What is the role of the state? The two ends of the political spectrum (left and right) will give you different definitions for this question. Without getting into the conflict and without taking sides let us assume what the state does should be for the benefit of the people.
We have a government that came to power in the centre with a huge majority the idea that they promoted was development. Now, development is a very absurd term to me a non-economist. My first question is development of what? I assume it means development of people. The way that we do so is by expanding business (At least in our country). Now business might be public or private and may entail manufacturing, services, etc. Here, is where I think almost all our governments fail.
In order to develop a business enabling environment one of the most critical factors is human capital. Having demographic surplus does not translate to human capital directly. What is the use of having a huge amount of young people without skills? It is also important that whatever skill programs are dictated by policy are geared to the future not the present.
What businesses were doing 15 years ago may not be their practice today. The dominant businesses of today may not be the dominant one of tomorrow. This is not a statement, this has been shown via multiple empirical studies in different countries. Than the question arises what should we skill people with? I believe we should skill them to become technologically adaptable. In other words, once a person is skilled to deal with different technologies the person can easily migrate his/her skills to other technologies.
How do we do this? Well for one the focus has to be on education. Right now we are opening IITs and IIMs like they are retail outlets. This definitely needs to stop. Unless that money is spent on primary and secondary education we will not have enough children who are capable of fully utilizing the facilities and faculties provided to them by higher educational institutions. What is the use of having so many IITs and IIMs when the input provided to them is not on par?
We also need to focus on research. Research in India is so neglected that we never even think that it can help us develop our human capital. How many indian researchers are fully tenured in US and UK universities? How many academic papers do they publish? Have they not had some form of education in India? Oh yes the brain drain phenomenon! Tell this to someone else. To do research you need facilities, you need institutions and most importantly funding. Other than a few places that I know off, where are the labs and the equipment? Where is this funding?
If you think that funding research is just pouring money down a drain than by all means make funding performance oriented. I am sure the true researchers hell bent on dedicating their life to make things better will not mind. But at least try it. Right now, funding to STEM has been cut dramatically. We are happier importing new technology rather than funding our own research community. We are more bother about politically controlling the IITs and IIMs rather than controlling them based on your performance. We are more interested in changing versions of history and science based on who said it first rather than encouraging advancement in science. We are more bothered about bring innovations from abroad rather than incentivizing innovation at home. Science does not care if some mythological story talked about nuclear physics before the western world. It does care about how nuclear physics can be used to benefit society. How can we understand the world we will in better? Science does not care if mahabhartha talks about nuclear weapons. It cares about non-conventitional energy sources that are cheap and clean. When will we get it into our heads that science is not about religion, science is religion.
If the role of the government is to develop society than we are failing. There are other failures too but that debate is for another post.
We have a government that came to power in the centre with a huge majority the idea that they promoted was development. Now, development is a very absurd term to me a non-economist. My first question is development of what? I assume it means development of people. The way that we do so is by expanding business (At least in our country). Now business might be public or private and may entail manufacturing, services, etc. Here, is where I think almost all our governments fail.
In order to develop a business enabling environment one of the most critical factors is human capital. Having demographic surplus does not translate to human capital directly. What is the use of having a huge amount of young people without skills? It is also important that whatever skill programs are dictated by policy are geared to the future not the present.
What businesses were doing 15 years ago may not be their practice today. The dominant businesses of today may not be the dominant one of tomorrow. This is not a statement, this has been shown via multiple empirical studies in different countries. Than the question arises what should we skill people with? I believe we should skill them to become technologically adaptable. In other words, once a person is skilled to deal with different technologies the person can easily migrate his/her skills to other technologies.
How do we do this? Well for one the focus has to be on education. Right now we are opening IITs and IIMs like they are retail outlets. This definitely needs to stop. Unless that money is spent on primary and secondary education we will not have enough children who are capable of fully utilizing the facilities and faculties provided to them by higher educational institutions. What is the use of having so many IITs and IIMs when the input provided to them is not on par?
We also need to focus on research. Research in India is so neglected that we never even think that it can help us develop our human capital. How many indian researchers are fully tenured in US and UK universities? How many academic papers do they publish? Have they not had some form of education in India? Oh yes the brain drain phenomenon! Tell this to someone else. To do research you need facilities, you need institutions and most importantly funding. Other than a few places that I know off, where are the labs and the equipment? Where is this funding?
If you think that funding research is just pouring money down a drain than by all means make funding performance oriented. I am sure the true researchers hell bent on dedicating their life to make things better will not mind. But at least try it. Right now, funding to STEM has been cut dramatically. We are happier importing new technology rather than funding our own research community. We are more bother about politically controlling the IITs and IIMs rather than controlling them based on your performance. We are more interested in changing versions of history and science based on who said it first rather than encouraging advancement in science. We are more bothered about bring innovations from abroad rather than incentivizing innovation at home. Science does not care if some mythological story talked about nuclear physics before the western world. It does care about how nuclear physics can be used to benefit society. How can we understand the world we will in better? Science does not care if mahabhartha talks about nuclear weapons. It cares about non-conventitional energy sources that are cheap and clean. When will we get it into our heads that science is not about religion, science is religion.
If the role of the government is to develop society than we are failing. There are other failures too but that debate is for another post.
