In quest for academic excellence

Mahmood Hassan

(The writer is Director, Char Areas Development, Assam. He can be reached at mahmoodhassan61786@gmail.com)

Recently the Indian government has a taken a decision to allow foreign universities to set up their campuses in India. The decision has been taken as a part of newly laid of New Education Policy, 2020(NEP) with the positive intent to provide quality education in the country. In a recent Educational survey report published by the UK-based Times Higher Education (THE) on World University Rankings, 2021 covering 1500 universities in 93 nations it was revealed that merely two Indian institutes feature in the list of world's top 400 universities. Indian Institute of Science of Bengaluru is placed at 301-350 groupings and Indian Institute of Technology of Bombay in 351-400 bracket. Ironically, Tezpur University features in top 800 universities. Oxford University topped the list followed by Stanford and Harvard. These facts speak about the poor state of education in India unable to meet the prevailing global standards. It is an undeniable fact that India does not have a 'world class' university capable enough to compete with the best institutes in the world.

The quality of education is in India have remained a lot to be desired. The quality of research has not improved at a time when Chinese Universities are making their gradual dent despite their language and communication problems. Asian Universities of Taiwan, Singapore or South Korea are doing better than India in the list. The quality of ongoing technological research has taken the countries to newer zenith. China's Tsinghua University was adjudged best in the continent with an overall rank of 20. The last decade witnessed the enormous progress in Universities across Asia.

The foundation of educational discourse laid down by the colonial administrators in the 19th century continues to be followed even till today. Even today the common citizens do not perceive higher education as an important intellectual discourse unlike in the west but a tool to educate the youths to get qualifications in mark sheets and certificates so that they can find a suitable job. Lord Macaulay's system of education introduced in India was aimed to create a class of 'babus' for running the British administration. The first universities came up in India during those periods starting with Calcutta, Bombay and Madras was designed to create such babus who would be loyal to their master and not to produce scientists and scholars like Cambridge or Oxford. This thinking even persists today. Reasoning; critical thinking or innovativeness has never been the forte of the Indian institutions. At a time when the entire South East Asia is showing remarkable excellence in academic pursuits whereas India is falling way behind.

Inarguably unlike the foreign universities the Indian universities do not promote or spend too much on research and innovations. This is the primary reason that a number of Indian scientists like Hargovind Khurana, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Chandrasekhar Venkataraman and Subramanian Chandrasekhar or economist like Amartya Sen or Abhijit Banerjee won Nobel Prizes for their research outside India. A large number of software engineers has set up their venture capital firms in Silicon valley in the USA shows the Indian prowess given the opportunity. As a part of the new framework the concept of creativity and innovativeness must be promoted by the faculties. Unlike the west or south Asian universities political issues create hindrances in independent functioning of these institutes. This is unfortunate as we do not hear such incidents occurring in Harvard or Cambridge where roll of honour and pictures of Nobel Prizes awardees adorn the corridors of the institutions. One can take the case study of the extremely talented physicist Stephen Hawkings who was allowed to continue his research despite his severe physical disabilities by the Oxford University. This is a remarkable example of a university helping a brilliant professor who was on verge of mental disintegration. The movie "Theory of Everything" a biopic on the life of the scientist has highlighted this remarkable story. There are more than 480 public universities and more than 25,000 undergraduate colleges in the country.

Our academic system is still lagging far behind other nations for the simple reason that there is poor investment by the government unlike the USA or China in Research and Development for promoting new ideas and innovativeness among the students. China has proven itself as the market leaders simply because of the huge contributions from the Research and Development departments of the Chinese Universities and technical universities that feature among the top universities in the world. Countries like Japan have built a new education system to create innovative ideas and technologies. This has been proven by regular patenting of new technologies particularly in the realm of electronics and motor vehicles. Singapore has risen lately as a knowledge hub in south East Asia. India must learn from these neighbouring countries how the private sector or the corporate world and e commerce sites are sponsoring the innovative products brought out in global market through research and development in the universities.

In the Global Innovation Index for 2020 released by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) India's position was 48th in the list of top 50 innovative countries. In the report Switzerland occupies the top spot whereas China occupies 14th position which is the only middle-income economy among the top 30. Most of the applications for patenting of various innovations or products that are received by WIPO comes from countries like China, the USA, Japan, South Korea and the European Union. This shows how the countries promoting innovations and creativity are moving ahead in this digital age. Unfortunately the innovativeness of the Indian entrepreneurs and scientists are not given any importance by our higher technical institutes and universities. Uddhav Bharali is one such innovator from Assam who is waiting for patent rights for more than 100 useful products.

At a time when the government is promoting the ideas of 'Make in India', 'Start Up India' or 'Digital India' into reality the researchers in the country must promote innovativeness among the youths. However, there are scope and potentialities in India if appropriate steps are initiated. The IIT Delhi Director states that "If Delhi NCR has the highest number of start-ups /Unicorns in India, IIT Delhi has played a role in it. If 14 of the 24 Unicorns created by Indians are by the alumni of one single institution IIT Delhi, IIT Delhi is surely doing something right".

Once ancient India was the seat of learning where universities like Nalanda and Taxila were the places where intellectual ideas were exchanged with foreign scholars. Quality education, research and technological innovation have to be given emphasis to take the country forward. Instead of the brain drain from India setting up of campuses of reputed universities like Harvard, Yale, Cambridge or Oxford in India is certainly a welcome feature. The latest move of Niti Aayog with a framework will certainly help the country in pursuit for academic excellence.