Page 38 - EW April 2025

Cover Story

F OR REGULAR readers labs and 39 outreach

of this sui generis pub-
centres countrywide,
has failed to ideate
lication which for the
past 25 years since it
was promoted with the any global or nation-
al groundbreaking-
unexceptional objec- product or service.
tive of “building the pressure of pub- It has evolved into a
lic opinion to make education the #1 bloated bureaucratic
item on the national agenda,” but has organisation with
had to suffer prolonged calculated in- 3,476 “active scien-
difference of the establishment, it’s a tists” supported by
familiar lament. None of India’s 1,168 4,000 technical and
universities — some of over 150 years other staff. India Inc
vintage — or specialist higher ed in- — which was expect-
stitutions, the Indian Institute of Sci- ed to commission
ence, Bangalore and Soviet-inspired CSIR Delhi headquarters: little India Inc faith research projects
Council of Scientific and Industrial to CSIR — has little
Research (CSIR) have been able to masses who pay for the employment faith in it.
present the world with a killer, zap- of academics and learning of millions In the circumstance, India’s criti-
’em product or service. students enrolled in India’s HEIs. cally important Research & Develop-
The railway engine, electricity, mo- Admittedly, academics and stu- ment (R&D) obligation to generate
tor car, jet airplane engine and revo- dents in India’s also-ran universities new knowledge and inspire invention
lutionary mind-bending products and are not entirely to blame for this sorry has fallen between two stools. Univer-
services such as the smartphone, the situation. Its genesis can be traced sities do hardly any R&D work and
Internet, Google, Metaverse, Chat- back to the early years after indepen- CSIR has failed to enthuse India Inc
GPT, and humanoid robots, have all dence when the Nehru-led Congress about its research and product devel-
been ideated and incubated in western party following the inorganic Soviet opment capabilities.
countries, mainly in research labora- model divested universities of their Consequently while America’s an-
tories of America’s great nation-build- research function and transferred nual R&D expenditure mainly con-
ing universities. this traditional obligation to special- ducted by its 4,000 universities aggre-
Independent India’s universities ised research organisations such as gates to 3.4 percent of its $23 trillion
and higher education institutions the Council of Scientific and Indus- GDP; China’s to 2.6 percent; South
where professors draw huge salaries trial Research (CSIR). As a result, the Korea’s to 5.2 percent cf. India’s mere
that are several dozen multiples of per important function of research and 0.6 percent of GDP. Little wonder in
capita GDP, and 43 million students knowledge creation was taken away the past 77 years since independence,
avail education at rock-bottom prices, from universities which have been neither CSIR nor the country’s 1,168
haven’t come good with even one glob- transformed into singular teaching universities have been successful in
al game-changer product or service in institutions. ideating a revolutionary product, ser-
the past 77 years. Therefore high-calibre faculty in- vice or invention. Despite all the bluff
This sustained failure apart, a terested in research-cum-teaching, and bluster, India is a distant laggard
greater tragedy of India’s higher edu- have been lured away by universities in the global socio-economic develop-
cation institutions (HEIs) is that they abroad, especially in the US. Mean- ment race with a per capita income
have failed to invent any transforma- while since it was established in 1942, of $2,600 cf. America’s $86,000 and
tive goods or services to rectify deep- CSIR which comprises 37 national China’s $13,600.
rooted and worsening problems of the Yet all is not gloom and doom. In
Indian economy — toxic air pollution, After EducationWorld recent years — and especially after
polluted rivers, traffic-gridlocked ur- was launched in 1999 a EducationWorld launched in 1999
ban habitats, low farm and office pro- to accord primacy to education in the
ductivity. Indeed it’s doubtful whether new energy and spirit of national development effort, began de-
academics and students in our univer- dynamism has become manding accountability and outcomes
sities are aware of the unwritten social manifest in India’s 1.4 million from mandarins of Shastri Bhavan,
contract under which they are obliged Delhi, laidback professoriate in ivory
to devise solutions for these and other schools, 45,000 colleges and towers and school leaders and teachers
endemic problems that make life nas- 1,168 universities countrywide — a new energy and spirit
ty, brutish and too long for the toiling of dynamism has become manifest in

38 EDUCATIONWORLD APRIL 2025