a very well-written article with important thoughts. However, it will become more useful if the author also writes about how he plans to motivate the public and politicians since they finally bring about such a change. Many, many times I have read some very good articles such as this one, but never have I seen them being implemented. I sincerely hope that such efforts are taken farther in future. Tom Date sent: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 17:18:22 +0000
First of all, let me congratulate Shalabh on the excellent piece, and Rediff for your tradition of thought-provoking pieces. Shalabh, I think a plan similar to what you outline, an entrance exam open to all comers, is already in place. I know this, because a friend of mine designed a brochure for international students for IIT Kanpur. This was, I think in 1994. I gather that an international JEE is already in place. There was also talk of basing selection of international students on SAT. I don't know about that one. But, no matter how good our education is, I seriously doubt international students will make a beeline for even the well-know centres like the IITs. The reason being the poor standard of infrastructure, barely edible food and lousy communication services (in IITK, typically one phone is shared by 350 students). I could come up with a longer list if I put my mind to it. But I guess I've made my point. Raj Date sent: Sat, 11 Apr 1998 17:42:30 -0500
People have the right to strive for the highest, even though they may not be able to achieve their goal. You cannot typecast individuals into different 'tiers' and require each tier to pursue only certain kinds of activity. What kind of a stagnant society would that be? Higher education doesn't necessarily train you to perform a certain narrow band of tasks such as 'typing, filing and software training'. Instead, higher education strives at providing a broader training which allows an individual to quickly pick up the essentials of any job (s)he might eventually take up. Furthermore, higher education does not necessarily mean utilitarian education. Each individual has the right to intellectual pursuits which may not necessarily translate to immediate economic gains for the nation. After all, we need some philosophers in our society who contribute through their thoughts and directions rather than by traditional means. Prashant Kumar
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