Page 12 - EW October 2025

Editorial

ENABLING RISE OF THE ASIAN CENTURY ed border lines for over seven decades
with large annual defence outlays se-
verely debilitating India’s national
lthough the indian intelligen- of starting fresh border demarca- development effort.
tsia has not yet acknowledged tion negotiations with China to settle Against this backdrop, the muscu-
Ait, the bonhomie displayed by this issue unresolved since India at- lar stance adopted on the Sino-India
presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia, tained its freedom from British rule border issue by the BJP/NDA govern-
Xi Jing Ping of China and India’s in 1947. It is pertinent to recall that ment in Delhi which has inherited this
prime minister Narendra Modi at the the communist government that as- mess from the Congress party, is fool-
SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organ- sumed power in Beijing in 1949 when ish. The plain truth is that people-to-
isation) Summit which concluded on Chairman Mao famously declared that people Sino-India ties are strong, as
September 1 in Tianjin, China, pres- “China has stood up”, had ab initio indicated by the unhesitating willing-
ages the rise of a new world order. protested border lines drawn by the ness of Indian industry and trade to
The post World War II global order British government of India in Aksai import goods and merchandise from
shaped by the victorious Anglo-Saxon Chin and Tibet on grounds that they our neighbour nation. The value of
US-UK alliance dominated by the US, had been imposed upon a then weak Sino-India bilateral trade in 2024-25
is nearing the end of its life cycle after China through “unequal treaties”. aggregated $128 billion with India’s
emergence and maturity of free and In retrospect, post-independence deficit of $99 billion, indicative of our
independent nation states of Asia — India’s Congress government and heavy reliance on Chinese goods, in-
India, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s cluding critically important interme-
Cambodia, Thailand and rapid resur- neglect and failure to negotiate mutu- diates and components.
gence of Japan — following WWII. ally acceptable border lines in the era In the circumstances continued
It’s only a matter of time before the when Sino-Indian bonhomie (“Hindi- failure to iron out peripheral bound-
21st century transforms into the Asian Chini bhai-bhai”) was at its apogee, ary issues and build strong durable
Century, an inevitability accelerated was an egregious error. It provoked ties with our northern neighbour na-
by America’s foolish decision to in- the Sino-India border war of 1962 tion is tantamount to dereliction of
stall a wrecking-ball president in the in which the under-prepared Indian duty and poor statesmanship, espe-
White House. Army was overrun and humiliated. cially in light of the radically altered
However this necessitates an ur- Since then there’s been an uneasy global geo-political situation. It is de-
gent national consensus on the issue military stand-off along undemarcat- laying dawn of the Asian century.

HEIS MUST UPLIFT HOST COMMUNITIES ing industry, business and societies
around the world. Therefore it’s an
urgent imperative for the academy
to emerge from its ivory towers and
ith an aggregate 43 mil- tion, and may well have become exac- develop close connect with industry,
lion youth on their muster erbated with the passage of time. For government and their host communi-
Wrolls, contemporary In- instance, widespread poverty, hunger, ties.
dia’s 52,000 undergrad colleges and ignorance and a rapidly deteriorating The knowledge, science and re-
1,338 universities arguably comprise ecology and ecosystem. Dominant search capability to reduce environ-
the largest higher education system sentiment within post-independence mental pollution asphyxiating urban
worldwide. Yet over the past 79 years India’s higher education institutions India; riverine pollution killing the
since independence, the academy (HEIs) has been — and remains — country’s great rivers; urban ve-
has not ideated and/or presented the that providing solutions to these and hicular traffic snarls and automobile
country’s long-suffering public with related problems that have enfeebled emissions destroying the nation’s
any notable game-changer product, the nation does not fall within their most productive cities; rock-bottom
service or disruptive technology. The purview. This ivory tower culture un- agriculture and industry productiv-
one possible exception is the unified der which the academy and industry ity, among other thousand unnatural
payment interface (UPI) which en- remain unconnected universes is to a shocks slowing national development,
ables bank-bank cash payments to great extent responsible for the coun- must necessarily emerge from the fac-
retail vendors through internet con- try’s also-ran status within the global ulty and students of academia which
nected smartphones. commonwealth. hosts the best brains of society.
Conspicuous failure to produce It’s surprising that neither academy In the circumstances, it’s time In-
revolutionary products and services nor industry leaders have discovered dia’s isolationist HEIs integrated with
apart, India’s over-blown academy has that most, if not all the products, ser- their host societies and cities to apply
also neglected to apply knowledge to vices and new technologies — automo- knowledge of science, technology and
solve major problems debilitating so- biles, telecom, internet connectivity, the social sciences for upliftment of
ciety and impeding the national devel- computers and smartphones — Were their host communities. Indeed, this
opment effort. Indeed almost all ma- ideated and incubated in the great is an apposite time for deans and dons
jor problems that hindered economic universities of the West and commer- of academia to revise and reorient so-
development and India’s national cialized by business entrepreneurs ciety/city as the curriculum. That’s the
development effort, still await resolu- and corporations totally transform- way forward for India’s HEIs.

12 EDUCATIONWORLD OCTOBER 2025