Knowledge and Indian Universities
HN DAS
Many academicians and educationists bemoan the fact that Indian universities
fail to revise the syllabus in different subjects in response to changes in
knowledge. In Assam and the Northeast, we lag further behind in this respect.
This indifference to change is one among the many causes of majority of our
brilliant students migrating to universities outside the Northeast.
This is also the cause of our students poor performance in competitive
examinations and in the entrance tests to institutions of excellence including
those for the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Atomic
Energy Commission (AEC), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and the
Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). Lately, the number of
students joining the natural science disciplines, such as physics and
chemistry, in universities in the Northeast, have gone down drastically
reducing the qualified manpower for teachers jobs in science streams in high
schools and higher secondary schools, besides many other consequences and
implications.
Assams technical institutions such as polytechnics, ITIs and even agriculture
and veterinary colleges do not get their full complement of students because of
a lopsided job market. According to an Assam Government survey, only 12 per
cent of the students go in for the science stream and 0.4 per cent for
technical and vocational streams, while 74 per cent join arts and six per cent
join commerce. This is rather strange in an age of knowledge explosion when
science and technology is leading the world. Today, information technology,
nanotechnology and biotechnology are at the forefront of an unprecedented
scientific revolution in the history of mankind.
It is fortunate that the recent developments in science and technology have
been properly absorbed by the discipline of economics. In fact, the term now
used to describe this particular branch is the new economics of knowledge.
One pioneer of new economics is Paul Romer whose 1988-90 epoch making
paper, Endogenous Technological Change, made the greatest contribution to the
theory of growth. Romer asserted that it was knowledge, not physical factors,
whose accumulation was the really important thing. However, management guru
Peter Drucker was the first to stress the significance of a knowledge economy
in the early 1980s. It was also realized that technological progress is at
least partly the result of economic forces. Some even claim that technological
change was a thoroughly economic process.
The newer textbooks today reflect the economic consequences of these advances
and also the inventions which have been made because of economic compulsions.
These text books are designed with the object to initiate students into a
standard curriculum of currently accepted views. They also analyse and
synthesize an enormous fund of knowledge. Moreover, thanks to a useful new
distinction between atoms and bits, there has been a redefinition of the
basic factors of production so that land, labour and capital have become
people, ideas and things, according to David Warshs 2006 masterpiece
entitled Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations.
I have been a student of economics ever since I joined college. It was more
than half-a-century ago that I bought a second-hand copy of Alfred Marshalls
tome Principles of Economics. This book I still possess. As I plodded through
Marshalls book, I also looked up parts of the other three earlier and
long-standing textbooks of economics by Adam Smith, David Ricardo and John
Stuart Mill. These four books held sway for more than one-and-a-half century
until Paul Samuelsons bestseller was published in 1948. Several generations of
students of economics learnt the subject from Samuelsons book which sold
millions of copies. In course of time this was revised by Samuelson and William
D Nordhaus. They added to take in all that has changed.
I was, however, slightly overawed by the works of the five masters and was more
comfortable with easier textbooks, especially the ones by Benham and Kenneth
Kurihara. Before passing the IAS examination of 1960 and joining that service
in 1961, I was a lecturer of economics for a brief period at Gauhati University
and Cotton College. I used to advise my students to read these latter textbooks
and not the cheap notes which were published from Kolkata and were available in
plenty. Some of the Cotton College economics students of those days did very
well. One got IAS, another IPS, a third joined the World Bank, a couple of them
became Principals of Cotton College, and a more well-known one became the
Ombudsman of the Reserve Bank of India after I completed my term in that job.
In mid-career when I had the opportunity to spend a memorable two-and-a-half
year stint at the University of Adelaide, on study leave from the Ministry of
Finance, Government of India, where I was then
working, I found that Samuelsons textbook was the most popular one with
teachers and students in that university.
Six decades have passed by since Samuelsons textbook was first published. The
world, in the meantime, has changed beyond recognition. Tremendous advances
have been made in science, especially in the emerging fields of information
technology, telecommunication, pharmaceuticals, entertainment, biotechnology,
nanotechnology, aeronautics, optoelectronics and a host of other areas.
Unlike in the past, university students are now taking up interdisciplinary
syllabi specially tailored to each ones particular requirements. I become
aware about the spread of this new phenomenon when I paid a notable visit to
the Tsing Hua National University of Taiwan which is located about 46 km away
from the capital city of Taipei. This university is considered to be one of the
best in the world. It has produced as many as three Nobel Laureates and a
fourth one got the Wolf prize in Mathematics which is rated as equivalent to
Nobel. This university has established very close linkage with the research
laboratories which the Taiwanese Government has very thoughtfully set up next
to the university. A number of non-polluting industries are also in the
vicinity. There is frequent exchange of manpower and know-how among these
institutions, which leads to further advancement of science and technology and
brings in wealth to that small but intelligent nation. When will we have
such a university in India?
In American universities also, the number of students following
interdisciplinary courses have increased considerably in recent years. I have
noticed this in the Silicon valley universities particularly. The time has now
come when India must upscale the standards of its universities and research
establishments and revise the syllabus of different subjects so that their
products will not only vie with the best in the world but will also devote
themselves to the spread of knowledge among the lower strata of society in
order to create a vibrant knowledge economy.
(The writer was Chief Secretary, Assam during 1990-95)
(The Sentinel,04.11.2007)
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