What exactly happened at Fukushima ?

Conventional Wisdom upside down: Designed in USA, Manufactured in China !

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I recently came across very provocative but still very critical-pragmatic paragraphs about the things we experience in economic policy crisis these days. I was reading John Kenneth Galbraith`s biography written by Richard Parker. In his very in-depth analysis about the transition from Alfred Marshall to Milton Friedman via George Keneyes through John Kenneth Galbraith. In the context of last three years financial crisis following lines are very noteworthy.

" It has recently been common-indeed fashionable-to talk about the end of the New Deal legacy that was born in 1934. In this view, Franklin Roosevelt`s idea of activist government, and the kind of economic theory eventually labeled 'Keynesian'-activist, interventionist, and liberally purposive-with which Galbraith is associated, has come to a close. Replacing it, we are told, is our 'new' era; Information age has replaced industrial age;  computers, fibre optics, and biotechnology are the new iron of the American economic power; and with them is coming a new way not just of doing things, but of living itself. We are told, we`ll be 'set free' to change our jobs (and careers) repeatedly, to manage our health care, investments, and retirement on our own to compete globally, and thereby to win (if we compete successfully) an unprecedented new prosperity alongside our new freedom."

And now when the issue of competitiveness comes across Paul Krugman tears apart this argument in his famous "Pop Internationalism." Krugman basically argues that notion of competitiveness can hold among different firms but never among different countries. He challenges conventional wisdom in this way: "Conventional view suggests that capital and technology are in fixed supply, and the growth in new countries comes at the expense of the more established countries. The reality is that diffusion of the technology, while it increases competition faced by the leader`s exports also expands their markets and reduces the price of their imports."

          Next, Krugman points out at the credibility crisis and manhandling of the situation which leads to debt crisis. "People in early 1990s were convinced that devaluation was not going to work and Europe seemed on an inevitable path of full monetary union. These apparent lessons for the advanced countries were reinforced by different but seemingly related experiences in the developing world. The debt crisis in the developing world led to the emergence of very high inflation rates. In the efforts to control inflation, exchange rate targets came to play an important role." Then he asks very acute question: Where does the conventional wisdom about economic policy comes from? It is partly driven by economic analysis, I don`t mean to say that research is completely ignored and partly driven by recent economic experience. Confidence of economic experts in what they say comes not so much from solid evidence as from the fact that so many other important people are saying the same thing. You get my point: conventional wisdom, to some extent based on real evidence, has a strong element of sheer fashion into it."

When we observe completion of 10 years of 9/11 or three years of financial crisis, one question looms largest: How does experts get it wrong that none could predict that. (Except this...)  Again Krugman, three years back wrote, about the reasons behind wrong forecasts of the coming economic situation. He says: "Few economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the least of the field’s problems. More important was the profession’s blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy. It’s much harder to say where the economics profession goes from here. But what’s almost certain is that economists will have to learn to live with messiness. That is, they will have to acknowledge the importance of irrational and often unpredictable behavior, face up to the often idiosyncratic imperfections of markets and accept that an elegant economic “theory of everything” is a long way off. In practical terms, this will translate into more cautious policy advice — and a reduced willingness to dismantle economic safeguards in the faith that markets will solve all problems."

Apt description of the crisis in the Krugman`s words is: " Yet the story of economics over the past half century is, to a large degree, the story of a retreat from Keynesianism and a return to neoclassicism." He concludes: "Economics, as a field, got in trouble because economists were seduced by the vision of a perfect, frictionless market system. If the profession is to redeem itself, it will have to reconcile itself to a less alluring vision — that of a market economy that has many virtues but that is also shot through with flaws and frictions. The good news is that we don’t have to start from scratch. Even during the heyday of perfect-market economics, there was a lot of work done on the ways in which the real economy deviated from the theoretical ideal. What’s probably going to happen now — in fact, it’s already happening — is that flaws-and-frictions economics will move from the periphery of economic analysis to its center."

Why I referred to all of this: Just one experience. When I was visiting downtown market in Trieste, Italy recently, I visited many shops which shown the mark on the various products with the punchline: "Designed in USA, Manufactured in China". And I was trying to interpret what it really meant when Italian finance minister visited Beijing to request Chinese government to buy Italian debt. Then certainly conventional wisdom was upside down; welcome the inevitable but unimaginable.

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Education Reforms in India: How and in what way ?

The massive reforms in the Education sector are awaiting for further action by governments, in states and at the centre. Starting from the fundamental Right to Education,  moving towards consolidating the secondary education and towards creating more quality professional and research institutions is the top priority in education sector of the government. The debate about the actual target hovers around achieving 15 % enrolment in 12^th plan and 20% enrolment up to 2020. Some experts in Planning Commission argue that focus should be on the absolute number of people to be brought in the education net rather than concentrating on the percentage of enrolment to be achieved. Real challenges ahead of Planning Commission are manifold when reforms in Education sector are discussed. Those are lack of inspirational incentive for the teacher training at primary and secondary education level. Huge paucity of infrastructure leading towards languishing of the funds and vice versa, great degree of vacuum in   the monitoring of the quality and excellence, too many regulatory institutions making it impossible for smooth functioning of the institutions regulating and those of being regulated.

            The reforms in the education sector are subjected to huge investment increase made by Planning Commission from 10^th to 11^th Plan. New Central Universities, Innovation Universities, Centers of Excellence, National Institutes of Technologies, IIITs, IITs, IISERs and many other premier higher education institutions are being proposed and being established. What is the matter of worry is speed with which these institutions are being established. Another important aspect of worry is the stagnated number of new institutions being proposed and limited intake capacity with limited disciplines having less scope for interdisciplinary professional courses and creating ambience to nurture interdisciplinary research fields.

            The reforms in higher education will only succeed once we create the anticipatory mechanisms which will tap, trace and respond to the growing challenges of the economic growth and sustainable development. The needs of these two factors should drive the classification of the categories which will dominate the creation of quality benchmarks for excellence in human resource development policy aims at. The complacency on the front of human resource development will greatly cripple the India`s growth aspirations which ultimately are aimed at fulfilling the basic needs of the huge population of this country. Development of soft skills and technical skills which will help in strengthening the employability are surely the principal means to provide the equal opportunity to the oppressed classes in competitive environment of job market and also in the attainment of life having meaningful resources to live and nourishing the capability and culture to share, collaborate and plan for synergetic projects of entrepreneurship in any walks of life.

            One of the great lacunas of planning in Higher Education sector is lack of imagination where this entire workforce will lead us to. The active collaboration with the industries so as to have meaningful utilization of those people coming out of the different institutions is very crucial. The   huge untrained human resources can be big disaster when it comes to providing them efficient services. These human resources must be trained to promote self employment, to ignite the industrial ambitions and to nurture the culture of quality and excellence so as to respect the professional values. These professional ethics exposure are absent from training of today`s higher education system. When Planning Commission consistently talks about Inclusive Growth, it remains to be seen whether the process of inclusion will be cherished by government alone. Every member of civil society and in this narrow respect, higher education sector is equally responsible for creating the value chain which will respond positively to enhance the capacity of supply side and also build the capabilities of demand side in education so as to create equitable access with logical expansion without compromising quality and excellence.

            Considering the huge sector of education, different bodies working on the problems of education and conducting research on education is deeply desirable and sought after aspiration. Opportune time has arrived when Planning Commission should push for creating more and more region specific and sector specific research institutes and developing the capabilities of the people already working in this area. Unless and until we have more mature understanding about the kind of agricultural/industrial/information society we need to have in our future we will not be able to justify the mere creation of massive number of huge knowledge institutions whose sole agenda would be to manufacture the professionals rather than cultivating the leaders in every walk of life who can solve the emerging, incidental problems at hand by complementing that knowledge by adding knowledge to understand the emerging scenarios in better ways.

            India is the country which simultaneously lives from 17^th to 21^st century. The equal and opposite argument about India`s strength and weakness is equally true. The massive contradictions and subtle similarities of habits make it unique destination to preserve the unique heritage we have in terms of human resources. Creating modern educational infrastructure will greatly diminish the potential of this diversity India has by creating more homogeneous workforce by killing the diversity of thought present in different demographic groups in India. Notwithstanding the   equality of opportunity inherent in the constitution, any policy aimed at creating more opportunities in primary, secondary and higher education also leaves huge space where exploitation of the people needing education happens all along. S

            Sometimes, this exploitation happens through expensive cost of the education, sometimes through lack of information technology, sometimes due to lack of sufficient access to information resources which can transform the way we learn and sometimes the lack of        access to quality resource persons which makes huge difference in terms of inspiration and standards. Still, people in India have tried hard, thrived in difficult circumstances and embarked on uphill tasks of creating and sustaining institutions and also in knowledge delivery  practices. These people and institutions need to share their experiences in systematic manner so as to help Planning Commission to have better sense of dynamics of the economics of education and trends in quality delivery of education all over the world.

            The role of leaders in the development of higher education cannot be underestimated. While the notion that only administrative leaders are responsible and capable of sustaining and innovating the progress in primary, secondary and higher education. We need to promote the leadership qualities at every level of the education; in teaching, research, administration, training, project development, collaboration, revenue generation, inclusive policies. Creating more and more leaders to ensure the huge demand to be met with quality and quantity will definitely compliment to the nation`s effort in the other sectors of development and economic progress.

            The higher education and any education sector is increasingly being subjected to privatization and in recent days to Public Private Partnership initiatives. The strong opinion of many stalwarts in public policy hold the view that state should not abdicate the responsibility in all education areas. But looking at the challenges about access and maintenance of the quality, entry of the private institutions were inevitable. Planning commission is envisaging different experiment where PPP will be used to strengthen educational infrastructure. Apart from this proposed entry of foreign universities also tries to give this promise of quality and excellence.

            While some of the qualitative aspects of the promises given about the entry of foreign  educational institutions can be debated, the basic issue of state of the art and centers of  excellence in our research institutions  and universities cannot be wished away relying on  or importing the readymade solution. We need to strive perseveringly for the establishment of the new institutions by rewarding all the people contributing to that process. Also, the gross ignorance about the incentives to the students at any level of education cannot be compromised. This is one area which greatly needs massive reforms. The prospects of quality research and development in public funded, autonomous and private research institutes greatly depend upon the kind of reward or incentives provided to the students irrespective of their economic, social status.

            Bottom-line of education reforms in India lies in the fact that little negligence at this stage of history can ruin the prospects of returning to the normal development pace with average human development indicators. Cautious and attentive planning will certainly help to remove the stagnation and arrest the decline of employment unfriendly academic institutions, defeat the largely anti-research environment in Indian universities, demystifying massive confusion about what it means by ‘world class quality’ and off course to eradicate the pervert politics in education replacing it with potential policies in education so as to empower the masses with knowledge, professionalism and a purpose to utilize that knowledge for solving the problems of our daily lives.

           

            The institutions like Planning Commission have always emerged to the scene. Regarding education, real changes started happening since completion of the 10^th Plan. Whether the changes are driven by new terms being coined in terms of BRICS or ideas of knowledge superpower being tossed from here and there; the potential of education is one of the very few instruments which will make the Idea of sustainably developed India true in every sense. In stimulation and response there lies the choice. It was thought that after liberalization India chose to respond. Some people thought it in terms of outsourcing, demographic dividend and knowledge driven sustainable economic growth. Real  stimulation lies not in the terms being appropriated from outside but it lies in deep felt agony of the daily problems faced by millions of Indian citizens across the length and breadth  of the country. And the space created by this agony and pain is pushing Indian policymakers towards reforms in Indian education system. Within this pain and these upcoming policies, lie our ability to make choices. Choices for better life, choices for better tomorrow!

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Planning Commission 2.0--- Towards Inclusion through Transformation

            Considering the growing challenges in front of Government of India in the context of ensuring ‘human development’ for all of its citizens, the crucial role of Planning Commission was, is and will always be at the core of policy making. This was the most significant realization once someone witnesses the actual evidence driven policy making debates in the Planning Commission meetings. Although, we may not agree that the great aspect of strategic planning which is observed in the foresight activities of MNCs and other think tanks is absent in the roadmaps of the Planning Commission, what must not be ignored that it is the only body which compels politicians, bureaucrats and scholarly world of research and development driven civil society to have common frame of reference and serious patience to listen to the compulsions of the each other professionals.

            The pressures on the public policy making and creating the thinking space for generating the hope of germination of new ideas is very crucial as far as the feasibility of any new initiative Planning Commission is taking. The performance of each ministry`s spending on the different schemes each year is not satisfactory. Even Planning Commission`s own budget meant for capacity and knowledge upgradation in the areas it is working is not being utilized properly which is meant for attracting proper research and documentation.

            The Commission needs a comprehensive research unit of its own to track record and circulate the indicators of development in the sectors of education, health, employment, agricultural and industrial growth, knowledge institutions and knowledge dissemination. The routine administrative work done by officers there cannot be overburdened by the expectations that they alone would be responsible for executing the specialized fields of policy making. Let the bureaucrats and supporting staff working in the Planning Commission be enabler in accelerating the proposals and other urgent priorities of the administrative approvals and let the focused team of ‘knowledge professionals’ be driving the work on carrying out consultations on the new emerging challenges in the fields of e.g. Higher education, Technology deployment in development initiatives, benchmarks for modem, sustainable infrastructure and state of the art ways to conserve the environment.

            The grave vacuum of the forecasting unit is being felt in the structure of the Planning Commission. In all macroeconomic or microeconomic planning scenarios, forecasting must be an essential component.  It is admirable that Planning Commission always welcomes new reports by global think tanks for detailed discussion, what needed is the dis-aggregated outlook towards the study of the problem and massive stakeholder participation for better, in advance anticipation of     the bottlenecks possible in the  execution of the schemes being run by the concerned ministries.

               Planning Commission has recognized the significance of reception of new paradigms regarding the real time consultations with the different representatives of the civil society through social platforms and technical platforms of social networks. Another significant aspect is the conviction of the Planning Commission to build the network of actors and to work in synergy rather than to continue to languish in isolated silos. This is very significant when the challenges being faced do not depend on one-dimensional assessment and unilateral initiative for enhancement of the possibilities of success in terms of conceptualizing, strategizing, mobilizing resources and executing the utilization of the time available for efficient deployment of the human resources. Having been engaged in the human resources division, the aspect of massive ignorance towards the development of the class of specialized people in the governance demands special  attention.

            Going ahead, during the meetings of steering committee and working group meetings the lack of preparedness on the front of members was not satisfactory. Very few members were caring for preparing and submitting advance note of their assessment of the situation. It was not observed during the three months tenure of the candidate`s internship that very few members of the committees being formulated discuss or participated in the deliberations in proactive manner. I wish not to utter the word ‘sycophant’ to describe the people not speaking or merely appreciating the established scope of discussions in the meetings, but there seems to be grave lack of leniency towards what already has been set in agenda. With the body like Planning Commission responsible for creating a liberal environment in the government to spark the debates encouraging fearless discussions without muting the capable voices. 

            The formulation of groups for any new strategy formulations must be very diverse compared to current groups which even though being sometimes little diverse tend to express homogeneous     opinions cutting the scope for any nuanced  argument to make its way forward in the echelons of the priorities of particular action. The groups normally comprise the people from government but no significant numbers of people are accommodated from academics, strong research background, professional competencies, and people coming from comparative background (other countries and other states).

            Considering the vast size and demography of the country like India, strengthening the State  Planning Commissions, supporting local universities and research institutions for capacity building in planning and forecasting exercises and having comprehensive discussions about the problems of each sector and each state is very crucial. More decentralized approach in generating reliable indicators and evidences about the problems being faced by that region directed to enrich  the consultations will also help to build trust and collate not only disaggregated data but also perspectives and opinions in the context of weaknesses and assets of that state.

            Having a professional, state of the art team of the consultant for the Planning Commission studies and tasks is very convenient way to complete the operations and functions being delegated from time to time. The outcomes of these studies and detailed analysis done by these reports of the major policy making areas may be strategically sometimes very crucial and therefore needs immunity from disclosure. However, Planning Commission should take lead in organizing seminars, conferences which promote more open and diversified deliberations on different issues involved in particular study or area of policy making. This will create more tolerant and wise atmosphere around the proceedings of the Planning Commission adding transparency as its major   asset. After Indian entry into liberal globalization and in the backdrop of recent financial crisis, the circle is completed. Therefore Planning Commission needs to reinvent its vital role for the betterment of the institutional structure of the historical legacy which is not only responsible for allocating the development grants but the igniting the new development debates, rewarding the sustainable ideas and compensating for the intellectual vacuum present in the ministries and in the governance above all. 

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From Silent Genocide to Silent Observer: A Tale of Domestic Apartheid in India

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With persistent inequalities in India, the girl child is at already at disadvantage and faces strong discrimination at every stage of her life in little or no access to education, lack of health care and nutrition and child marriage. In a shocking (?) revelation about the increasing intolerance of ‘modern’, ‘educated’ Indian society, a research article published this week in ‘The Lancet’ has shattered the claims of Indian governments—both central and states –in stopping the girl child killings every day and night in well-developed Indian habitats. This study, supported by India`s 2011 census preliminary results, reveal a growing imbalance between number of girls and boys aged 0-6 years due to increased parental sex determination with subsequent selective abortion. The international team of nine health experts lead by Prabhat Jha assessed sex ratios by birth order in 0.25 million births in three rounds of the nationally representative National Family Health Survey covering the period from 1990 to 2005.


The life of the girl child reflects strong elements of discrimination at various stages. Prejudice against daughters stems from the perception of girl child as a liability. Devil is apparently frightening us before we enter into details. But we have to face this grim nature of facts before we prepare ourselves to fight this challenge root of which firmly and deeply lying in social/cultural prejudice and convictions about the women as a whole in our everyday lives. The 2011 Indian census revealed about 7.1 million fewer girls than boys aged 0-6 years, a notable increase in the gap of 6.0 million fewer girls recorded in the 2001 census and the gap of 4.2 million fewer girls in the 1991 census. In effect, more girls than boys die at ages 1-59 months, but this is mostly offset by more boys than girls dying in the first month of life. In contrast, in most high-income countries, only slightly more boys than girls are born, with recorded sex ratios at birth of 950-975 girls per 1000 boys.


Significance of this study lies in the fact that this is first one to assess the trends over time in selective abortion of girls in India at the national level with nationally representative data. Research compared the sex ratios of second-order births after firstborn girls with the second-order sex ratio after firstborn boys. Findings note a sharp decline in the girl-to-boy sex ratio for second-order births when the firstborn was a girl. These declines are greater in educated and richer households than in illiterate and poorer households. The total of about 4-12 million selective abortions of girls happened during the period from 1980 to 2010. The data also suggests that selective abortion has spread from a handful of states to most parts of the country. Thus, most of India`s population now live in states where selective abortion of girls is common. The exact contribution of selective abortion of girls to the measured sex imbalance at ages 0-6 years in the censuses also depends upon child mortality rates. However, the uniqueness of this study lies in exposing that it is only in recent years did slightly more girls die compared with the boys.


A UNFPA study (2010) points out that even after legislations such as the ‘Pre-conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act of 1994’ (PCPNDT Act) and many campaigns to promote the value of girl child, the situation has barely improved. Both central and states have launched many programs and policies which aims at empowering girl child so that they can avail equal freedom and opportunity. All the policies target the poor families which de facto face poverty as a major constraint that prevents raising and educating girl children. But findings published in Lancet provoke us to shift the focus of policy, programs and schemes in completely reverse manner. It is to be emphasized here that for example poor regions, tribal regions of the country are far ahead as far as protecting the girl child to enhance the child sex ration than compared to so called educated, developed and rich class. We can easily make out that availability and access of cheap technology is making the monster out of this ‘modern life style.’


During the last decade, there has been a substantial decline in the sex-ratio at birth (SRB) as well as child sex ratio (CSR). The 2001 census data and the different rounds of sample registration surveys show that the problem is acute in the economically progressive states of Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Gujarat. Examination of child sex ratio at the district level indicated that in 1991, not a single district in India recorded a CSR less than 800. However, in 2001 census 14 districts came under this category. Likewise, there were no districts having CSR in the range of 800-849 in 1991, however 31 districts recorded this range in 2001. Triggering a sense of crisis, many states were forced to swing into action on the premise that financial incentives would trigger behavioral changes among communities, more specifically among newly weds and young parents to value a girl child. The effect of all the schemes was basically intended to improve Sex Ratio at Birth and Child Sex Ratio, increased school enrolment and attendance in primary, middle and high schools, and an enhanced age of marriage.


What the performance of all the schemes launched recently tells us about the effectiveness of the government`s efforts in this direction? Firstly, let us look at kind of schemes launched. Dhan Laxmi scheme of government of India, Ladli scheme of Delhi and Haryana, Ladli Lakshmi Yojna of Madhya Pradesh, Bhagyalakshmi of Karnataka, Balri Rakshak Yojna of Punjab, Balika Suraksha Yojna of Himachal Pradesh, Mukhya Mantri Kanya Vivah Yojna of Bihar, Balika Samrudhi Yojna of Gujrat etc.


Multiple conditions and corresponding documentation hinders the smooth implementation of the scheme. The monitoring mechanism for these kind of schemes is very poor. Government monitors the scheme through district authorities and organizes public hearing to gather feedback from the beneficiaries to take corrective actions. Many applicants are normally unaware of the benefits under the scheme. The ignorance and lack of awareness among the beneficiaries in turn leads to manipulation and corruption. These schemes are implemented through the vast network of Anganwadis and the ICDS machinery. Successful implementation requires support and co-operation from other departments such as education, health, pachayats etc. The officials responsible for implementing the schemes complain about non-support from the government departments resulting in delays and difficulties.


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Being Ambitious: Consolidation leading towards transformation aiming for reforms-12th Plan Strategy for Higher Education

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The 12^th plan has accorded high priority to Education and higher education in particular. As issues of access, excellence, expansion are at the centre of the new initiatives being taken in the higher education sector there are some key thematic issues which needs special attention in the coming few months. While there are many desirable goals, the efforts should be aligned to the implementable schemes and strategies. The prime focus via the point of departure or strategic shift for the 12^th plan would be from creation of new institutions to their consolidation, focus on quality and raising the bar for high quality institutions to make them globally competitive. Also, for the coming plan--the document of which will be ready by 1^st April 2012--the key bottom-line emerging out of recent public policy discourse is about having flexible strategy which will have a good feedback mechanism so that it can react and adapt rapidly to country`s changing requirements.

Among many crucial issues, the very urgent issues attracting immediate attention are firstly the improvement of quality of teachers and secondly the strategy for skill development in alliance with the growth of higher education in the country. Key institutional issues are    a) allowing flexibility in the kind of interdisciplinary experiments we can make with different disciplines in academic set up, b) creating research culture in the universities and reversing the decline of social sciences and humanities, c) strengthening increasingly ignored higher education provided by the state universities with their affiliated colleges forming around 99% of total higher education sector, d) increasing the number of community and vocational colleges e) focussing on the absolute numbers of enrolment and ways to strategize for achieving 10 million enrolment at the end of this decade 2020 rather than focusing on 21 percent enrolment figure and f) encourage private participation in the higher education through different incentives and regulatory framework. 

There is great need to provide additional infrastructure or strengthen the same in existing institutions. Addressing leadership and governances issue in the context of reform process remains the basic concern of the government in the midst of dynamic changes in the higher education sector. With the leap in technology and ‘death of distance’ we must accelerate the distance education programs more vigorously. National Knowledge Network with its ambitious plans of 1GBPS, embarking on massive distance education programs will be possible. There is need of having barrier eliminating consortia approach in total approach towards higher education in which collaborative alliance with the other crucial partners like DST is going to be important in creating the intellectual wealth to promote innovation. Boosting the IPR chairs in the universities will help in visualising the new opportunities in exploiting the IPR potential in the higher education sector. Nurturing the culture in which book reading is at the centre of knowledge acquisition, Book Promotion Policy will enable government to create more awareness about this issue. Developing, conserving and enabling translation of Indian languages will also ensure the securing and disseminating education and knowledge in regional languages, not only in the 22 scheduled languages but also other languages.

There is need to have a clear understanding about the qualitative impact of the initiatives about the higher education are going to have in terms of 12^th Plan strategies. While the issues of access, equity, relevance, quality, internationalisation in higher education, assessment and accreditation are pivotal for the rejuvenation of the higher education sector in country, we must realise that we cannot be complacent or be satisfied with small targets in higher education. The challenge in equity lies in bringing the huge population of SCs/STs/women/children/differently abled/vulnerable sections/economically backward sections of the society in the mainstream of higher education. This will help to move in the direction of democratization of higher education.

The concern on quality of education is alarming as out of 577 universities and around 34,000 colleges (approx.), only 164 universities and 4000 colleges have subjected themselves for the accreditation. Within these institutions also, the number of universities and colleges getting C & D status is greater than getting B & A. It remains to be reminded again and again that support for higher education from states is very low compared to what centre has given now, ironically true compared to the almost 99 % of the higher education is dependent on the state universities and affiliated colleges. Incidentally number of students enrolled in central universities is only around 1, 39, 000, less than one percent of the total students enrolled in higher education. (Planning Commission has suggested to the stakeholders a possibility to create joint funding of state plans by central and state governments while central funding focussing on governance and academic reforms.) Moreover, the states do need to change their ambivalent attitude towards higher education. Strengthening higher education is not possible without addressing the qualitative aspects of the primary and secondary education. To increase the transition rates from secondary to higher education, we need to evolve new strategies which would address the major weaknesses of the current system.

While there are around 8000 colleges awarding degrees in professional technical education and more than 3000 awarding polytechnic degrees, the challenges of the technical education are many. Some of the new ways to expand technical education would be to bring community around these already existing technical education institutions. Going ahead, forming the clusters of different institutions to share the faculty and other resources would be possible alternative. Involving industry to train the students to have quality skills according to the requirements of the industry will help to improve the employability of the students enrolled there. Building skills with the help of technical education institutions will be very beneficial to the community around those colleges. Around 90% of the technical education institutes are in the private sector. Government needs to invest more in this sector and also continue to promote private participation with the oversight on quality and other regulatory issues and moving towards formulating more PPP model mechanisms to address the expansion issue. Major intervention is needed in terms of allowing industry in setting up the R&D centres in technical education campuses by involving the faculties and the students of that specific technical education institution. So, incubation centres can be established by different funding schemes and incentives arrived from time to time by central regulation and understanding of the technical education institutions in states.

Faculty development forms the core of the agenda for realising the quality in primary, secondary and higher education in the country. While holistic scrutiny of the skills and knowledge levels of the teachers at the recruitment level is not possible, very little happens about quality training of the teachers after recruitment. The regular periodic training sessions conducted by Academic Staff Colleges are not very successful. As recognised by Yashpal Committee and National Knowledge Commission, the university and college level leadership needs to be inspired for the changes we wish to see to be brought out by them. In this direction, a ‘National Program on Leadership Development and Governance Reforms’ can be launched. Empowering the teachers through the quality training and enabling them to take initiatives in terms of ways to promote excellence are crucial steps for consolidating the gains made in the eleventh plan.

Maintaining quality, pushing for excellence in existing institutions and creating new centers of excellence and universities is crucial for 12^th plan. Focussing on the urgently needed numbers in recruitment and further on developing skills of the teachers remains the catalyst to realise the other changes we want to see on the ground in the context of 12^th plan. We cannot ignore the vital link between primary, secondary and higher education. This needs more attention because there is lot of overlapping of course structure. We need to have special attention for scientific research and we could look forward for having separate science universities or we can strengthen newly established IISER.

GER improvement can only be done by state universities and by incorporating more open and distance learning. Even if each university takes responsibility improves enrolment by 10, 000 it will help to have quantum jump of 10% growth in GER.  We can learn from other countries experience especially in community colleges example of USA can be imitated where they are providing education to 14 million students through more than 5500 community colleges while India is having around 13 million of its population being educated through existing more than 4000 colleges. A good institution must have enough number of students so that it can conduct different programs on its campus. We need to pay more and more attention to girls hostels. India has many old colleges and universities. Also, reputation and quality of old colleges needs to be re-established. But during the course of time, many institutions languished because they did not catch up with the changing realities and they could not connect to the education they are providing to the challenges in industry, society and research. A lot needs to be done on the part of faculty positions by improving and revising the guidelines in that direction.

Skill development needs huge advocacy because country as a whole, there is still huge disconnect between the challenges on that front and related potential we have. There is need of attaching some kind of premium to the skill development initiatives. Large chunk of the faculties are either too young or too old, middle segment having both energy and experience is still missing. Along with the plans set to establish 5000 skill development centres and 1500 new ITIs, focus should be on how higher education institutions can be leveraged for the skill development. Centre can attach conditionality for approval for the new engineering colleges related to the kind of contribution they can make towards skill development in their localities.

Very few higher education institutions in the country today understand how they are addressing the real needs of the country. We need no blind imitation. There is greater urgency to break the barriers we have created over the decades between university and real world. Our higher education system is burdened with the past. The need of lateral entry in different disciplines of the higher education is greater than ever before. The fresh, innovative approach must be adopted towards the classroom teaching by looking towards new alternative in distance education. Indian higher education institutions are not offering any innovations in any sense. The universities should move in the direction where knowledge gained must be associated with the craft and hands on in that particular sector of discipline or profession.  

The focus must be addressed towards removing the weakness of the higher education system. As 99% of the higher education stems from state universities, there is need to have model act for uniform implementation for state universities to improve their capacity and performance in the context of rising demographic challenges. The research facilities are very poor. The strategy for equity and inclusion is not satisfactory. Time has arrived when the issue of National Education Finance Corporation needs to be accelerated for addressing inclusion and equity. Currently there is huge pressure on autonomy of colleges so state university guidelines should be revised in a way to reducing the stress on the autonomy of the colleges.

Steering motto for the 12^th plan must be consolidating the achievements made until now. Country of this size needs large institutions and half islands of success. Higher education should be seen as a sector which brings people, societies and regions together aiming towards national integration. Holistic development of higher education demands attention towards mobility of faculty, students, technology and resources. Concept of Teachers without Borders can be promoted to accommodate vast talent pool outside the formal educational system to enable and incentivise their participation in knowledge delivery processes. Therefore consolidation of existing data is relevant is immediate requirement in that context. Publishing annual India Education Report will be welcome step in that direction.

Higher education without quality is a waste of resources. We do not need Ocean of mediocrity and islands of excellence. Problems in higher education started when true meaning of regulation was interpreted in terms of disciplining and controlling institutions rather than enabling them to reach upto quality benchmarks and strive for excellence. Ignoring performing institutions is not going to motivate them to excel and therefore nurturing a culture where there is a natural incentive based on proactive action for performance is needed. Capacity building of the teachers is at the core of whatever kind of academic reforms we have in our mind. New adaptive pedagogy which understands potential of technology for delivery of knowledge, cumulative assessment and revision of the curriculum is very crucial to consolidate the knowledge base and thus catalysing the changes required for organising the research environment in the universities.

Industry participation in the higher education is very much neglected. The growth of whole service sector depends upon the skill development and the kind of professional training they are getting in higher education. There are a huge number of students who are simultaneously involved in job and distance education. Many of the people are who are employed are reluctant to enter into some kind of distance education program because there is lack of incentive in terms of economic security and about relevance of those programs for the career growth. Biggest challenge ahead of economic growth objectives of the country remain in the terms of human resources. There is huge section of population which is disadvantaged people. Creating and mainstreaming the special schools for them is one of the important requirements to accommodate the aspirations of that section. If we wish to achieve 30% GER, then the norms for setting universities must be made more flexible. Especially the conditions related to land and capital can be more flexible off course without compromising the quality and other regulatory compliances.

The corporate world always experience quality higher education as inadequate for their functional requirement so they always train the people being recruited. Therefore it is not economical for industry to invest in that person all again for training and upgradation of their skills. So, introducing soft skills in the curriculum may be one of the ways to address this difficulty. Significant revisiting of faculty recruitment process is very necessary because there seems to be little correlation between subject expertise and the kind of teaching skills needed in higher education set up. There is need to enthuse greater respect for teaching in general and motivation to teach must be a prime mover for talented people in the experts of discipline and profession.

There are huge regional, sub-regional imbalances and knowledge disciplinary imbalances. There is extraordinary fragmentation of the higher education. The concept of university seems to have been diluted and umbrella status of centre for learning and research is being superficially used for very narrow purposes of vocation and study. It should once again be reminded about huge disconnect between primary, secondary and higher education. Government needs to have special attention towards the schemes incentivising the participation of the private sector in the higher education. Everything about improving standards and access of higher education is about public interest, so the concept of Private, Public and Public Private Participation should be revisited to reformulate their contexts in changing paradigms.

Huge spurt in the number of Ph.D. have thrown the challenge of deteriorating quality of research in the country. This needs to be addressed immediately. The issue of credit transfer has to be approved because it provides greater mobility to acquire knowledge and positive push for the cross sectoral employment and knowledge acquisition opportunities. As mentioned earlier, the much desired interdisciplinarity and the promotion of the culture of liberal arts is very much crucial for spirit of enquiry in academics.

Higher education needs fundamental change. Higher education is not asking for transformation and not for reforms. It is seeking transformation of organisation of higher education and research in institutions, consistent revisiting the content of higher education and regularly ensuring the social reach. Priority in the transformation should go to the undergraduate students. We do not have mechanism of teacher training and it should be formally established in universities. Our university system needs to have Human Resource Planning and Management Centre in order to utilise existing potential up to an optimum level and address the university faculty requirements. There is need of disaggregation of the data of the kind of enrolment achieved and the kind of visualised in the next few years. Then only we will be able to address the issues of inclusion.

We are having uneven expansion of the higher education system at the expense of quality of the academics. UGC affiliation programme needs to be strengthened. There is huge increase in the admission of professional colleges but the enrolment in basic sciences, core disciplines of social sciences and humanities. The basic issue of concern is that we are moving towards the kind of higher education where the understanding about the basic sciences or social sciences is being compromised at the cost of aggressive entry of professional courses.

Absorptive capacity of the state universities and other institutes is a matter of concern. Research funding in social sciences is a different ball game altogether. It should not be compared to the kind of funding patterns and criteria developed for the science technology sector.

What happened to secondary education is going to happen to higher education in the flow of elite to massification to universalization. There is more emphasis on infrastructure and less on quality of education and human resources being nurtured. There are very few journals of higher education and comparative higher education. There is great need to have flexibility and porousness connected to the kind of professional skills needed and the kind of academic courses being conducted. India is natural for developing and least developed countries in higher education. So, it is not desirable to always look towards west. We should also develop and work with the other countries sharing our experiences, resources and expertise.

Forecasting and developing the industry potential needs metrics of measurement. These metrics are helpful in measuring feedback from the stakeholders and thus empower them to promote change. Therefore there must be efficient mechanisms which frame the indicators of learning outcomes. Goal is to visualise the parity between learning, employment and research-development objectives. The kind of ecosystem in the current higher education sector does not have the elements which will support the innovative and different thinking initiatives. Online teacher training programs can be used for skill transfer and quality improvement. Judging learning outcomes is extremely important. The distinction between examination and evaluation must be made in order to improve the assessment of the both students and teachers.

Eventually, vision for the 12^th plan is “Society and Higher Education should go together.”

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"I wish to reach my wife to gift her before fashion changes" : Dynamic world of speed, efficiency and supercomputing !

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Advances in computer technology have revolutionalised the transfer of information rendering national borders to critical new knowledge. As the pace of new knowledge and discoveries picks up, the speed at which knowledge can be accessed becomes a decisive factor in the commercial success of technologies. Computing has become a symbol of our creativity and productivity along with being a expressive barometer of the competitive position of the organizations and the country in the world of knowledge economy. Supercomputers, in particular, are extremely important to design and manufacturing processes in diverse industries like oil exploration, aeronautics and aerospace, energy, transport, automobiles, pharmaceuticals and electronics to name few of them.


(With the acknowledgement to Copyright of Niels Drost, 2010 for the work Real-World Distributed Supercomputing published by NOW):-  “Ever since the invention of the computer, users have desired higher and higher performance. For an average user the solution was simply a matter of patience: each newer model computer has been faster than the previous generation for as long as computers have existed. However, for some users this was not enough, as they required more compute power than any normal machine could over. Examples of high performance computing users are meteorologists performing weather predictions using complex climate models, astronomers running simulations of galaxies, and medical researchers analyzing DNA sequences.


To explain some of the major challenges encountered by high performance computing users, we use an analogy: making coffee. What if I was responsible for making coffee for a group of people, for instance a group of scientists on break during a conference? If the group is small enough, I could use my own coffee maker, analogous to using my own computer to do a computation. However, this will not work if the group is too large, as it would take too long, leading to a large queue of thirsty scientists. I could also brew the coffee in advance, but that would lead to stale and probably cold coffee.

 The obvious solution to my problem is to get a bigger, faster, coffee maker. I could go out and buy an industrial-size coffee maker, like the one in a cafeteria, or even a coffee vending machine. Unfortunately, these are very expensive. In computing, large, fast, expensive computers are called supercomputers. Fortunately, several alternatives exist that will save money. Instead of a single big coffee maker, I could use a number of smaller machines (a cluster in computing terms). I could also rent a coffee maker (cloud computing), or even borrow one (grid computing). In reality, I would probably use a combination of these alternatives, for instance by using my own coffee maker, borrowing a few, and renting a machine. Although combining machines from different sources is the cheapest solution, it may cause problems. For one, different coffee machines need different types of coffee, such as beans, ground coffee, pads, or capsules. Moreover, these different machines all need to be operated in different ways, produce coffee at different speeds, and may even produce a different result (for instance, espresso). In the end, I may be spending a considerable amount of time and effort orchestrating all these coffee makers.

Recently, cloud computing has emerged as a high-performance compute platform, offering applications a homogeneous environment by using virtualization mechanisms to hide most differences in the underlying hardware. Unfortunately, not all resources available to a user offer cloud services. Also, combining resources of multiple cloud systems is far from trivial. To use all resources available to a user, software is needed which easily combines as many resources as possible into one coherent computing platform.”

Now my story begins about what India wish to do about the supercomputing in coming few years. :- Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems involving quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling (computing the structures and properties of chemical compounds, biological macromolecules, polymers, and crystals), physical simulations (such as simulation of airplanes in wind tunnels, simulation of the detonation of nuclear weapons. Apart from these areas, other notable frontiers of research where supercomputing is being used are: In ccomputational fluid dynamics for optimization of turbines and wings, noise reduction and air conditioning in trains, in fusion for plasma in a future fusion reactor (ITER), in Astrophysics for studying the origin and evolution of stars and galaxies, in solid state physics for superconductivity, surface properties and semiconductors, in Geophysics for earth quake scenarios, in Chemistry for catalytic reactions, in medicine and medical engineering to simulate and control blood flow, neurysms, air conditioning of operating theatres, in Biophysics to research on properties of viruses, genome analysis and in climate research for modeling, currents in oceans among the many other applications.

Relevant here is the distinction between capability computing and capacity computing, as defined by Graham et al. Capability computing is typically thought of as using the maximum computing power to solve a large problem in the shortest amount of time. Often a capability system is able to solve a problem of a size or complexity that no other computer can. Capacity computing in contrast is typically thought of as using efficient cost-effective computing power to solve somewhat large problems or many small problems or to prepare for a run on a capability system.

In 2005 India was on 4th position in the world in terms of supercomputing capacity, in 2010 country slided to 24th position. We always take pride in the fact that when supercomputing technology was denied to India in the 90s, our brilliant engineers at CDAC made us proud of them by creating PARAM for us. Even in 2007 we had third largest supercomputer and since then India’s performance in this strategic sector has downgraded such that time has arrived to ask question are we languishing far behind what we envisioned? We need to improve on the fronts of capacity (human and computer/networking resources), capability (manpower skills) and identifying the challenging areas where we wish to focus our attention for problem solving in either R&D or other applications. So, as things stand today, out of first top performing supercomputers in the world, USA has 274 in list, China has 42 and imagine India four.

When it comes to building and using of supercomputing facility in India there are many serious stakeholders: DRDO, DAE, Dept. of Space, DST, DBT, financial sector, E-governance initiatives, international collaborative projects like ITER, telecom and others. With the increasing realization about the technological and financial viability to use network as a computer rather than just building network of computers use of distributed computing has been envisioned for massive applications. Moreover, Indian strategy is focused on using supercomputer more oriented towards memory centric operations compared to processing and analytical operations.

The transformational journey of supercomputing strategy is based on fourth paradigm in supercomputing going from computer centric to data centric. Initiatives like National Knowledge Network will only add to our experience about creating, hosting, sharing, transmitting, broadcasting and conserving the huge amount of data in the back end. Here, potential of integrated capacity of large number of computers in a network can be visualized yielding enormous amount of outcome which increases exponentially over a short period of time. And it is very difficult to handle the exponentially increased high speeds and high performance computing at greater degrees of operation. Therefore sharing has emerged as a new champion of performing very critical and complex tasks. Due to sharing, seamless integration of data and high precision experiments is possible.

It is desirable and positive step that country is thinking seriously to invest in the frontiers of supercomputing and thus consolidating the initiatives in the emerging areas of the research and development, real challenge lies in the developing the absorptive capacity for the large amount of funds being released from the centre and complementing them with attraction of right mix of talented people with motivation by having good infrastructure in place in time. Largest number in the universe is Avogadro’s number which is around ten to the order of 23. This was the strong belief of scientific community up till now. But with the help of large supercomputing facilities it is possible now to calculate the numbers beyond the degree of Avogadro’s number. In a way, from the perspectives of growth of fundamental science and addressing the issues of inclusive society, we need supercomputing.
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