Indian Science Congress 2011

What Ails Indian Science Education ?

Vinod Varshney

The truth of Indian Universities is that much attention is not given on research, which is quite natural in the Indian situation when power and money matter more than knowledge and sincerity. The educational culture is being vitiated fast by mushrooming private universities and colleges, many of which have been opened with the blatant intention of only making money.


No surprise that any conscientious academic would lament that even after 63 years of independence we don’t have even one which can be counted among the top 200 universities of the world. This fact was effectively underscored by Dr K. C. Pandey the General President of the Indian Science Congress in his Presidential speech Tuesday in SRM University of Chennai.


Unluckily his speech would not find sufficient space in the mainstream media, which remains more concerned about reporting what government leaders say.


Beleagured Leader Loses Sheen

The 98th Indian Science Congress was inaugurated Tuesday by Prime Minister Dr Man Mohan Singh, a beleaguered leader amidst his government’s multi-billion dollar 2-G spectrum scam which has taken away much of the sheen from his gentle appeal. One can leave aside most part of his lecture, except one glaring reality “that while C. V. Raman won the Nobel Prize eighty years ago for the Raman Effect, most of the instruments available in India today using this principle are imported.”


Why is it so? Dr Singh has not ant remedy for this. He only mentioned the malady that that was not an isolated example. "Many of our outstanding scientific discoveries had been converted into marketable products by technologists and firms based abroad."


So what is wrong with India? Everybody knows that its political culture is the real problem, which breeds, supports and cover up corruption. The culture of corruption has seeped deep inside the educational institutions also and politicians have been active participants of all this sordid happening. If political culture remains as it is, there is no hope that Indian science education would get any major change.  


What Are the Solutions?

What has been offered as solutions? Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal, as is his wont, blared out an agenda, which he thinks can make India a "hot spot of innovation". The agenda will include long term academia-industry collaborative relationships with open access to and resources free of intellectual property entanglements; better integration of corporate with higher educational and research institutions, encourage multidisciplinary collaboration among business, government, academia and R&D, thereby creating an environment that supports technological development. Definitely these are fanciful words which an illustrious lawyer politician can always utter.


It will take genuine strenuous efforts and long time to bring into practice even a few of these things as spelling out an agenda is one thing but to do concrete work is a diffrent ball game which requires real sincerity and sense of commitment.

How Many Engineers

India Produces in a Year ?

Writes Vinod Varshney

New Delhi. India produces how many engineers in a year? Six hundred thousand or nine hundred thousand? Nobody knows this at least in India. We may be having Planning Commission and Ministry of Human Resource Development, but our capability is limited to telling only how many engineers the US produces.

This assertion was made by no less a person today than Mr Kapil Sibal, the HRD Minister of India, who is known for making bombastic promises, while releasing a study titled “Engineering Education in India” at Observer Research Foundation (ORF).

The study was undertaken by Rangan Banerjee and Vinayak P Muley of IIT Bombay. While giving briefly inferences of the study, Mr Rangan himself admitted that it was such a difficult task to get correct statistics. He could compile statistics only up to 2006.

Engineering PhDs So Few In India

The study puts India in a very poor light so far as the higher engineering education especially the research is concerned. It highlights that advanced countries like UK, US and Germany produce 10, 9 & 8 per cent doctorate engineers out of graduates whereas India is happy with just around .5 percent.

Indians better forget what US, UK and Germany or France do; we need to peep at what our neighbours like Korea and China do. Sibal told that China was producing 60,000 science & engineering PhDs a year while India only 8,000 though fifteen years ago India and China were alike.

Who should put their heads in shame for these statistics--people of India or the political leaders of India? The country is full of talkers and dreamers, but there is acute shortage of people who can convert dreams into reality. Sanjay Joshi of ORF rightly said, “Aspirations remain dreams unless concrete actions are taken.”

Sibal Promises to Take Bold Steps

Kapil Sibal assured that 2010 would be an important and different year. He sounded like he would be taking concrete steps. His remedy lies in involving private sector more in higher education. But know for sure currently already seventy five percent of graduate engineers are products of private engineering colleges. This is told to be one reason why Indian engineering graduates are un-employable, many feel.