Indian Universities Not among the World's Top 200

January 2014

The following were my reactions when I heard that none of India's universities found a place among the top 200 universities of the world:

Mohan R. Limaye

In this connection, I recall that TIME magazine also published university-rankings some time ago.  To start with, let me admit that I’m ignorant of the state of higher education (and, for that matter, of education at all levels) in India.  However, what I’m going to say is so general that it will apply to any poor and populous country.  I’m going to adopt a plain, unadorned tone (meaning “undiplomatic”) and a kind of language that will emphasize my points:

(1) In my opinion, the priority of India’s public policy regarding education should be to provide free and compulsory primary education to all its children, and absolutely no tax money should be allocated to higher education until the goal of universal “literacy” is achieved.  Let private money entirely fund university education (with grants/scholarships, mandatorily, provided to poor and deserving students by these private “runners” of higher education institutions).  Of course, policy makers and elected representatives of the people should work out the finer details.  I admit it will be a form of extra taxation on the rich, but that is the way it should be.

(2) Let the field – and the moral responsibility -- of “basic/pure” research be left to the rich countries of the world.  Academic research (not trademarked or patented as intellectual property) published in scholarly journals is freely available for “use”, anyway.  As far as technology is concerned, India can buy what it really “needs.”  India, a poor country, should not be running after “empty” prestige.  It cannot afford the luxury of (expensive) research.  It has other urgent priorities.  It needs to spend its limited resources on food, clothing, housing and primary health for its billion-plus population.  Its higher education should train engineers, doctors and other professionals to satisfy its own market demands.  Forget about research.  Not to mention, I personally think, some technology research is redundant and hence wasteful, and does not add a bit to the “richness” of one’s life. 

(3) Let someone among my friends and relatives get reliable data about these famous universities’ budgets (of Stanford, Harvard, Oxford, Sorbonne, etc.) and compare them with the budgets/resources of some of India’s states.  I just read that Rice University in Houston, Texas collected $1.1 billion in donations in celebration of its Centennial Year (2013).  When some of our even state governments may not have as much revenue as the richest universities’ budgets in the West, when dire poverty cries out for relief in India, and when female literacy in India is at a pathetic rate, it is unwise and even outrageous to attempt to mimic the rich and to chase empty fame.

(4) As I said once in another context, each country has its own unique gift to the rest of the world.  Two of a few greatest human beings of all time, from my perspective, came from India: Gautama Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi.  That is India’s unique gift to the rest of the world.

(5) And the most important point I want to make is that we Indians need to abandon, to get rid of, the slavish and fawning attitude (toward the West) we have imbibed from the days of the British Empire.  Why should we care about what the West thinks?  Why should we adopt their criteria?  We have to plan/create our own national agenda according to our needs.