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Published online 20 May 2009 | Nature 459, 311 (2009) | doi:10.1038/459311d
News in Brief
Re-election of Indian prime minister aids nuclear deal
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India has enormous scientific potential and increase in funding will further promote scientific research, which help to find out solution of major challenges in the field of energy security, health and climate change. It will not only transform Indian economy but also make a self-dependent country. Now more young talented people will attract towards higher education.
The promotion of science agenda is one thing, the escalation of nuclear program can be quite another. While nuclear reactors do provide abundant source of relatively clean energy, the proliferation of undesirable covert nuclear weapon activity may be beyond the control of the government. Just make double sure that regulatory constraint and stringent supervision are done properly and fairly. India is no exception. (Tan Boon Tee)
Without reforming the core primary and secondary education there is no hope to achieve quality output from higher education and research in India. Our current education system selectively discards talented students; discourage students to ask questions. Now Indian education system is ruled by private tuition and coaching enabled ?good? boys with excellent mugging up capability. They have replaced original talents. The whole area of higher education and research is overwhelmingly dominated by mediocre people. Currently India just supplies technical manpower worldwide not because of its quality but for its huge availability and cheap cost. So we excel in routine outsourcing jobs or as a typical postdoc material. Average quality of research in India is going down since independence despite of steady increase in funding. There is no reason to believe that higher spending will translate into higher accountability and research output if we can not provide productive manpower inside the glittering new labs, behind the costly machines we buy.
An in depth analysis of Indian educational system reveals that it is an assortment at present. Though there are quite a few islands of excellence in our system, however, much of the system surely relies on mugging and not innovative or lateral thinking. With a highly educated Prime Minister namely, Dr. Manmohan Singh on top it is anticipated that the educational system will further move in the progressive direction. Apart from having the second largest technical and scientific manpower in the world, India (as recently has been again made evident) is a great democracy. Therefore, her future as a great scientific and technological power now seems certain. Dr. Upinder Fotadar