DRAFT SPEECH FOR MINISTER OF STATE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

Distinguished delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen!

I am very pleased to be here this morning to address the ‘eINDIA2009’. Let me congratulate CSDMS and its associates on a job well done in organising this international ICT summit. It is a sign of India's growing role in world ICT and development networks, which I commend it for.

India has a long history of organized economy. In various fields we are known worldwide, as for example in Information Technology, an industry that has become synonymous with India’s emergence as a New knowledge Power, to speak to you at this conference and to present the range and diversity of Indian information technology.

The information and communications revolution has transformed the world economy. The government and the development community is discovering hitherto unknown markets. Countries are closer together than ever before and there is a great flow of information and knowledge through technology across borders. Teachers and students now enjoy an unparalleled reach brought about by developments in content, production, reproduction and dissemination. It is this ongoing process of integration of technology with the global economy that has made today’s India.

Brazil, Russia, India and China are perceived to be the fastest growing developing economies. According to a study, over the next 50 years, their growth though will slow down, but their aggregate GDP will be higher than the G6 countries. The pre-requisites for the growth are macro-economic stability, evolution of strong democratic institutions, education and openness. I believe that there is a fourth dimension to their faster growth and that is digitisation and IT penetration.

India definitely has a cutting edge in case of software. But the Indian approach has to undergo a transformation. Indian expertise should be honed up in technical fields such as software for petrochemicals, shipping, steel, banks, automobiles, aviation etc, which are language neutral. We have to create thought leaders for fructifying these ideations.

India is a major source for software that goes into the hardware equipment, gadgets, etc. In the next 20 years or so, it is predicted that hardware will outpace petrochemicals in terms of production and sheer size. It will be advantageous for India to form an alliance to upgrade the quality of software and hardware that goes into equipment and gadgets. Such efforts cannot fructify in vacuum. Here comes the vision of joint research projects commissioned to evolve newer products and concepts, which can have steady marketability in the world market.

India has the advantage of English language, which enabled the country to reap the benefits of the software revolution. Similarly, we should develop such advantages in the case of Chinese, Russian and Latin American languages. More schools of languages should come up and curricula

re-oriented to include foreign languages at the university level. We have to introduce these languages widely to have the advantage, the same way we had it in the case of English.

We are happy that the world is taking note of India. We recognise that as we take our place in the world we have to assume our share of responsibility, consistent with our need and capacity, to make the world a better and safer place. More than anything else, it is growth that has allowed the government to increase public expenditure in sectors such as health and education.

India pegged its expenditure outlay at Rs.44,528 crore (Rs.445.28 billion) for both school and higher education which is around 20 percent more than the last fiscal, Rs.37,366 crore.

School education gets over Rs.29,099 crore (Rs.290.99 billionas budget outlay. While budget hails both the schemes of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Midday Meal and allocates more money for strengthening them, it also has made provision of Rs.350 crore to set up 6,000 model schools as benchmark of excellence.

education to millions of children has been successful to a large extent, and has thus created a need for strengthening secondary education infrastructure across the country. The HRD Ministry has taken note of this, and now plans to implement a secondary education scheme called Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyaan (RMSA) during the 11th plan at a total cost of Rs.20,120 crore.

With the successful implementation of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme set up by the government to bring elementary education to millions of children has been successful to a large extent, the HRD Ministry now is in the process of implementing a secondary education scheme called Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan during the 11th plan at a cost of Rs 20,120 crore.

The scheme aims to address the technology needs while rolling out RMSA, the need to build ICT capacities of secondary level teachers and provide higher quality e-content, relevant case studies from India and abroad, an innovations in the domain of technology-based education in India. This aligns with the efforts of the Ministry of HRD to assist States to build up the ICT infrastructure in secondary schools through the scheme "ICT in Schools".

An outlay of Rs.750 crore has been kept for disbursing 100,000 scholarships for students in class 11-12 under the national means-cum-merit scholarship scheme.

The union budget 2009-10 with a thrust on higher education proposed to allocate over Rs.21 billion for the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the National Institutes of Technology (NITs). The budget underlined that there is a provision of Rs.3,902 crore for technical education that includes provision towards assistance to IITs, IIMs and NITs.

The demographic advantage India has in terms of large percentage of young population needs to be converted into a dynamic economic advantage by providing them the right education and skills. The provision for the scheme Mission in Education through ICT has been substantially increased to Rs.900 crore.

Similarly, the provision for setting up and up-gradation of polytechnics under the skill development mission has been increased to Rs.495 crore (Rs.4.95 billion).

The government shall take forward its intent of having one central university in each uncovered state and for this purpose Rs.827 crore (Rs.8.27 billion) has been allocated.

The government was considering allowing new autonomous colleges to be set up independent of universities but with stringent quality parameters.

In the present system a college would usually start with it being affiliated with university and then graduate to getting an autonomous status.

These (autonomous) colleges would require higher level of parameters to be independent of universities and once they improve even further, they may be allowed to become universities themselves. This would facilitate establishing a three-tier system in college education in the form of affiliated colleges, autonomous colleges and the universities.

The government also plans to set up 374 ‘model’ colleges in as many educationally backward districts in the country.

At present we have only regulatory bodies, such as the All India Council of Technical Education. We also need rating agencies, such as CRISIL, that can rank the colleges by performance. Students should be allowed to change their programmes and colleges. Insurance schemes should be available to protect the students.

Distance education has also been proved as a powerful tool through which IITs can help in this effort to provide education to the remote India. The freely available NPTEL video and web courses can work as effective tools in distance communication.

An alternative approach has been demonstrated by IIT, Bombay. It has been transmitting live, through EDUSAT and webcast, about 1,000 hours of its own classroom teaching, absolutely free of cost, every semester.

I believe universities, particularly the ICT varsities. have a great role in materializing the hopes and aspirations of the people. The recent budget announcement has allocated Rs.90 crore for Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and state open universities to promote distance education.

The academic network implied with all these programmes also has the potential to catalyse the growth of research activities as well.

Through the Right to Education Bill, which had already been passed by the Rajya Sabha, India is going to be spending huge amounts for neighbourhood schools, the process by which adequate number of students will be thrown up for the university system.

Again, the governement has asked all state governments to provide a detailed report of their objectives in the field of higher education by 2020 within a three month deadline.

The state has the first responsibility to educate the child. Unless we look at the national enterprise as a partnership between the Centre and the state we don’t think we will be able to deliver for India. In the next three months…each state must give its vision as to what it wishes to do by 2020 in the filed of higher education. The vision should contain what is the state of affairs (of education) at present, kind of inputs required to realise that vision and budgetary allocation in the years to come. It should also let the Centre know how they wish to improve the gross enrollment ratio and where the state is likely to be by 2020, besides, how many colleges and universities they have. Noting that such visions would enable centre to collaborate with the states and set benchmarks where the Government would like India to reach by 2020.

There’s again immense scope to synergize activities in the telecom and IT space, which currently languish. India will soon witness launching of a National Information Highway Authority (NIHA). The main aim of NIHA, as has been found, will be to increase various e-activities of the government and these e-activities include e-governance, e-learning and e-health. The main intention of the Central government is to promote an assortment of e-activities, since different ministries and departments had partly restricted its penetration as they deal with them. Now, as the apex body for such initiatives, NIHA would clear and monitor all future projects and budgets.

Once NIHA is in place, it would become an ideal vehicle to promote such initiatives effectively in a time-bound manner.

The goal of HRD in India is to promote the well-being of all, the whole education community in the region through economic growth and development. That goal must be achieved by planning, developing and implementing education and training programmes for the community, in both the public and private sectors. Government is coming out with a package of reforms and policy measures in the case of development of technology, cooperation and trade for capturing the market and ICT. The bottom line is that well-designed domestic policies are instrumental for enhancing the benefits from education while addressing the quality and inequality concerns.

The eINDIA platform in the past has always ensured to bring forth the policy needs of the country, be it in terms of education, ICT, or other development domains. The continuous discussions and debate on the ICT policy needs in the school education has already started providing the impetus, and the Ministry of HRD has initiated the consultation process with the community on a national policy framework. No denial, the initiative of the ICT Policy in School education is inspired by the tremendous potential of ICT for enhancing outreach and improving quality of education and at the same time, dialogue platforms like this contribute identifying the needs of such policy processes which the government always looks out for.

These policies would also help strengthen public-private support, research and innovation and investment policies, and promote perceptions that education is an opportunity for all. So, help the government in evolving a wish list that will bring the underlying growth opportunities, with embedded technology.

In the deliberations over the next two days I am sure that you will be guided by this goal, as well as you discuss the variety of new projects and initiatives before you. The conference and exhibition is also timely as we prepare for the reforms time in another few months.

My special appreciaton for chosing Hyderabad as the destination for this year’s conferencing. At a time when the world is divided in many ways—developed versus developing, North versus South, and rich versus poor, it is necessary to bridge this divide, and dialogue can do so. Dialogue can explore the needs and challenges of the area, promote better appreciation of the issues; dialogue can also anticipate emerging trends. This is an exciting time for Hyderabad and India-and let the convergence be successful in making engagement for others with information and communication technology.

I wish you a very fruitful conferencing this week, and look forward to seeing a fruitful dialogue happening. I thank you all for your patience and courtesy.