India spends money on Science and Technology from public resources; industries have not woken up to the fact that they need to invest in research and development, said Shekhar C Mande, Director General, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), speaking at ThinkEdu Conclave 2019, organised by The New Indian Express on Wednesday.
"When industries too start investing, it will benefit both their profits and the society as a whole," he said, speaking at a panel discussion themed 'Are we investing enough in education infrastructure and research?'.
Debashis Chatterjee, Director of IIM Kozhikode, said that the private education sector grows six times as much as the public sector. Pointing to the increase in a profit-driven system, he said that the poor are finding it increasingly difficult to access good education.
India needs to invest more on education and infrastructure because we cannot deprive large sections of the population from having access to knowledge, said Thirumurugan Gandhi, a geo-political commentator and a human rights activist, adding that the days of Manu Dharma are gone when education was exclusive to an elite few.
"The reason we need more government investment is that the profits are privatised and losses are socialised," he said. He added that several expert committees set up by the government, starting with the Kothari Commission set-up in 1964, have suggested that the government spends at least 6 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on education.
E Suresh Kumar, Vice-Chancellor of English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), said that asking if we have enough funds is a relative question. "A person may eat a sumptuous meal for ₹200. But can we guarantee that a ₹2,000 meal is equally sumptuous or ten times better?" he opined, adding that funds must be used optimally.
Dinesh Kumar, Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University, said that India focuses on making people knowledgeable, but not skilled. "We need a combination of knowledge and skill. They are two sides of the same coin. But skills are being treated as inferior now," he said. He added that the school education system does not focus on real-life situations that will equip students to be skilled professionals. "Students are given 12 salts to analyse in Chemistry practical exams, but they are never encouraged to pick up a handful of school soil and test that for different salts," he said.