It is hard to have development without innovation, and impossible to have innovation without research, writes Suhail Masoodi
Greater Kashmir
January 27, 2010
On the first day of the 2010, I started off with a normal routine; grabbed a newspaper and started reading it. But this time I adopted a more optimistic approach, perhaps as part of a New Year resolution, that 2010 will be better than the previous year in terms of peace and development in India and the world. I also hoped that the role of policy makers, politicians, and writers will be pragmatic for the well being of a common man.
Turning the pages of “Times of India”, I came across an article written by Swaminathan Aiyer, one of the most respectable writers of India. The article entitled “India to overtake China in 2020” seemed to me far from reality. Being in China for over a year and looking at the development of China which accelerates at the fastest pace, I wondered whether the author is trying to befool people by his tall claims.“China is set to be 2nd largest economy in the world,” I said to myself, and recalled what my professor would often say “China will catch-up USA by 2020.” Even though both my professor and Mr. Aiyer made assumptions, the difference was the former’s claims were based on facts and figures while the latter’s was sheer rhetoric. Several people had even termed “ridicule” Mr. Aiyer’s article in their comments.
Exactly 16 days later on January 16, a news story in The Indian Express “‘UGC's norms link promotion to output; Seniority not a factor’” caught my eye. This news put me back in a thought- that something concrete is also happening. The University Grants commission (UGC) initiative (promotion on the bases of research output) led by Sibal is practical and need of the hour. Aiyer through his article wanted people to believe that India can overtake China because it has more young population, more English speaking population. While, Sibal knows, saying “all is well” phrase that has attracted thousands of people after it was used in a recently released Bollywood movie “3 Idiots,” is not going to work.
If India wants to compete with China it has to change its basics first. And, Sibal has touched the right nerve: research. It would have been better for the development of India and specifically for its educational development had they brought this regulation a decade ago, but, better late than never. Under this regulation, the promotion of a university/college teacher would be based on his/her research output, and satisfaction in teaching rather than experience. Apart from this, another regulation was passed some months ago by the HRD Ministry in which CBSC exams system of evaluation would change into the grading system of evaluation. I believe both the systems grading pattern of examination system and promotion on the basis of research output and quality of teaching are borrowed from China—which have been part of the Chinese education for years.
Fair enough. Countries adopt policies from other countries, which can fit to their context, and leave the ones which are not applicable. But the problem here is not with the policy but with the perception of people, especially teachers, professors in this case. The members of Federation of College and University Teachers Association (FEDCUTA) have supposedly gone for hunger strike against this regulation saying it will affect the teaching quality.
Usually in many other developing countries teachers complain that bureaucrats come in their way, when they want to focus on research, but here it is opposite. They say, a scholar’s desire is to produce more and more research, but it seems that is not true in India. Either the teachers don’t want to do the research and enjoy 60 years of life-long employment, without any accountability. Or they don’t know the importance of research. But blame does not lie squarely on teachers only. There is also institutional fault which the HRD is now trying to rectify by creating new policies which make research output pre requisite for promotion. But only this is not going to bring any drastic change unless the mindset is changed and skills for research are incorporated. The basic need is to change the pattern of evaluation system in the colleges and universities. It should be based on research paper submission, presentations, group discussions among others by the students in the class, pretty much like most of the developed countries as well as developing countries like China, and Singapore etc do, instead of present examination system which in one hand creates fear psychosis on the students and on the other hand fails to bring critical thinking among them.
Lifelong employment without any threat of getting fired has proved ineffective except in few countries like Japan, where unlike India; ownership of government work can be seen from each and every person. Thus, many countries replaced the lifelong employment system with the contract system of employments, which has proved to be affective
Secondly whether research is important for a country? The answer to this question lies in industrial revolution which changed the power politics of world. Finally policy change in the education system would improve the Indian research out. Most of the Indian students lag behind in research and academic writing skills because of the faulty education system. Contrary to India, where a student has to memorize the answers in order to write them in exams, in China an under graduate student write a thesis paper in order to graduate besides other course requirement papers and exams. The requirement for master’s degree student is to at least publish one academic paper in addition to his/her thesis. But in India, except few topnotch universities like Delhi University, JNU, IIM, or IIT’s students get even PhD degrees without any academic publication.
To borrow from Jaffrey D. Sachs argument, “it is the technology not the exploitation of poor, which became force behind the increase in income in rich world”. (Sachs; The End of Poverty). A small piece of steal (chip set) on which they add knowledge became much more expensive than our gold. Developed countries are developed because of innovation, not because they have natural resources, or they exploited the poor countries. I do not say natural resources do not play role in countries development, or the mighty America, western, and new rising East Asian tigers did not exploit poor countries, which helped in economic growth in these countries. But, it was innovations and technology, which made them superior than the rest of the world. History is testimony to the fact that many countries have developed in spite of less or nonexistent natural recourses; and at the same time sizable number of countries in Africa, Middle east, Central Asia, Asia pacific and South Asia are under developed despite huge natural recourses. Countries like Saudi Arabia. Qatar, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and even China have huge natural resources than a small country like South Korea which has no natural recourse at all, but none of these countries can match the economy of South Korea; which has mostly knowledge-based economy. Instead of benefiting a country’s development, the natural resources in many developing countries or least developed countries have become what Richard Auty calls “Resource Curse”. This “resource curse” could be seen in many African, Middle Eastern, Central Asian and many other developing countries.
So, where is the India’s knowledge capital? India’s HRD Minister Mr. Kapil Sibal answering a question in a debate on 12 March, 2008 in the Raj Sabah said, “India lags behind China in Research and Development (R&D) output and R&D spending”. India has 157 researchers per million population compared to China’s 633, Germany 3222, USA’s 4,526, Japan 5085, Sweden 5171 and Finland 7431.The gap between India and China in research output is very wide. In 1996, China was ranked 9th on research output with 26, 853 documents and India grabbed 13th spot with 20,106. This gap widened until 2006, China got onto the second position in research output after the USA with 166,205 documents, and India secured 10th position with 38,140 documents. (Subbiah Arunachalam 2008). This gap may widen further as China is investing huge money on R&D sector compared to India. China already invests around 1.80% of its GDP on R&D compared to USA’s 2.5%, and India’s 0.8%. China is planning to spend 2.5% of GDP on R&D in 2020 to don innovation in the world. So for India, the challenge is not only to invest in R&D and make India advanced in technology and foster development. But to effect the institutional change by changing the mindset of teachers and students, and by enforcing legislation that would encourage research. Or else, it is not going to happen. As the American Scholar Margeret Lavi says, “People seldom want to change the habits and norms that have protected them and promoted their individual ends, unless they are not convinced that the circumstances have truly changed.”
It is hard to have development without innovation, and impossible to have innovation without research. So research is the key.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
India Needs To Act, Atleast For Its Own Sake
If India wants to meet first Millennium development goal “to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger,” it has to leave its static position and take a proactive role in Copenhagen to combat Climate Change.
By Suhail Masoodi
07 December, 2009
Countercurrents.org
On 3rd December, 2009, just 4 days ahead of Copenhagen summit on Climate Change, Minister of Environment, Mr. Jai Ramesh, announced in the Indian Parliament that India has voluntarily agreed to cut 20-25 percent carbon emissions by 2020 over 2005 level. On next day, Arun Jaitly, leader of the India’s largest opposition party BJP rebuked Mr. Ramesh for agreeing to emissions cut, which he believes was done under the USA pressure. On the other side of Indian border, and world’s biggest carbon emitter China also agreed first time to set a target of 40-45 percent cut in its carbon emissions. It must be stated here, China’s decision came a day after President HU Jintao’s meeting with the US President Barak Obama last month in Beijing, and Indian government’s decision what they called voluntary action, also came just after few days after PM Manmohan Singh’s meeting with President Obama. This is the first time when both the countries, India and China set targets to cut Co2 emissions, which means the big daddy Obama means business, and thus wants to take action himself and push others to do so.
There are many voices not only in India and China but in other parts of developing world that seem to be not in favor of making any commitment to cut the carbon emissions, thus stating the old and obsolete argument that developed countries should cut the emissions, thus take whole responsibility on their shoulders. Fair enough, everybody knows they (developed world) have polluted the world, but does that mean we in developing world should sleep and let our people die. In India, except some scientists and environment activists nobody seem to be bothered about climate change, and why should they be? It will neither fetch votes for Politicians, nor has it yet affected its bourgeois, India’s three hundred million middle class. Yes, it has affected its over 28% population who live under the below poverty line, it affects and will severely affect in future its 400 million population (which is almost equal to the population of whole Europe and the US) who are still without basic electricity.
Over the years we have seen increase in threat of Climate Change to the world. According to Global Humanitarian Forum report 2009, around 325 million people are seriously affected by climate change, and estimated 500 million will be at extreme risk, and 4 hundred billion people (about two thirds of world population) are expected to be vulnerable to the future effects of climate change. More and more land is getting severely affected by drought. The percentage of land affected by drought has gone up from 1% to 3 % from last 10 years, and it is expected to affect 8% in 2020, and 30% by the end of this century. Looking at the rising problems created by Climate Change, it is obvious that it is the poor Indian population who will have to face the brunt of climate change in the coming years. A very shocking truth about the effects on poor Indian farmers come from the National Crime Records Bureau, which tell us that an estimated 16,625 farmers across India have killed themselves in 2007, nearly one fourth of them were from the Maharashtra’s Vidarba region. The growing worry is that the numbers are continuing to rise. Since 1997, 182,936 Indian farmers have ended their lives, or roughly, 46 Indian farmers kill themselves every day - one suicide almost every 30 minutes. These suicide rates although cannot be generalized as being solely due to negative impacts on agricultural produce from climate change, but Climate Change has certainly contributed to their agony and the negative effects of climate change on agriculture are bound to worsen this scenario further. It is believed that methane emissions especially from the cultivation of rice (especially the flood irrigation of rice) and livestock are the principal green house gas (GHG) emitters in the South Asian region. These account for about 25 percent of GHG emissions in India and 40 percent in neighboring Bangladesh and Pakistan. As such it has become a vicious cycle where the poor end up having no choice but to emit GHG and in turn also suffer from the negative effects of the emitting.
On the other hand the increasing affects of global warming, have caused the Himalayan glaciers to melt rapidly. The 24,000 kilometer Himalayan glaciers which are source for 9 largest rivers in Asia thus provide water to over 1.3 billion population cutting across geographical boundaries. According to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN body on Climate Change; Himalayan “Glaciers could disappear altogether by 2035.” So it is high time for India to act rather than playing petty politics on the issue. If India is able to manage to save the Himalayan glaciers, it will not only help herself, but will also help her neighboring countries as well. India needs to play a central role and bring other stakeholders like China, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bhutan to save the Himalayan glaciers from melting. There is a clear indication that water capacity in India has been decreasing, since 1947, as such this decreasing rate of water availability is a serious concern for the whole subcontinent. Currently, India has 1,100 billion cubic meters of aggregate annual utilizable water and it is believed the water demand in 2025 of the country will be 1,013 billion cubic meters. Although the data shows the country has enough water, as the current availability of water is higher than the projected demand by 2025, but decreasing water capacity makes it alarming. In the year 2000 India had 2,200 billion cubic meters of water available, which is expected to decrease to 1,600 billion cubic meters by 2017.
Though India has taken a series of measures including 2008 eight point action plan to combat Climate change, but it does not seem India has invested much in green technology, despite its relative advantage in wind energy it has so far failed to make full use of it. On the other hand China has been immensely investing in green technology. With $ 218 billion green stimulus package, it has already become largest investor in green technology in the world. Making green technology as a mission, it has launched major research in solar battery and wind energy; it is pertinent to mention here that China already creates more power from renewable energy than other countries, if you walk to Beijing or Shanghai streets you could observe a caravan of electronic bikes, but hardly any petrol or diesel motor bikes. Renewable energy in China is getting immense importance contrary to India, where even its minister for new and renewable does not visibly get invitation for meeting on climate change. So if India wants to meet first Millennium development goal “to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger,” it has to leave its static position and take a leadership in Copenhagen to combat Climate Change. At least for its own sake.
By Suhail Masoodi
07 December, 2009
Countercurrents.org
On 3rd December, 2009, just 4 days ahead of Copenhagen summit on Climate Change, Minister of Environment, Mr. Jai Ramesh, announced in the Indian Parliament that India has voluntarily agreed to cut 20-25 percent carbon emissions by 2020 over 2005 level. On next day, Arun Jaitly, leader of the India’s largest opposition party BJP rebuked Mr. Ramesh for agreeing to emissions cut, which he believes was done under the USA pressure. On the other side of Indian border, and world’s biggest carbon emitter China also agreed first time to set a target of 40-45 percent cut in its carbon emissions. It must be stated here, China’s decision came a day after President HU Jintao’s meeting with the US President Barak Obama last month in Beijing, and Indian government’s decision what they called voluntary action, also came just after few days after PM Manmohan Singh’s meeting with President Obama. This is the first time when both the countries, India and China set targets to cut Co2 emissions, which means the big daddy Obama means business, and thus wants to take action himself and push others to do so.
There are many voices not only in India and China but in other parts of developing world that seem to be not in favor of making any commitment to cut the carbon emissions, thus stating the old and obsolete argument that developed countries should cut the emissions, thus take whole responsibility on their shoulders. Fair enough, everybody knows they (developed world) have polluted the world, but does that mean we in developing world should sleep and let our people die. In India, except some scientists and environment activists nobody seem to be bothered about climate change, and why should they be? It will neither fetch votes for Politicians, nor has it yet affected its bourgeois, India’s three hundred million middle class. Yes, it has affected its over 28% population who live under the below poverty line, it affects and will severely affect in future its 400 million population (which is almost equal to the population of whole Europe and the US) who are still without basic electricity.
Over the years we have seen increase in threat of Climate Change to the world. According to Global Humanitarian Forum report 2009, around 325 million people are seriously affected by climate change, and estimated 500 million will be at extreme risk, and 4 hundred billion people (about two thirds of world population) are expected to be vulnerable to the future effects of climate change. More and more land is getting severely affected by drought. The percentage of land affected by drought has gone up from 1% to 3 % from last 10 years, and it is expected to affect 8% in 2020, and 30% by the end of this century. Looking at the rising problems created by Climate Change, it is obvious that it is the poor Indian population who will have to face the brunt of climate change in the coming years. A very shocking truth about the effects on poor Indian farmers come from the National Crime Records Bureau, which tell us that an estimated 16,625 farmers across India have killed themselves in 2007, nearly one fourth of them were from the Maharashtra’s Vidarba region. The growing worry is that the numbers are continuing to rise. Since 1997, 182,936 Indian farmers have ended their lives, or roughly, 46 Indian farmers kill themselves every day - one suicide almost every 30 minutes. These suicide rates although cannot be generalized as being solely due to negative impacts on agricultural produce from climate change, but Climate Change has certainly contributed to their agony and the negative effects of climate change on agriculture are bound to worsen this scenario further. It is believed that methane emissions especially from the cultivation of rice (especially the flood irrigation of rice) and livestock are the principal green house gas (GHG) emitters in the South Asian region. These account for about 25 percent of GHG emissions in India and 40 percent in neighboring Bangladesh and Pakistan. As such it has become a vicious cycle where the poor end up having no choice but to emit GHG and in turn also suffer from the negative effects of the emitting.
On the other hand the increasing affects of global warming, have caused the Himalayan glaciers to melt rapidly. The 24,000 kilometer Himalayan glaciers which are source for 9 largest rivers in Asia thus provide water to over 1.3 billion population cutting across geographical boundaries. According to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN body on Climate Change; Himalayan “Glaciers could disappear altogether by 2035.” So it is high time for India to act rather than playing petty politics on the issue. If India is able to manage to save the Himalayan glaciers, it will not only help herself, but will also help her neighboring countries as well. India needs to play a central role and bring other stakeholders like China, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bhutan to save the Himalayan glaciers from melting. There is a clear indication that water capacity in India has been decreasing, since 1947, as such this decreasing rate of water availability is a serious concern for the whole subcontinent. Currently, India has 1,100 billion cubic meters of aggregate annual utilizable water and it is believed the water demand in 2025 of the country will be 1,013 billion cubic meters. Although the data shows the country has enough water, as the current availability of water is higher than the projected demand by 2025, but decreasing water capacity makes it alarming. In the year 2000 India had 2,200 billion cubic meters of water available, which is expected to decrease to 1,600 billion cubic meters by 2017.
Though India has taken a series of measures including 2008 eight point action plan to combat Climate change, but it does not seem India has invested much in green technology, despite its relative advantage in wind energy it has so far failed to make full use of it. On the other hand China has been immensely investing in green technology. With $ 218 billion green stimulus package, it has already become largest investor in green technology in the world. Making green technology as a mission, it has launched major research in solar battery and wind energy; it is pertinent to mention here that China already creates more power from renewable energy than other countries, if you walk to Beijing or Shanghai streets you could observe a caravan of electronic bikes, but hardly any petrol or diesel motor bikes. Renewable energy in China is getting immense importance contrary to India, where even its minister for new and renewable does not visibly get invitation for meeting on climate change. So if India wants to meet first Millennium development goal “to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger,” it has to leave its static position and take a leadership in Copenhagen to combat Climate Change. At least for its own sake.
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