Press Trust of India Posted online: Thursday, January 12, 2006 at 1510 hours IST Updated: Thursday, January 12, 2006 at 1540 hours IST
Bangalore, January 12: Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal today criticised Human Resource Development Ministry for turning down a request from Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore (IIM-B), to open a campus in Singapore, saying it went against the objective of "releasing genius of Indian people".
Agreeing with Infosys chief N R Narayana Murthy's views on higher education sector reforms, he said here, "lot of my people in government differ with that statement, and it's a reflection of what I read this morning in the newspapers."
Speaking at an event organised by Microsoft Research India here, he noted that the government had disallowed IIMB's request. "I am not making a qualitative judgement here", Sibal, however, said.
The Human Resources Development Ministry has turned down IIMB's request citing that prestigious B-schools should meet the domestic demand.
Sibal said, "I think the challenge ahead for our government and for any government of the future is to release the genius of Indian people".
He said, "It's very important to release the (higher) educational institutions from the control of government". But that does not mean opening the educational sector for exploitation, he hastened to add.
Sibal recalled the statement of Murthy, who had suggested that government's role in higher education must be minimised and higher education should be allowed to run as an industry in a free market environment with suitable regulatory mechanism and licensing must be removed, among others.
He said the amount of money spent on coaching by IIT aspirants -- 600,000 people for 6000 seats in different IITs -- is a whopping Rs 600 crore -- higher than the budget of IIMs and IITs put together -- if one takes the figure to be an average of Rs 10,000 for each of them.
According to him, India has a total of 600,000 software professionals who account for 20 per cent of the country's total exports; this is expected to go up to 33 per cent in 2008.
As many as 54.7 crore people were below the age of 25, he said.
"With the education (reforms) that Murthy has talked about, these educational institutions can flourish and release lakhs and lakhs of young people with hopes and dreams", he said.
Sibal stressed the need to build institutions of excellence in India.
