I come back with great hope after this meet. Hope that India is indeed on the threshold of achieving greater heights and that the IITs, alumni, faculty and students will play their part in helping India achieve its potential.
One of the key themes in the meet was the need to improve the quality of research and faculty in the IITs. IITs face a huge shortage of quality research scholars , which in turn leads to shortage of faculty. IITs are moreover burdened by an ever increasing number of students which has put tremendous pressure on facilities and infrastructure. The PAN IIT movement has come out with some concrete action plan to help the IITs is these matters.
Apart from meeting quite a few old friends, hostel mates, classmates, colleagues, professors and also making new acquaintances , I got the chance to hear some inspiring talks given by some of the invited speakers.
First on my list is Gururaj "Desh" Deshpande who apart from being a very very successful engineer, entrepreneur and innovator, is also a very active philanthroper. He runs the Deshpande Foundation which amongst many other things funds and supports Akshyapatra. Akshyapatra is a mid day meal program for poor and underprivileged school children in India. They now feed a hot and nutritious mid day meal to almost 1 million children every day! Akshyapatra uses the best of modern technology and supply chain processes to bring in efficiencies and keep the cost of a meal to as low as Rs 4.
C.K. Prahalad chaired a session whose panelists were three Tata Group CEOs - Ravi Kant of Tata Motors, B. Muthuraman of Tata Steel and S. Ramadorai of TCS. Muthuraman explained how the innovation culture is ingrained in the lifeblood of Tata Steel and how it is an integral part of day to day business in Tata Steel involving all employees. According to Muthuraman - Social Innovation has a greater impact than innovations in technology and business processes. Tata's were amongst the worlds first industrial groups to have introduced concepts such as 40 hour of work per week, leave with pay and medical leave.
C. K. Prahalad quoted a Goldman Sachs report that India would be among the top four economies of the world. He said that however India would need a trained manpower of 500 million strong to reach that position.
The last name on my list is Amartya Sen - Nobel Laureate in Economics, philosopher and champion of welfare economics. He said that while India has made strides in higher technical eduction ( IITs being a shining example) , India has done miserably in sectors such as basic health care, poverty alleviation and primary eduction. He mentioned that India not only has the largest number of hungry children, but also the largest proportion of hungry children in the world! Amartya Sen encouraged IITs and the PAN IIT movement to put their skills and minds in these areas.
To me - these things fall in place and are totally aligned. To create a 500 million strong technically capable workforce - you need to ensure that the base is strong. Unless we improve the literacy rates and spread primary education to all - we can never have enough quality manpower to take India to its rightful place. And if our children are hungry, will they ever go to schools? Deshpande, Prahalad and Sen are all saying the same thing. It is for us to listen and start acting!
