India announces massive investment in skills creation and science and technology

India announces setting up of 30 new Central universities, and several new IITs and IIMs. See details below.

Source: Press release, dated January 3, 2008, issued by India's Press Information Bureau

The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh inaugurated the 95th Indian Science Congress at Visakhapatnam today. Speaking at the occasion, Dr. Manmohan Singh reiterated the Government’s commitment to invest more in science education. The Eleventh Five Year Plan is in fact a National Education Plan, the Prime Minister said. He stressed on the need for a global response, a national response and a local response to meet the challenge of climate change. Dr. Singh also urged the scientific community to tap into our traditional knowledge base, to develop environment-friendly and efficient technologies.
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Our Government is committed to investing more, much more, in education, especially science education. The Eleventh Five Year Plan is in fact a National Education Plan. The Plan allocation for education has been stepped up from 7.7% of gross budgetary support for the Plan, in the 10th Plan, to over 19% in the 11th Plan. In nominal terms there is going to be a five-fold increase in spending on education in the 11th plan. This is an unprecedented increase in financial support for education in India.

We are planning to fund thirty new Central Universities, five new Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, eight new Indian Institutes of Technology, seven new Indian Institutes of Management, and twenty new Indian Institutes of Information Technology.

We are also launching a Mission on Vocational Education and Skill Development through which we will open 1600 new Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and Polytechnics, 10,000 new vocational schools and 50,000 new Skill Development Centres.

We will ensure that annually, over 100 lakh students get vocational training – which is a four-time increase from today’s level. Detailed plan for implementing these proposals will be spelt out in the next six months.

To enlarge the pool of scientific manpower, and foster research in the sciences, a programme entitled “Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research” (INSPIRE), is being launched. Under this programme, over the next 5 years, one million school students will be given science innovation scholarships of Rs. 5,000 each. The Plan will also support Scholarships for Higher Education (SHE), providing 10,000 scholarships per year of Rs. One Lakh, to attract talented students to enroll in B.Sc. and M.Sc. courses.

Our strategy for the promotion of science education in the 11th Plan will aim at (a) expanding and strengthening the Science & Technology base in our Universities, and (b) promote excellence through competitively secured funding at centers for advanced research. In addition, discipline-specific education programmes will be launched in strategic sectors like nuclear sciences and space sciences to capture talent at the “plus-two” stage itself.

All this marks a quantum leap in the infrastructure available for good quality teaching and research. At the last Science Congress I gave you my assurance that we are willing to increase the annual expenditure on science and technology from less than 1% of our GDP to 2% of our GDP in the next five years. That assurance stands.

We must make science a preferred discipline of study for our students. We must attract the best and the brightest young people to a career in science. We need, I believe, both a qualitative improvement and a quantitative expansion in the pool of science students in India. This means we will also need more teachers. We will need an army of teachers, especially in the basic sciences and in the field of mathematics. Shortage of good teachers is an immediate challenge.

I urge our academic community to come forward with innovative ideas to help us overcome and meet this challenge effectively. Tried and tested methods will not suffice. We need fresh creative thinking. Out-of-the-box solutions. The academic community too must be willing to think creatively.

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Excerpted from the above mentioned press release