Educate women to create leaders

Students from Switzerland and Germany came to Banasthali Vidyapeeth in an exchange programme and learnt a lot about Indian society and culture. Students from Banasthali also go abroad similar way to do one semester in several foreign university.

VINOD VARSHNEY

Foreign universities are good only for competition, 
they may have de-culturising effect on youth.

All-women universities are just seven in the country, two are quite new and struggling to find their feet. Among the well-established five, Banasthali University (Vidyapeeth) is unique in several respects. It adheres to its basic Indian philosophy of imparting comprehensive education—intellectual, physical, practical, aesthetic and moral–in the days of globalisation when money making institutes are mushrooming all around. It was founded by Pandit Hiralal Shastri, the first Chief Minister of Rajasthan along with Padma Bhushan Smt Ratan Shastri a “Shiksha Kuteer” with six girls in 1935.

Vanasthali has walked with the time, grew and became University in 1983 and today offers high profile courses in Computer Science, Operational Research, Electronics and Biotechnology. New courses include M.Sc. (Bio-Informatics), M.Sc. (Pharmaceutical Chemistry) and M.Sc. (Applied Microbiology). The latest one in the pipeline is on earth sciences.

Prof (Dr) Aditya Shastri, its illustrious Vice Chancellor, after completing his PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and working one year in Tata Institute in Fundamental Research joined Banasthali in 1992 and has put in a lot of energy to make the university self-reliant through bold initiatives. He spells out the governing philosophy and future vision for the university in an interview with Lokayat.

Vice Chancellor Prof Aditya Shastri

Banasthali has grown phenomenally during last few years, its infrastructure is impressive, what is the view and vision for the future?  

The long term vision cannot be defined by infrastructure alone. To understand what we intend to do in the future can be understood in the backdrop of the four phases it has already gone through … It is an exciting journey from where we started …. Banasthali started seventy six years ago… those days there was no tradition of sending girls out of home for education. The school representative had to visit door to door to convince parents and draw girls out of home to seek education. The former speaker of Rajasthan Assembly Sumitra Singh, a Banasthalite is one example of that period... she says--had she not got education here, she would have been tending cows and bufallows like many of her childhood sahelis (friends)… this was the first phase…

The second phase started in 1960…. now most families had developed a desire that their daughters should go to school … seek modern education, but there was one big problem … the age of marriage was still very low… most parents would take their girls out of the school for marriage too soon…. only few girls were completing their high school. The issue once was raised before Rajagopalachari… he said you have to work within whatever social space you have to work… he advised prepare short duration programme… thus an 8-year course ‘Sanskrita’  was launched… this was course keeping in mind the concept of comprehensive education… which is now discussed in various school boards…. see the vision of those people… they started it Banasthali in 50s and 60s… The third phase was to motivate girls to do BA, BSc…

What about the professional higher education, which is the latest craze?  

I come to that…. let me tell about this… this is now the ongoing phase… you see, the drastic change in the field of women education came in 1985… girls by now had developed a desire to compete with men in every field of education… and seeing the changed requirements of the society, we started MBA and MCA courses… these became immensely popular… placement level was hundred percent…. companies like TCS and IBM just these two were recruiting two thirds of the total candidates… all well-known names Arisant, Accenture, HCL, Infosys come for campus interviews…

The real issue is what next?

Yes, this is the real issue….. our vision is to impart education to girls for leadership roles… no matter which field they go… see Meira Kumar, the Lok Sabha Speaker and Dr Kamala Beniwal, the Governor of Gujarat are two Banasthalite examples…. but we would like to have an entire crop of leaders to come… we need to motivate girls during their education to take up leadership role later in life, industrial or public.

The current trend is to have tie-up with some foreign universities. Is Vanasthali also trying to do this?

European girls learnt Indian dances and gave a performance in a cultural show

Not that kind of tie-up but we run student-exchange programme under which Banasthali students go abroad and complete some part of their education there… similarly girls from US and Europe come here to do the same. We allow girls to complete one semester abroad and whatever credits they earn there, are counted here. Incidently more girls come here … than Banasthalite going abroad in the exchange programme… every year some fifty students come from the US and Europe…  during their stay for 4-5 months here they come to know about Indian classical music, dance horse riding, they come to know about Indian culture …. I shall be happy if Indian girls go abroad in larger number for a semester, but because of budget-constraints of their families or the conservative considerations, many girls want to go abroad… but are not able to go for this kind of exposure. I recall…. girls from Switzerland came last time and they learnt Rajasthani dance…. when they returned to their mother-land they performed a programme of Rajasthani dance... what a fantastic cultural exchange along with education…!

Central government body NAAC in 2003 had pointed out that some departments have not been able to do curriculum revision and no career orientation is given in a few traditional courses… so what remedial …?

Every year twice, Academic Council meeting takes place and we take care of the changing industry requirements, we keep in touch with companies like IBM… but let me tell you what they say… they say technology changes happen quite fast… so what is required from students that they are strong in fundamentals and the rest can be done by the industry itself… and yes there are many institutes that introduce courses sounding the latest but the knowledge of students remain superficial. Companies prefer candidates who have sound grasp of fundamentals.

Why led to the sudden growth of Banasthali during the last decade?

Yes, there has been speedy growth in recent years…. now this residential university has more than 10, 000 students. This is in line with the new vision… or mission worked out by the central government. Three four years ago India had gross enrolment ratio of just 9-10% in under graduate courses vis-à-vis global 24-25 percent. If the country wants to become an economic super power then it has to work for the national mission of achieving the global level of 25 percent. By this year the enrolment ratio is 13-14%. We have introduced several professional courses like MBA, Pharmacy and Bio Tech.  We have established a new Centre for Earth Sciences in the wake of new requirement of green technologies to save the earth…the book “Is this the last century?” has predicted the human race may not last more than 100 years… he has raised the question of the human existence…that is why the issues of water, climate change and environment have become so important... entire world is working on developing green technologies…we are awake to the new requirements...by next year our Centre for Earth Sciences is going to start MSc and MTech courses in Remote Sensing and Environmental Sciences, Geo Informatics, Geology and Geography. We are also planning to have joint research programmes with government agencies.

Tell one--thing why Indian universities figure very low in the international ranking of universities?

It is because of the criteria …. Indian Universities cannot acquire high ranking. This is different game, for example… if an Indian university hires a Nobel Laureate as its professor, its rank would go up very high…but the question is---by having a Nobel Laureate, can the quality of education would really go that high? Second big reason is that our universities focus less on research…this keeps their ranking low…if ranking is done among Engineering colleges alone, definitely our IITs would figure at a much higher slot…similarly if ranking is done among women universities, Banasthali University would be at quite a high rank.    

What impact will the Foreign University Bill have on Indian education system?

Foreign universities will create a new environment of competition….to that extent it would be good, research and teaching would get a boost, so let foreign universities come…..but education cannot be seen in a narrow perspective, the more important aspect of education is the conservation and improvement of culture … but their education system may  have deculturising impact on India….they may create a notion that anything Indian is bad, such thing may not be good….the universities that would come from abroad…they would come with their own purpose in mind…it should be our purpose in our mind that we have to retain the cultural aspect too.

There has been mushroom growth of private institutes in the country, and many of them just sell degrees rather than imparting education, of what use are such institutes, are they not just money-making businesses ?

There is a dichotomy… there are certainly institutes, who seek donations, many have been caught also, since government wants speedy expansion, such unethical players would also come….the government will have to look at this issue of money-making, it will have to devise mechanism to keep malpractices out of the system… but at the same time policies should not be strangulating to good institutes…the policies should be to help good institutes...another mechanism is market force…if there are bad institutes, market forces automatically would take care of them. Only good institutes would ultimately flourish. 
(This interview of Prof Aditya Shastri was first published in monthly magazine Lokayat)

When the economist PM fails…

VINOD VARSHNEY

Indian PM Manmohan Singh

Among major economies of the world India has clocked the highest price rise in recent years. This has stark implications to various sections of our people. It means 221 million odd households had to shell out Rs 5.8 lakh crores more to meet their needs during the last 3 years. In effect this is a covert tax mainly on the poor and the middle class. 

The above figure has not been trotted out by communists to justify their relentless war on capitalism. It is the outcome of a research done by the global rating and consultancy firm Crisil, which works for national and global companies that  top the  profit makers’ list with turnover running into billions. They are touted as shining examples of successful capitalism, not socialism.

The price rise has been steady during the last three years and, though  it showed  some decline for a few months, there is no sign of a relief any time  soon. While raising the prices of petroleum products much was made out by the spin doctors of the government that it  spent more than 20 percent of  revenue income  from all sources on oil, food, fertiliser and interest subsidies. But Crisil’s research notes that total  Central  subsidy is less  than what people  spend extra due to price rise.

The revelation may embitter, even enrage, the common man. But will it prick the conscience of our economist prime minister who seems worried more about the growth index than the common man’s plight?  He does not care if the high growth curve has been achieved by punishing the common man.  

Every year during the preceding days of  national budget presentation  it is  common  for  white collar employees  in various offices  to speculate and pray  for  some relief in personal income tax. If the finance minister grants even a tiny relief, it makes   banner headlines in newspapers. Whereas the indirect taxation through price rise on common man during the last three years have turned out to be 35 percent, higher than any rich person including Mukesh Ambani has to pay on his income as income tax.

According to the research cited above, if prices increase by just three percent, say from five to eight, the outgo from the common man’s pocket in a year comes to Rs 1.6 lakh crores. This is a huge burden – in fact, invisible, indirect taxation. Common people feel the squeeze, the poorer they are, the more they are crushed. Sadly, they can do little about it except to think about a change in the system.

My dream is the prime minister ensures that prices never rise higher than 5 percent per annum.

(The article was published in the July, 2011 issue of Lokayat)