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Journalism of Courage
Three years since its inception, for the first time ever, the members of the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) had an interactive session with management students and faculty members at a conference by the NKC and the All India Management Association (AIMA) on Monday.
Sam Pitroda, chairman, NKC, and other members of the NKC- Dr Sujata Ramdorai, Professor (School of Mathematics) Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Dr Ashok Ganguly, Chairman, Firstsource Ltd and ABP Pvt Ltd and Professor Amitabh Mattoo, vice-chancellor of University of Jammu addressed students of Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) and other B-schools. They spoke of the state of education system in India, emphasizing on school education, e-governance and other core areas.
“We have just 380 universities for a population of over 1 billion. As per NKC recommendations, India needs at least 1500 more universities . Even as we speak of increasing the number, we also need to focus on improving the quality. There are not enough trained qualified professionals in India today.” Dr Ashok Ganguly said, adding, “Unless vocational education is not modernized, our demographic dividend will be in a chaos.”
Pitroda who is considered to be one of the pioneers in transforming India’s telecommunications and information technology infrastructure as the founding chairman of the Telecom Commission in India, reminisced on how it took the telecom industry 20 years to change the face of India but said that the same journey for a ‘knowledge revolution’ would be longer and more complex.
“We have started the journey but we require more of political will, public opinion and more importantly insistence by the people to demand change,” he said. Taking a dig at the central government, Pitroda said that people should not wait for “Delhi to take decisions” but local commutates could take up initiatives . Pitroda also stressed on the need for children to know English in order to be a ‘global player’. “English should be taught from standard one in all the schools. The idea is not to replace the mother tongue but to capitalise on the capacity of young children to grasp different languages.”
Pitroda concluded by urging the students to ‘get into teaching’. “We need more and more people to join us in our journey,” he said.
