http://drishtikona.com My online journal with thoughts, opinions, comments and more.. Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:04:17 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.1.2 http://drishtikona.com/images/favicon.gif http://drishtikona.com en http://drishtikona.com/archives/employmenteducation/003032.php http://drishtikona.com/archives/employmenteducation/003032.php#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:56:28 +0000 Indra http://drishtikona.com/archives/employmenteducation/003032.php 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. ]]> 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. ]]> http://drishtikona.com/archives/employmenteducation/003032.php/feed/ http://drishtikona.com/archives/manufacturing/003029.php http://drishtikona.com/archives/manufacturing/003029.php#comments Sun, 29 Jan 2012 05:38:25 +0000 Indra http://drishtikona.com/archives/manufacturing/003029.php 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. ]]> 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. ]]> http://drishtikona.com/archives/manufacturing/003029.php/feed/ http://drishtikona.com/archives/indian_politics/003027.php http://drishtikona.com/archives/indian_politics/003027.php#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 06:11:39 +0000 Indra http://drishtikona.com/archives/indian_politics/003027.php 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. ]]> 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. ]]> http://drishtikona.com/archives/indian_politics/003027.php/feed/ http://drishtikona.com/archives/employmenteducation/003026.php http://drishtikona.com/archives/employmenteducation/003026.php#comments Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:45:02 +0000 Indra http://drishtikona.com/archives/employmenteducation/003026.php 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. Are you having some questions, please contact irsharma@gmail,com To be continued ]]> 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. Are you having some questions, please contact irsharma@gmail,com To be continued ]]> http://drishtikona.com/archives/employmenteducation/003026.php/feed/ http://drishtikona.com/archives/industrymanagement/003025.php http://drishtikona.com/archives/industrymanagement/003025.php#comments Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:35:57 +0000 Indra http://drishtikona.com/archives/industrymanagement/003025.php 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? ]]> 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? ]]> http://drishtikona.com/archives/industrymanagement/003025.php/feed/ http://drishtikona.com/archives/government_policyadministration/003023.php http://drishtikona.com/archives/government_policyadministration/003023.php#comments Fri, 13 Jan 2012 02:00:46 +0000 Indra http://drishtikona.com/archives/government_policyadministration/003023.php 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. ]]> 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. ]]> http://drishtikona.com/archives/government_policyadministration/003023.php/feed/ http://drishtikona.com/archives/government_policyadministration/003022.php http://drishtikona.com/archives/government_policyadministration/003022.php#comments Tue, 10 Jan 2012 12:03:01 +0000 Indra http://drishtikona.com/archives/government_policyadministration/003022.php morose once he came to know of the India’s status of R&D in comparison to China while preparing a speech for the 99th India Science Congress at Bhubaneswar. His speech made us more morose. He himself gave a lot of real facts on education and R&D in India. “The number of scientific publications by Indian scientists working in India has increased at more than 12% per annum against the global average of 4% over the last few years,. India has moved from the 15th rank in 2003 to the 9th rank in 2010 with respect to the number of publications in peer valued journals. The University of Rajasthan leads among the top 50 Indian scientific institutions in citations per paper under international collaboration. India produces 8,900 PhDs annually in science and engineering, three thousand more than five years ago.” Manmohan was perhaps trying to prove how hard his government worked for improving R&D in India. India’s R&D-spend has remained lower than 1% for more than a decade now, 0.65% in 1996, 0.75% in 2001, 0.89% in 2006, 0.8% in 2009 and 0.9% in 2010. And Manmohan promised that ‘the total R&D spending as a percentage of GDP would increase to 2 per cent by the end of the XII Plan Period from the current level of about 0.9 per cent. Manmohan also expressed his unhappiness that ‘Industry contributed only 25 per cent of the total R&D expenditure today, and must increase its contribution’. “GE and Motorola have created world class technology hubs in India, while India’s own industry has not done so, except perhaps in the pharma sector.” Will his promise of the increased government investment in R&D get materialized? Interestingly, as reported, Manmohan promised the same what Atal did few years ago on the same platform. Will Manmohan sit with the Indian CEOs of technology companies, convince them and take a positive commitment and ask his minister of science and technology to monitor and be accountable? If Manmohan is pained with ‘the recent survey of 2000 Indian women PhD holders in science that had found 60% of them unemployed’, will he ask some agency to investigate and find out the ways and means to improve the situation? Manmohan Singh passed on some good news too about girls and women. “49.6% of the INSPIRE awardees are girls. More than 60% of INSPIRE fellows pursuing doctoral research are women.” These are all improving performances. Unfortunately, the competitors have gone ahead. India will have to have a strong strategy to catch up. “The country’s Agni Missile programme has a women scientist -- Tessy Thomas at the helm and for the first time last year three women scientists received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize as compared to total 11 women awardees for all the years since 1958 upto last year. A proposal to build national capacity and capability in supercomputing will be implemented by the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore at an estimated cost of Rs5, 000 crore. Another proposal is there to set up a Neutrino Observatory at Theni in Tamil Nadu at a cost of Rs1,350 crore to study the fundamental particles that form the universe. Tribals of Koraput region received global recognition for conservation of bio-diversity and developing climate resilient farming systems.” China has 16 universities in the top 500 (13 in engineering, 1 in medicine and 1 in social sciences) while India has just 2. China has 6.8% of the world’s top 500 universities and accounts for 19.8% of global population—India’s figures are 0.4% and 17.1%, respectively. India’s gross enrolment ratio in higher education has gone up—from a dismal 5% in 1980 to 12.5% in 2007 to 17.27% in 2009-10—with the rise in GDP growth. But India requires hundreds of new universities and thousands of colleges and must focus on the quality of teaching and research. It is not bad to make China as benchmark for adding capacity, but the system must be designed to ensure the quality of the new institutes as we;; as for improving the existing ones. ]]> morose once he came to know of the India’s status of R&D in comparison to China while preparing a speech for the 99th India Science Congress at Bhubaneswar. His speech made us more morose. He himself gave a lot of real facts on education and R&D in India. “The number of scientific publications by Indian scientists working in India has increased at more than 12% per annum against the global average of 4% over the last few years,. India has moved from the 15th rank in 2003 to the 9th rank in 2010 with respect to the number of publications in peer valued journals. The University of Rajasthan leads among the top 50 Indian scientific institutions in citations per paper under international collaboration. India produces 8,900 PhDs annually in science and engineering, three thousand more than five years ago.” Manmohan was perhaps trying to prove how hard his government worked for improving R&D in India. India’s R&D-spend has remained lower than 1% for more than a decade now, 0.65% in 1996, 0.75% in 2001, 0.89% in 2006, 0.8% in 2009 and 0.9% in 2010. And Manmohan promised that ‘the total R&D spending as a percentage of GDP would increase to 2 per cent by the end of the XII Plan Period from the current level of about 0.9 per cent. Manmohan also expressed his unhappiness that ‘Industry contributed only 25 per cent of the total R&D expenditure today, and must increase its contribution’. “GE and Motorola have created world class technology hubs in India, while India’s own industry has not done so, except perhaps in the pharma sector.” Will his promise of the increased government investment in R&D get materialized? Interestingly, as reported, Manmohan promised the same what Atal did few years ago on the same platform. Will Manmohan sit with the Indian CEOs of technology companies, convince them and take a positive commitment and ask his minister of science and technology to monitor and be accountable? If Manmohan is pained with ‘the recent survey of 2000 Indian women PhD holders in science that had found 60% of them unemployed’, will he ask some agency to investigate and find out the ways and means to improve the situation? Manmohan Singh passed on some good news too about girls and women. “49.6% of the INSPIRE awardees are girls. More than 60% of INSPIRE fellows pursuing doctoral research are women.” These are all improving performances. Unfortunately, the competitors have gone ahead. India will have to have a strong strategy to catch up. “The country’s Agni Missile programme has a women scientist -- Tessy Thomas at the helm and for the first time last year three women scientists received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize as compared to total 11 women awardees for all the years since 1958 upto last year. A proposal to build national capacity and capability in supercomputing will be implemented by the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore at an estimated cost of Rs5, 000 crore. Another proposal is there to set up a Neutrino Observatory at Theni in Tamil Nadu at a cost of Rs1,350 crore to study the fundamental particles that form the universe. Tribals of Koraput region received global recognition for conservation of bio-diversity and developing climate resilient farming systems.” China has 16 universities in the top 500 (13 in engineering, 1 in medicine and 1 in social sciences) while India has just 2. China has 6.8% of the world’s top 500 universities and accounts for 19.8% of global population—India’s figures are 0.4% and 17.1%, respectively. India’s gross enrolment ratio in higher education has gone up—from a dismal 5% in 1980 to 12.5% in 2007 to 17.27% in 2009-10—with the rise in GDP growth. But India requires hundreds of new universities and thousands of colleges and must focus on the quality of teaching and research. It is not bad to make China as benchmark for adding capacity, but the system must be designed to ensure the quality of the new institutes as we;; as for improving the existing ones. ]]> http://drishtikona.com/archives/government_policyadministration/003022.php/feed/