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September, DATAQUEST
 
 
Two outstanding interactions in the space of twenty-four hours gave me a new hope in the future of education in India. For a long time we have worried about the appalling quality of some of our educational institutions , at primary, secondary and tertiary levels and have despaired about finding resources in the right quantity and quality to fuel the ever growing needs of the IT and BPO industry. The galloping economy in the last few years and the sudden surge in the fortunes of many manufacturing, retail, healthcare, hospitality and financial services firms have accentuated the concerns with no other a luminary than KV Kamath of ICICI Bank forecasting that the services industries in India would need ten million skilled people to enter the job market every year for India to sustain its economic momentum. And a situation where less than twenty percent of the three million more graduates are deemed as employable is certainly not a source of great comfort or optimism.
So what was different about the two interactions?  Maybe it was the quality of the institutions themselves – the venerable Pune University and IIT Bombay, or the gentlemen at the helm of affairs, Vice Chancellor Dr Narendra Jadhav and Director Prof Ashok Mishra who are both educationists of a quality rarely seen in this country because they combine academic excellence with worldly wisdom that will surely take the institutions under their watch to global greatness. Speaking at the valedictory session of the Research Scholars’ Forum in IIT, it was a pleasure to hear that IIT Bombay has been ranked first among Asian institutions  because of its focus on research which has now resulted in the number of PhD scholars every year going up to over two hundred. Interesting to find too that the next Indian institution on the list is the Indian Institute of Science followed by the other IITs at some distance. Even more heartening to find that a PhD thesis cannot be submitted in IIT Bombay unless the researcher has published two peer reviewed papers in international journals. With the noticeable paucity of both quality and quantity in the research community today, the investments IIIT Bombay is making in this area bode well for the future of research and new product development in all industry segments.
On a different plane but in an area as important as the research sphere, the “Oxford of the East” Pune University under the leadership of Dr Jadhav has made great strides in the last year, revamping curriculum, using distance learning to expand the reach of quality content to the furthermost corners of the state and setting up collaborative networks between colleges and the private sector to enable high quality vocational training to be available across the college network. The use if technology in education is neither new or revolutionary but what is unique is the commitment with which the VC and his University is committed to making it happen, now just to offer more options to the elite students of Pune but more important to provide a future to the underprivileged sections of society.
In an industry where the global economic slowdown is already beginning to have some impact on the current results as well as the future outlook of most IT and BPO companies, the relatively slower period gives all of us an opportunity to consolidate and reflect on the steps to be taken to ensure future prosperity – for our firms, our industry and indeed our country. The NASSCOM AT Kearney study on fifty locations for IT and BPO has shown that the opportunities for reverse migration to smaller locations can happen only when the educational, social and physical infrastructure is improved in smaller towns and villages. Strong PPP case studies need to emerge because it is no longer enough to offer alternatives to traditional education like APTECH and NIIT did in the nineties! All partners in the future of the country have to work together to strengthen the knowledge eco-system. Not only do we have to replicate the Pune University experiments in every college and university across the length and breadth of the country, the strengthening of the education processes and outcomes at levels from primary schools to high end research and innovation has to be seen as a priority for all sectors. The IT industry has always shown the way to other sectors in its willingness to meet global challenges head on and this may be the time for the local challenge of resources to be tackled on a war footing as well!
 
   
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