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Cabinet approves 70 lakh scholarships for minorities

Cabinet approves 70 lakh scholarships for minorities

Ravi Shankar Prasad

Ravi Shankar Prasad

New Delhi : The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the provision of 70 lakh scholarships to students from the minority communities under its pre-matric, post-matric and merit-cum-means based schemes till the year 2020.

Union Minister of Law and Justice Ravi Shankar Prasad told a media conference that under the three schemes, the government provided 60 lakh scholarships to students of this category during 2017-18.

“To meet the next target of 70 lakh scholarships, the total expenditure is going to be Rs 5,338.32 crore,” he said.

The Minister also said that technology is being used in transferring scholarships directly to the accounts of the beneficiaries to avoid duplication and other problems.

—IANS

Education top priority in ties with India, says Australian envoy at opening of UNSW office

Education top priority in ties with India, says Australian envoy at opening of UNSW office

Laurie Pearcey

Laurie Pearcey

New Delhi : In a major step to take forward its widening outreach to India, including in student recruitment and collaborations in cutting-edge research, the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, on Tuesday evening inaugurated its new premises in the Indian capital as Australia announced its intent about making India a major focus of its economic and diplomatic strategy with education as a “flagship sector”.

Australian High Commissioner to India Harinder Sidhu graced the inauguration of the centre, located in the Jasola commercial complex in New Delhi, while UNSW Pro-Vice Chancellor (International) Laurie Pearcey flew down especially to attend the event.

Addressing the select gathering at the event, High Commissioner Sidhu, who is of Indian origin in an increasingly multiracial Australia, termed the opening of the new office “a big milestone” in the bilateral relationship with India.

Referring to the report, ‘An India Economic Strategy to 2035, Navigating from Potential to Delivery’ released last week by the Australian government, Sidhu said it outlined that education is “not just a priority sector but the top priority sector” in bilateral relations with India.

“Education is a benchmark of co-operation between our two countries. There’s a lot that we have been doing together and can now do much much more in the field of education and research,” she added.

Pearcey, in his remarks, said from nine overseas students from Southeast Asia in the early 1950s, UNSW today has 20,000 international students from 120 countries, “and India is an important part of UNSW”.

He termed the opening of the new office an “incredibly exciting time in the Australia-India relationship”. He stressed on UNSW’s strategy, which is academic excellence, social engagement and global impact.

Manish (one name), Joint Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, termed the opening of the centre as “very timely” and said that education is one of the primary areas of bilateral cooperation.

“We have collaborations for cutting edge research and technology with institutions of higher education. We want to step these up to the next level in the coming years,” said Louise McSorley, Counsellor-Education and Research at the Australian High Commission.

Ambassador Amit Dasgupta, a former Indian consul-general in Melbourne and country director of UNSW, said the India engagement of UNSW started modestly and has “gone from strength to strength, and I believe the best is yet to come”.

He said it was not just a matter of student recruitment, but went beyond that. “A partnership that forged together the twin pillars of teaching and research, how we can collaborate with institutions of academic excellence in India and with the corporate sector and in the process transform lives, that is the mission we have.”

The event was attended by senior academics like Rupamanjari Ghosh, Vice Chancellor of Shiv Nadar University, Vivekanand Jha, Head of The George Institute, Sanjeev Prasad, Professor of Computer Science, IIT Delhi and Sanjay Seth, CEO of TERI-Griha among others.

The report, ‘An India Economic Strategy to 2035, Navigating from Potential to Delivery’, authored by former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and one-time High Commissioner to India Peter Varghese, looks at how Australia can capitalise on economic growth in India and states that a strong and productive Australia-India education relationship should be seen as the “flagship sector” of the bilateral relationship.

“There is no sector with greater promise for Australia in India than education. Australia’s future growth and prosperity will be driven by our ability to generate and attract the best and brightest.”

According to it, India’s tertiary-age (18 to 22) population is the largest in the world and is projected to peak at 126 million in 2026 before stabilising at 118 million by 2035, yet enrolment in higher education (27 per cent) is far behind China (43 per cent) and Brazil (51 per cent).

The report estimates that if Australia maintains its growth in international students and can recapture its share of Indian students from its 2009-10 peak, direct revenue from Australian education exports to India could exceed $12 billion by 2035.

Located in Sydney, Australia’s student city, UNSW is one of the world’s leading research and teaching universities and is home to more than 52,000 students from nearly 120 countries. UNSW is ranked 45th in the world, according to QS World University ranking.

—IANS

Apple increases support for Malala Fund to advance girls’ education

Apple increases support for Malala Fund to advance girls’ education

Apple increases support for Malala Fund to advance girls' educationRio de Janeiro : Apple Developer Academies will play an important role in supporting the Malala Fund’s mission to provide education opportunities to girls across the globe, Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai has said, referring to deepening of partnerships between the tech giant and the fund.

Meeting the young developers at the Apple Developer Academy here on Friday, Malala said the fund will gain access to new tools to support its mission of free, safe, quality education by tapping into Apple’s network of student developers.

“The students in Apple’s Developer Academy programme share my passion for improving the world around us, and I am eager to see their innovative ideas to help girls in Brazil and across the globe,” Malala said.

The Nobel peace laureate was speaking on the occasion of Apple launching on Friday a new collaboration between its 10 Apple Developer Academies in Brazil and Malala Fund to advance girls’ education opportunities.

“My hope is that every girl, from Rio to Riyadh, can be free to choose her own future,” she said.

In January this year, Apple entered into a partnership with the Malala Fund to support new programmes in India and Latin America, with the initial goal of extending secondary education opportunities to more than 100,000 girls.

“We share Malala’s goal of getting more girls into quality education and are thrilled to be deepening our partnership with Malala Fund by mobilising thousands of Apple Developer Academy students and alumni across Brazil,” Apple’s CEO Tim Cook said in a statement.

“Apple has been committed to education since day one, and we can’t wait to see what our creative student developers come up with to help Malala Fund make a difference for girls around the world,” Cook added.

—IANS

Reimagining employability in India: A singular imperative

Reimagining employability in India: A singular imperative

GraduateBy Amit Dasgupta,

The singular expectation from university education is guaranteed employability and, thus, a return on investment. When this fails to happen, it is because the quality of education does not respond to market demand.

Drawing on data from 60,000 graduates pan-India, an employability solutions company noted that around 47 percent of Indian graduates are unemployable. According to a McKinsey report, only a quarter of Indian engineers are employable. Other studies put it at a much lower figure and even as low as five percent. These are alarming statistics because they would significantly and negatively impact India’s demographic dividend.

In the meantime, technology has emerged as a game-changer. Breakthroughs in robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, 3D printing, driverless vehicles, for example, have triggered a revolution that is expected to transform everyday human experience.

Take robotic surgery, for instance. The surgeon can now carry out the most complex procedures with far greater skill, precision and dexterity. Robotics, similarly, is being used in the construction industry and it is argued that with robotic systems, output would be much more consistent accompanied by higher quality, speed and efficiency. In the military, it is estimated that the US armed forces could have more robots on the battlefield than real soldiers by 2025. Not only would these robots have deadly capability but, more importantly, their use would dramatically reduce loss of life among American soldiers in combat zones.

In a similar fashion, 3D printing is already impacting manufacturing, the production of medical devices, the fashion industry, architecture and the automobile industry. The dramatic impact that the technology revolution is having and would continue to have is an indisputable fact of contemporary life.

This would suggest that in 4-5 years time, when a student graduates, the job the person would do is yet to be created. For educators, this would prove to be a nightmare, unless they gear students up to anticipate uncertainty and have the ability to respond to it.

This is not true of Indian education, however, because of its steadfast refusal to evolve and embrace new challenges and prepare for a rapidly changing world. Unless it does so, education would not lead to employability or job creation through entrepreneurship.

What we know as facts are, first, that the rapid breakthroughs in technology would result in several current jobs being done by machines. We are already seeing this in multiple fields, some of which we interact with in our daily lives. Many supermarkets, for instance, have introduced pay machines and dispensed with manual bill generation and payment counters handled by staff. With the increasing use of credit cards, pay-and-go would displace more persons from other current jobs in many retail outlets. This would be equally true of airline and other modes of long-distance travel where boarding passes can now be printed without having to visit the counters. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that around one-third of all jobs across 46 nations would be displaced by 2030.

Second, how we negotiate our relationship with technology would be critical to our well-being. At present, there is fear of, and even resistance to, technology because of credible apprehensions about loss of jobs. We need to recognise that technology is only a tool meant to assist us and to improve overall performance and productivity. Rather than a threat, it is meant to complement our core capabilities and free us from drudge work that machines might do better and more efficiently.

Even engineers, architects and doctors need to rethink their role, as machines would now replace what they did. But then again, there are several other areas where technology would be found wanting. Consequently, there would be increasing demand for new skills, as the work place would itself be dramatically transformed.

The McKinsky report estimates that automation could force anywhere between 75 million to 375 million into new jobs by 2030. This is borne out by other studies as well that argue that global, virtual teams would replace the current work place environment because project teams would now be geographically dispersed. PricewaterhouseCoopers projects this new style of working to increase by 50 percent by 2020 resulting in a potential shortfall of 85 million qualified workers globally by 2020.

Third, this suggests that education needs to build the soft human skills that Artificial Intelligence cannot emulate. What we teach, consequently, needs to be rethought. While strong technical knowledge is important, it is equally important that students master intercultural communication and are in a position to perform in geographically dispersed virtual environments. Team building, leadership, crisis and conflict management, and dealing with people would be the key tipping points in deciding who is employable and who may be displaced.

Reimagining employability is an imperative for India but its success is entirely dependent on how we redesign our approach to education. What we require is close collaboration between the corporate sector and educational institutions to create the work force of the future.

(Amit Dasgupta, a former diplomat, is the inaugural India country director for UNSW Sydney. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at amit.dasgupta@unsw.edu.au)

—IANS

Lack of attention on education, health magnified in Modi rule: Amartya Sen

Lack of attention on education, health magnified in Modi rule: Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen

New Delhi : Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen said the lack of attention on social sectors had taken a “quantum jump in the wrong direction” since the BJP came to power and that despite the visible prominence of backwardness in India, the political dispensation was diverting attention from the core issues.

“Things have gone pretty badly wrong. Even previously before this government, we did not do enough on education and health. But it has taken a quantum jump in the wrong direction since 2014,” Amartya Sen said on Saturday during a discussion on his new book “Bharat Aur Uske Virodhabhas” (India and its Contradictions), co-authored with economist Jean Dreze.

Pointing out the contradiction in India getting backward while also being the fastest growing economy in the world, the Nobel Laureate said: “Twenty years ago, of the six countries in this region, India was the second best after Sri Lanka. Now it is the second worst.”

“And because of Pakistan’s problems, Pakistan has managed to shield us from being the worst,” he said.

He added that while people should take pride in the things that India has, they must be critical of those things of which they have reason to be ashamed.

“Despite the easy prominence of backwardness in India… now if you try to draw attention to that, the way to deflect it is to say: now think about the great pride of India,” Sen said.

He said despite the enormous inequalities, it was possible to distract attention.

“A great writer who I admire, V.S. Naipaul, who wrote such a novel like ‘A House for Mr Biswas’, could also write that what happened after the 13th century was destruction of Hindu temples and Hindu civilisation, overlooking that this is also when new ideas were coming in.

“If you can distract V.S. Naipaul’s attention then you can distract the attention of most intelligent people,” the Nobel Laureate said.

“The result is that there has been deflection. When there has been this deflection, we have to do something anti-deflection,” he added.

Dreze, who co-authored the book, said while India, in the last few years, had got some success in its quest to become the fastest growing economy — “helped partly by slowdown in China’s growth and partly by some jugglery of numbers” — there is a significant difference between growth and development.

“While development is the goal, economic growth is the medium to achieve that goal. And it’s something to think about that despite 7 per cent GDP growth, the income of the rural labourer has remained the same and yet no one speaks about it,” he said.

He added that while economic growth can help in achieving development, it needs to be accompanied by public action.

“If we talk about health, India is way behind even Bangladesh despite being economically ahead of it. And that is because of lack of public action in India compared to Bangladesh.

“Similarly public action is crucial for education, nutrition, social security, ensuring equality, and environmental protection,” he said.

—IANS