Gloomy Growth, Hopeless Managers

Posted on February 14, 2012 by indra

It is getting serious. Slow down is real. Achievable growth rate for the current fiscal is being reduced again and again.
According to a survey of professional forecasters by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), forecast for growth in gross domestic product (GDP) was scaled down by 60 basis points for 2011-12 and by 40 basis points for 2012-13. The revised GDP forecast for the current year now stands at seven per cent, down from 7.6 per cent earlier. For 2013, the growth forecast is now 7.3 per cent, compared with 7.7 per cent projected earlier.

I wish instead of presenting the dismal decaying governance, the persons at the head of affairs be he is our prime minister; finance minister or head of planning commission or reserve bank would have laid out the roadmap of reversing the growth rate from reducing to increasing. They must do what they can and let the industrialists, farmers and the workers know whatever their expectations from them are.

Growth in savings fell to 13.7% during 2010-11, compared to 21% in the previous year because of high inflation, pulling down the share of gross domestic savings in GDP by 1.5%,

Finance minister is loosing sleep brooding over the huge subsidy. “As the finance minister when I think of enormity of the subsidies to be provided, I lose my sleep. There is no doubt,” Mukherji expects the subsidy bill, pegged at 1.4 lakh crore in the budget, to overshoot the target by 1 lakh crore. Mukherji must prepare a course to cut down the unproductive subsidy. Instead of the subsidy, the amount of expenditure on infrastructures such as irrigation facilities must increase exponentially. The subsidy must gradually end. It is not benefitting the desired needy lot but getting distributed in unscrupulous individuals who design, plan and implement the system to make it easy for them to grab the major portion.

January exports rose 10.1% to $25.4 billion while imports rose 20.3% to $40.1 billion. Import is surpassing export month by month may go to $160 billion increasing the trade gap. Is it all oil? How much of the increase is because of so called globalization and free trade? Interestingly, India may import $100 billion worth of gold. Is there any harm in finding fair means in reducing the import? Is there any effort to keep the import to only the most essential? Do we put any effort for that either through incentive, motivation, or even regulation? Government seems to know the need to curb the import.

Industrial production growth is low. Manufacturing sector might have a policy but hardly has the support of any industrial policy to make it grow visibly bringing hope.

The World Bank recent cautioned India in particular to prepare for a crisis. Should India not take it in right spirit?

Communists suggest to collect the tax concessions given to the rich (nearly R15 lakh crore during the last three years) and to use for public investments to build our much needed social and economic infrastructure while generating large-scale employment. But could not the government demand some control on bad money in public banks? The banks find hundred of reasons for not giving loans of few thousands to a needy farmer or artisans but hardly hesitate to loan millions to many in so-called unscrupulous business community.

And now even CBI director A P Singh says, “It is estimated that around 500 billion dollars of illegal money belonging to Indians is deposited in tax havens abroad. Largest depositors in Swiss Banks are also reported to be Indians.” Can nothing be done to bring back the money? It is amazing just how little India is willing to carefully look at the sources of the $50 billion inflows that the RBI calls “remittances”.
Every year, the government provides direct and indirect subsidies worth R3 lakh crore, half of which is direct.

It will do little or nothing to dismantle the transfer economy that feeds its votes. How long we give on pouring in the tax-payers money in white elephants of public sector companies?

If the government and people are satisfied with the present way of development and growth, how can some divine powers brings it?

Government lacks the mission and vision, perhaps both.

I myself and many are still hopeful for a resurrection of the economy in time with a right kind of leadership. However, many question if Manmohan Singh can fix the government that he made lethargic?

As reported in media, Manmohan Singh recently got out of his slumber and has started taking interest in matters that may help to boost the economy. I wish it’s true and continues.

Posted in economy, governance | Tagged , | Leave a comment

‘Aakash’ Lost in Ministry Mess

Posted on February 12, 2012 by indra

It is unfortunate and shameful too. It is more so where it has become a conflict between the HRD ministry and IIT, Rajasthan. A country can develop its own indigenous advanced interceptor missile and successfully test it. It can compete with the advanced countries in technologies related to nuclear plants. However, if one has followed the recent launch of Aakash (Images), the tablet by Kapil Sibal with so much of fanfare and the mess thereafter, India is so poor in manufacturing.

As I could understand the Aakash project of the HRD Ministry, it was meant for students in schools up to class XII and not for the students for graduate courses in engineering, post graduate or PH.D. As the first thing, I couldn’t understand why the IIT, Rajasthan was given the responsibility of creating the specifications of the tablet and not to other older and mature IITs. Fortunately now the ministry has involved three of them.

I can very well infer that the IIT, Rajsthan prepared the specifications target for just schools. But after the launch, someone in HRD ministry decided to make it for the use of IIT students. And the officers collected feedbacks from IIT students, who knew of Apple’s tablet iPad the best in its class. Datawind’s Aakash was declared as under-specified.

And look at the expectations now “The IIT or HRD now wants Aakash 2 to run at – 20 degree and up to 50 degree Celsius, withstand steep and sudden fall and waterproof against rain with a 1.2 Gega Hertz (Ghz) microprocessor as against 366 mega hertz (Mhz) in Aakash and random access memory (RAM) of 700 megabytes, double of the original. The battery specified can run up to eight hours.” One can produce tablets of this specification if the price is not a constraint. But then why not buy the Apple’s iPads? The schools in India require 220 million tablets. And the 90% or more will require it to be cheap at around $50 a piece.

Aakash must be in two three models- one for the students of lower classes up to Class VI, the second one for the students from class VII to XII and the third one for the students of the higher education, all with increasing prices and better specifications for the applications.

It amazes me also to know that the HRD ministry wishes PSUs such as Indian Telephone Industries (ITI) and Bharat Heavy Electrical Limited (BHEL) to produce the Aakash Tablets. I couldn’t understand the rationale for this thinking. Why couldn’t the government call HCL and Wipro that are already in manufacturing of computers and doing a lot of work in the field of education too in big way through its foundation and seek its assistance? May be that these companies could have found the solution of a tablet for the students in the desired price range effectively.

If the mess is not cleared, it will be another failure of the government missing an opportunity to help in bridging the digital divide of the student community. And the result as someone says will only be disastrous:

“Huge amounts will be spent, either on delivering a crippled device or, perhaps, on not delivering anything, if there are further procurement issues. Economies of scale count, and 220 million is a huge number. Globally, 67 million tablets were sold in 2011. If we assume a price of $50/unit (Rs 2,500), that could work out to a total spend of Rs 55,000 crore. Just for comparison, the entire 2011 HRD ministry budget was Rs 52,000 crore.”

Let the Montreal based Datawind execute the order it got an order if it can execute it with a quality required for school application. For the higher end tablets, HCL and Wipro may be roped.

Shiv Nadar has recently made a statement in an interview: “Five years from now, the entire school will be on a tablet — like an iPad, at a very low cost. India will make an effort to do it. Our Foundation is also working on it. A very good teacher will play the role of augmenter. Also, the teacher will be located anywhere and helping students”. It gives a hope.

I wish HRD Ministry could name a technocrat some one like N R Narayana Murthy for this project.

Posted in education, governance | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Will India’s Education Revolution Succeed?

Posted on February 6, 2012 by indra

Kanti Bajpai has written a wonderful article dealing with a need for bringing about ‘an education revolution’: “No country has transited from being poor and backward to being rich and developed without an education revolution.”

We are hardly to wait for the reports such as one from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009+ test, to know, understand and worry about the abysmal state of our education system.

Interestingly only the students from Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu were selected to participate, as the states were rated the best. We could have also sent the students from the 100 best schools of urban centres. I wonder if the result would have been very different. And even if it would have been somewhat better or more correctly respectable, what would have been its worth?

More worrying is the real situation in the country. More than 60% of the schools in even urban regions are very poor in standard of teaching. And more than 60 % of the students are having their schooling in the rural India, where the primary education, I mean learning at primary school stage, is just non-existent. The teachers are neither motivated nor capable to make even a normal child learn. The parents are not educated enough to help the school going children to make up the shortcoming of the schooling with the poorly qualified teachers. There is hardly any tuition or coaching facilities. Going to school and staying there getting taught by the teachers, is hardly interesting. I don’t feel like believing that attractions of getting the mid day meal keep them in school or make them learn.

Surprisingly, the conditions even in the majority of urban schools are not very encouraging. Even the education standard of the highly expensive schools is not comforting. There may be many excuses, be it the skill of the teachers or the very high numbers of students for each teacher to handle.

I was surprised that many schools are outsourcing the teaching of the mathematics and science subjects in senior classes to the coaching enterprises. Tuition in group is another prevalent way, though costly as well as stressful for the students that is popularly used to make up the shortcomings of the school teaching. There are many excuses put forward by the school authorities for the deficiency, but hardly any out of the boxes solution to improve the quality of the education to the desired level.

While some corporate houses such as Nadar Foundation or Premji Foundation and quite a number of NGOs are trying to improve the quality of education for the children from the deprived and rural families, the sum total of their work is just negligible considering the number requiring the similar facilities.

I wish at least 100 top corporate houses would have pulled together their resources to scale up the work of these successful models of educational institutions. Can the energy of the whole nation converge for providing the quality education for all and every child? It will certainly be a revolution that the nation needs badly. Unlike all other projects till date, the government and the political leadership must cooperate to get the country educated and that too with quality teaching at all the schools.

Posted in education, governance | Tagged | Leave a comment

Two Wished Election Codes

Posted on February 4, 2012 by indra

Many would have imagined that the present UP election would be fought on the issues such as corruption or the world’s worst poverty prevailing in the country and more so in the state that is undergoing election battle. But on all battle fronts, the issue present is either community or caste. Is it in the interest of the country? Should not the Election Commission or the highest in judiciary if not the parliamentarians ponder over the subject? Should not the EC ban the mention of caste and community from any election campaign? Will it be unconstitutional? If yes, why can’t the constitution is changed?

While the other codes of conduct once the election dates are declared are causing the slow down or almost shutting of government functions, the election time does also cause a lot of hidden social turmoil because of the mentions of lolly pops for certain castes and community.

What will be the ultimate of reservation? I would not have asked it but unfortunately the reservation accommodated for very genuine reasons in constitution has been perpetualized for political reasons and because none wants to irritate those who had been beneficiaries. In the present campaign, the Congress Party seems to promise an offer 4.5%-9% out of 27% of OBC reservation for minority. SP has gone to promise 18% for minority. This figure is based on the percentage of minority in overall population.

Tomorrow each of the castes or community in India may ask for the share of reservation of its caste based on its own population or may go for even protest and some political party may back those groups. Let me explain a little more clearly. A particular caste among the category of schedule caste or a specific tribal group may ask for fixing up the reservation for it based on its population.

Are not the politicians and community leaders playing with a fire that can divide the various communities and made them bitter against each other? Can the people and their leaders, legislators or judiciary give a clear decision based on the worst situation?
Will the religious leaders be forbidden from issuing fatwas for voting for a political party or a candidate? Such religious fatwas must be banned in election time. The great country got divided once on basis of religion and suffered the misery that was unprecedented. Why can’t the reference of caste or community in open be constitutionally banned and instead the whole effort is directed to the right education and skilling of the people?

I am sure the promises of reservation for the minority community out of the permitted reservation for OBC are already creating ripples in the society.

I thought with the expansion of education, the youngsters in North India will make the seniors shun community and caste. Though it has not happened till date but perhaps good education for all will be the only answer to end this menace. What EC or parliament can’t do with its mighty power, the people will do that. And that is the hope for the region.

Posted in economy, governance, indian politics | Tagged | Leave a comment

Manmohan is not honest

Posted on January 31, 2012 by indra

How can a person who causes damage to the image of the nation he represents be honest? ‘A common quip in New Delhi is that Ms Gandhi has power without responsibility; whereas Dr Singh has responsibility without power.’ However, I don’t vouch for even this much credit to Manmohan. Manmohan Singh is just a mediocre so far administrative capability is concerned.

A few recent instances of his administrative lapses are more than anything else to prove that. Manmohan didn’t do anything to better his image and at least in these incidents Sonia would not have interfered.

Manmohan has unnecessarily allowed the age issue of the Army Chief to linger. As soon as Manmohan came to know of it, he would have called the General and sorted it out talking one-to-one basis with him soon the issue. The whole issue is in a bad taste to the citizens of the country. It sets a bad precedent.

The way Manmohan has allowed the reprimand of the scientists of ISRO to be handled by his very poor assistants is another glaring example of his poor way of administration. Why couldn’t he call Mr. Nair, the former chief of ISRO, and discuss? Does Manmohan want to prove that he is better than his counterparts in Pakistan? Can anyone believe that the action was so messy because of Sonia’s interference?

Don’t the people of India know by now the vacillating approach of Manmohan on the issue of identity card issue? Couldn’t Manmohan mediate between Montek Singh and PC Chidambaram fighting for sanctioning fund for Aadhar project headed by Nandan Nilekani?

Time and again, Manmohan gets out of his slumber and does something that brings a hope and then he sleeps again. He had a press conference with media men and promised that he would regularly to do that to discuss the critical current issues of the country with media. After the very first meet where he had chosen few, the others kept on waiting for getting a chance to talk to Manmohan directly in the next meetings. But that never happened.

Manmohan as Prime Minister could show his administrative capability in improving the rating of ‘Doing Business in India’. Manmohan could get his minister change the emphasis to the outcome rather than allocation. He couldn’t bring any effective mechanism to monitor the big projects that decide the growth of the country? Manmohan couldn’t take any image building infrastructure project and get completed the long promised ones such as the railway link to Kashmir valley. Many a time I find Mayawati better than Manmohan. At least she could give a world class F1 course in record time and Yamuna Express way for state. Why couldn’t he take a high speed bullet train project even between a short distance to prove that India can do that? Is there any one project including one being demanded in memory of our brave jawans that can be associated with his name as initiator?

As reported recently, the steel minister boasted of India becoming the fourth largest steel manufacturing country of the world. Is it not in spite of the government? India could by now certainly become the second largest steel manufacturer if the government would have taken some bold policy decisions.

Could not Manmohan take some bold step for shipping sector instead of bemoaning for not spending 75% of the fund allocated for it in 11th plan?

I am sure for all the above failures in performance of Manmohan, Sonia’s interference cannot be a rational excuse.

Why the PM always is found failed?
—————
PS: Two news papers one of English and the other of Hindi have the same news on Manmhoan Singh in its headlines based on some article in Time Magazine. The headline in Hindustan Times is ‘Manmohan a quiet giant who could make history‘ ; and that in Hindi happens to be: अमेरिकी पत्रिका ने मनमोहन को बताया ‘आत्मघाती’. I am at loss. Do both mean the same? Did the Hindi Newspaper Bhaskar translate it from Hindustan Times and did a poor job? Is it the news based on an old article in Time magazine, planted by new media advisor in PMO that has now a new head?

Posted in indian politics | Tagged | Leave a comment

From Nano to Aakash

Posted on January 29, 2012 by indra

Four years ago Tata Motors unveiled the Nano (Images). Overnight Ratan Tata became an iconic figure of auto industry. India got a unique global recognition of an industrial nation with capability of breakthrough innovation. The world recognized India’s mastery of frugal engineering, frugal manufacturing, and frugal management.

However, a number of hurdles and management’s perception about the marketing made Nano’s sales trail far behind the early expectations when it went into regular production at Sanand. Recently Ratan Tata agreed about Nano’s failure to get fast enough volume sales: “I don’t think we were adequately ready with an advertising campaign, a dealer network. The Nano is not a flop. Tata Motors failed to capitalize on the early excitement surrounding the launch of the world’s cheapest car.” Nano didn’t flood the car market as expected. May be that Indian consumers are not willing to buy the cheapest because of a status hurdle.

Another product (Image) is facing similar fate.

Few months ago, Sibal launched a very ambitious project of $35 tablet- Aakash with a lot of fanfare. It was meant to leapfrog the application of technology in education to assist the millions of school children. Datawind was the manufacturer of the tablet. IIT, Rajasthan was providing technical support and deciding on specification. However, that project is also facing an unimaginable delay or may be premature demise. Many like me are shocked and shore about these halfhearted endeavours.

Sometimes I feel like believing that while Aakash was the cheapest solution just for handling the content required for school going children. However with the acquaintance of the top end tablets such as Apple’s iPad available in the market, the users took Aakash as a toy tablet of not much use to them. However, the deficiencies pointed about was its slow speed, heating up quite quickly, poor battery life, the resistive touch-screen, and it supported only Wi-Fi access to the Internet.

Interestingly, Aakash has generated huge excitement among gadget geeks and internationally renowned columnists alike. When Datawind offered Aakash’s slightly more expensive cousin, the UbiSlate7+ online on December 14 2011, the company in less than a week got orders for 60,000 tablets.

Initially it appeared that the manufacturer was having production constraints, but now as it appears the Aakash will require major up gradation and may not reach the market pretty soon.

I wish all IITs and its scientists and engineers would have helped Aakash to succeed once announced and launched by India’s HRD Minister so proudly for the sake of the poor students who can’t afford the i-Pads or similar tablets.

As such a right tablet for the school children at even $50 is still not ready though many dreamt of having one many years ago. If Datawind is not a right vendor or the services of some other reputed manufacturers must be sought to get over the drawbacks of the Aakash and make it really useful to the student community. The burden on their back must get reduced. The learning must get interesting and wide.

The Aakash project should not end up with adding one more in the list of failed tablets. One must remember the history of Popularly known, OLPC (One Laptop Per Child), that was MIT’s Negroponte’s initiative aimed at deploying millions of rugged, ultra low-cost, individually connected laptops to children between six to 12 years of age of developing nations that lack access to such devices. Aakash must serve the same purpose for Indian schools. I wonder if all the children in rural schools are ready to use a gadget like Aakash to bring equity in education.

However, the financial result of Apple announced last week tells the huge requirement of a gadget such as i-Pads. And I could get the insight of its manufacturing in China. I wish those interested must read the stories of the wonder called i-Pads and its manufacturing, though as usual some disturbing news came about the hardships in the Chinese manufacturing companies that has become a good masala for some media men.

Indian manufacturers, be it Godrej Chhotukool or Amul Auto’s tractors, and Indian thinkers such as Vijay Govindarajan, professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, have been the pioneer in frugal engineering. India must go for a real big push to manufacturing electronics and Kapil Sibal must prove himself at least in one project.
———-
PS: Google has 88,100,000 entries for Nano car (Images) and that for Aakash tablet (Images) 3,820,000 as on January, 2012 ar 4 PM in India.

Posted in governance, management, manufacturing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A Winning Way for Vulnerable BJP

Posted on January 25, 2012 by indra

Some identify BJP as a party of business men particularly traders. And perhaps that was the reason that it opposed FDI in multi-brand retails that I and many like me didn’t like or agree. Most of the country men like or should like BJP as an alternative to Congress Party that survives as because there is some Nehru descendent owns it. Many like me don’t like the sycophancy and the family rule of Congress Party, though it has still many good leaders.

BJP or for that matter NDA even with its allying political parties such as opportunistic JD=U, fascist Shiv Sena and community-linked SGP can never win a majority at centre. With the major minority community that considers it as anti- Muslim not voting for it, BJP will always be having a big handicap. India has many constituencies where the percentage of minority voters is significant with overall population of around 20%. For example, Muslims are expected to influence the outcome of the UP results in at least 130 constituencies where their numbers are large. Keeping this in mind, the BSP has fielded 84 Muslim candidates, the Samajwadi Party 75 and the Congress 61.

In India today with the proliferation of political parties, the elections are won and lost by additional few percentages of votes in favour. How can a community with population of 18% or more be neglected? The way BJP can bring the minority on its side requires it to innovate some acceptable programmes and projects that can benefit the majority of this minority.
I was really impressed with a report coming out of Bihar in Telegraph: “Jan. 14: The BJP today announced the launch of Shiksha Abhiyan, a programme under which party leaders and workers from the state to block-levels would convince people to send their wards to school.”

This may prove a wonderful move. Amartya Sen says, “Focus on health and education allowing growth to take care of itself.” I wish to make it further simpler and say, “Focus on just education and you will win the people.”

I wish BJP pulls out all its resources and goes to every family in rural and urban areas and approaches the parents without any bias. It can always show more focus on the minority and deprived families without telling that. Its own members or volunteers drawn from all the institutions of priviledged class such as one done in Times Group Teach India programme must convince the parents about the need of education and sell the dreams about the education that can catapult the family ahead and make them enjoy a better quality of living.

If BJP can’t bring the minority and dalit through embracing them in right manner, it must forget to lead or govern the nation that it wishes. However, the party will have to be cautious while taking up this massive education and skilling drive. The party must be sincere and move fast so that the project can distinguish it from the other parties that are still depending on money and manpower. It must avoid any conflict and invite all parties to join it in its drive. It must not do anything that can raise the controversy of its move as saffronisation of education and skilling.

The younger India will love to work for BJP if its leadership is innovative and inspirational and if it agrees to incorporate democratic means for all the decisions such as the selection of candidates for the elections at various levels. It will have to get itself engaged in the social work at grassroots level that helps even an ordinary person to get all his rights and benefits provided by the government and other agencies.

I don’t know if the BJP leadership will agree for taking the trouble for a future of its own or it will go the way only what RSS wishes, as many say. And let me be frank, I could not get convinced by any RSS men till date.

Posted in indian politics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

For Parents of School-going Children

Posted on January 23, 2012 by indra

It’s again the examination time, be it finals or entrance examinations. Examinees as well as guardians or parents are equally stressed. While the coaching centres including private tuition sector remain crowded, the schools appear deserted. Teachers have shifted to the coaching centres or doing a fair business from home itself. The traditional schools and institutions but for some, are today just the registering centres and not for holding classes and teaching or completing syllabus of the courses. Are you one of such a lot of parents?

Attaining excellence in education is long drawn process. It demands sacrifices from the students as well as parents with no outing, no TV, no partying and many things. Lucky are very few who don’t make such sacrifices and still their children excel.

As your child starts growing, you will have to change your life style a little and create an ambience for the child to get interested in study and school. Please start buying good books and magazines and engage yourselves in reading them in your spare time. Your interest at home influences your child immensely. The child must perceive that studying through books aided by the school teachers, supervising parents, tutors or friends will be good for his or her life.

You must keep a close watch on the interest of your child. Please notice if by the time your child reaches class VII standard exhibits a clear cut interest. Don’t force him to prepare for becoming engineers that has become the major thrust of parents these days. It will be excellent if his activity indicate an aptitude for becoming engineer.

Are you one of those parents who wish to see your child into IITs or any other engineering institutes with good ranking? If he is among the top five in his class with good interest and scores in science and mathematics, you can try for these top engineering colleges.

If you do really wish to and your ward also wants to prefer, don’t loose heart even he doesn’t get into these top institutes. There are many tier I and tier 2 engineering colleges. Those are equally good. Try to impress on your child that the name of the college behind the degree of engineering hardly matters once he gets in to real career.

If your child has not succeeded to enter in IITs or the targeted institute, there is nothing to worry. Please appreciate that only 1-2% succeeds out of about 5 lakhs of the students who appear for the entrance examination every year. Don’t waste time and money for going one more time for coaching. Instead try to get into the best possible private engineering college suited to your means. If your child works hard, he will become equally good engineer. I found a large number of the engineers from unknown and unheard of engineering colleges doing really good in American companies in US or in MNCs in India.

I have some advices for those whose children succeed to get into engineering.

Once your gets into engineering course and starts liking it, please dissuade him to get engaged in preparing for MBA or UPS examinations that has become a practice now with the engineering students. One must go for MBA only after an experience of 4-5 years at work. Unfortunately except for some institutes such as ISB, other institutes do allow fresh graduates for its MBA course. But then why did one go for engineering? One can do equally good by going for MBA even after any graduate course of his choice?
While in the final year of engineering, your ward has few other options too besides joining a company. Why should he not go for further studies such as M.Tech or Ph.D.? Many tech industries now prefer persons with higher qualification with R&D and innovation becoming a very important activity in this competitive world.

Posted in education | Tagged | Leave a comment

India’s R&D, Science and Mathematics

Posted on January 19, 2012 by indra

We had a lot of hope from Nilesh, the youngest son of my cousin Nirmal. He wasted a year in Kota taking coaching for getting into IITs and then took admission in a private engineering school near Agra. He has just completed his first semester of engineering. He had preferred for electrical and electronics as his branch, not because he had interest in it, but as it could get him better chance for placement from the institute itself. Nilesh was with me last week. I was amazed when he talked about doing MBA as his goal after completing engineering. I advised him to focus on his engineering. MBA from a good college is not only expensive, but also makes the 4-year education of engineering a waste. More prudent way out perhaps is to go for an executive management course related to the sector the engineering graduate gets into for his initial employment. However, most students of engineering today are having almost similar wishes as Nilesh wanted. I don’t know if Nilesh would follow my advice.

Nilesh and his age group are least interested in mastering or even knowing the basics of their preferred subjects. Perhaps MGK Menon revealed the scenario very rightly when he said, “Most people are searching for money. So those who do science and are very good at it, want to do IIT entrance. Then they go for these tuition and so on. And by the time they finish with all those examination efforts and the tuition, they are completely drained. There’s nothing much left in them. And then they get into an IIT, and then what is their aim in getting into an IIT? Not to do engineering, per se, but to then get out and do an MBA. And from an MBA, they want to go into areas like finance, and so on. And very large number want to essentially enter the IT sector, which is the money-making sector.” Thus the left outs for teaching and R&D functions are certainly not the best, though only the best would have been desirable.

Let us look at few recent media reports in support of what I have tried to state:

“A student of the coveted institute, Siddharth Shah, was the first student from his batch to be picked up by a leading global investment bank during the summer internship. The company paid him Rs 2.5 lakh per month during the internship. With such credentials, Shah would be among the highest paid students of the institute in the campus placement.” Why should not this become the dream of all who can do that?

“Six undergraduate students at Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), University of Delhi, have walked away with offers from Deutsche Bank with a salary package of Rs 16.5 lakh per annum.”

“95% of students graduating this year from IIM-B are from a technical background (93% from engineering and 2% from science, commerce students make up 3% of the student body while other fields account for a mere 2%.It’s not much different at IIMA, where engineers constitute 91% of the student body.” “In sharp contrast, Harvard Business School (HBS) has the following division of its class of 2012 based on undergraduate majors: humanities and social sciences (43%); engineering/natural science/technology (33%); business administration (21%). Or look at Wharton: humanities and social sciences (43%), business (29%), engineering/math/science (25%); and others (3%).” Does it not require a serious overview to stop the loss of the best engineers by the policy makers who must consult and collaborate to find the solution desirable for the industry as well as for the candidates? “Should not tech pros get an MBA?”

The lure of the initial package in million offered by the private enterprises, particularly the financial institutions, from all over the world in the mind of the student community and parent fraternity is creating havoc for learning oriented education and the result of this aggressive but unscrupulous invasion on the knowledge society will be horrendous. India will hardly get the first class brain for the really skill requiring professions such as those of doctors, engineers and scientists. And this chaos is coming from the business model innovators of US. I hardly know what can be done about it.

Further, with globalization and scarcity of talent and trained persons, the best of India’s brains still prefer to go to foreign soils for studies or jobs. The next best try to get into the MNCs that have established its shop in India. For the analytical jobs, many financial giants such as HSBC are hiring chartered accountants, MBAs and graduates in engineering, mathematics and statistics.

Our education system as such is hardly encouraging the students to appreciate and get interested in knowing any subject to its ultimate depth. It’s just a chance that some rare species for reasons unknown go for teaching and R&D.

India’s disadvantage is also due to the wide spread deprivation and the lack of education of the parents in the majority of the population. They just can’t give up an opportunity to get to the top ranking jobs.

Under this scenario, how can one think of getting in competition with the country where the education at early stage itself as well as the society, make a student interested in pursuing a subject of interest rather than a subject that pays the most as initial package?

Posted in education, governance | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

India vs.China: R&D

Posted on January 13, 2012 by indra

The prime minister’s speech at Bhubaneswar at 99th India Science Congress made many revelations about the nation status on R&D after six plus decades of independence. As usual, I felt like compiling a data on India vs. China. The objective is to tell academicians and policy makers of the nation that India must rise and let them help in this by making education a mission without which a nation can’t become a super power.

1.India published 233,027 scientific papers in 2010 compared to 969,315 research articles by China.

2.China recorded a 22.83% growth in publishing scientific research compared to 14.27% by Indian researchers.

3.On an index of state of art science, China was placed at 0.86 with India coming on the negative end of the scale at -2.48 though the citation levels (how many other researchers read the papers) was higher for India than China on average.

4.India had 159 areas of competencies in different scientific fields while China had 885 such areas. While India is publishing more in chemistry. engineering, biology and biotech, China is publishing a lot more in computer sciences, medical specialties, mathematics, physics and health sciences.

5.China patents five times more than India for every billion dollars of GDP and the growth in registering new patents has risen rapidly over past five years. In 2005, China had filed 93,485 patents and this galloped to 153,060 in 2007.

6.China is going to target investing 3% of its GDP into scientific endeavours by 2020 while India is still ‘aspiring’ to ramp it up from the current 0.9% to 2% by 2017.

7.China’s GDP is $6,980 billion as per IMF compared to India’s $1,843 billion. China investing about 2.5% of its GDP last year in S&T works out to $174 billion compared to India’s 0.9% which works out to roughly $16.5 billion.

8.Even a decade ago in 2002-03, China had 8.5 lakh researchers producing 40,000 PhD theses in sciences compared to India’s 1.5 lakh people producing about 1,000 PhD theses in R&D.

9.While China invests heavily through state-run scientific institutions, it also pulls in a large amount of private investment from outside. It has nearly 100 international research facilities that have come up since 2003.

10.India’s public investment in R&D has, in comparison, gone down with time and has been unable to attract partnerships with the private sector as well.

11.Among the four nations that have achieved an all-members-gold IMO (International Maths Olympiad) with a full team, China has been at the top with 11 times, Russia and USA 2 times each and Bulgaria 1 time. Is it not surprising that the nation of Bhrahamgupta, Bhaskaracharya, the inventor of zero and decimal, is no where in mention?

12.The Global Innovation Index 2011 ranks India at 62 among 125 nations’ innovativeness, while China is at 29. Interestingly, the main author of the Index is an Indian.

I shall agree that there are very rational reasons for India’s poor performance. I shall discuss that next time.

Posted in education | Tagged , | Leave a comment