Partnering With America In IT? India Needs To Invest Heavily In Building World Class Universities

What does India need to do to become a world power in IT? A top class universities ecosystem that engages deeply with government and industries. 

There are times when the interests of great nations converge, and this is one of those moments for India and the US. There is an outcry in the US that its companies, industrial research centers, and military computers have been under relentless attack from government-sponsored hackers in China.

India can represent the counterweight to China, America requires at this point. It needs the next generation of computer programmers from India for cyber-security and other business applications as the US is not producing enough of its own.

Since India already has a substantial global presence in the information technology sector, collaboration between India and America in this area is natural. There are geopolitical and economic reasons for joint projects in other industrial fields as well, but outside of information technology India cannot hope to play the role of a partner equal to the United States for the foreseeable future.

It appears, therefore, that Prime Minister Modi’s current visit to the US can become much more than a public relations opportunity. It is to be expected that new initiatives between the two countries will be announced. But will Narendra Modi later use the promise of such collaboration to push major reforms in the Indian education system? Without reforms, one cannot hope to have an ecosystem of science in India that is anywhere like that of the Silicon Valley.

To understand why urgent reforms are needed, let’s quickly note the two big changes that are taking place in the world. First, automation (using robots and AI) has transformed business and manufacturing. Workers in engineering plants, even in China, are being replaced by robots and this process will only accelerate in the future. As a country becomes prosperous, its workers do not wish to do boring and repetitive low-wage jobs.

The other fast growing sectors of the world economy deal with products for the mind. If, the period of European colonialism was about the physical domination of people and lands, the twenty-first-century captains of industry wish to conquer the landscape of the web. Both of these areas must leverage capability in computer science and artificial intelligence (AI), and India is well placed to provide a large fraction of the next generation of workers in these fields.

The costs associated with the physical infrastructure in the companies dealing with information technology products are relatively low, and, therefore, successful companies can and do dominate the entire world as evidenced by names such as Google, Amazon, Uber, and eBay. The globally dominant company must keep on innovating and for this it needs to hire the best people from any corner of the world.

What does India need to do to become a world power in IT? It needs better infrastructure to attract global talent; it needs healthy engagement between industry, universities, and the government to foster a virtuous cycle of sustainable innovation; and it needs world-class educational institutions.

In the most recent QS world university rankings, only two Indian universities were in the top 200 (IISc and IITD at 147 and 179, respectively), whereas the city-state of Singapore alone had two in the top 15. Not only do we not have the sufficient number of top-notch universities, about one-fourth of our colleges produce graduates of unacceptably low standards.

India devotes a much smaller fraction of its gross domestic product to research and development than rivals China and Brazil, not to mention the established economies of the United States and Europe. Each year, Indian students spend several billion dollars on higher education abroad for we do not have enough capacity.

The best Indian universities need an upgrade of their facilities to attract superior students, as well as the most qualified faculty from across the world. The universities also need to modernize their charter and reform their governance. At this time, the IITs cannot even start new departments without concurrence of the parliament.

We must acknowledge that there are some positive signs. Research in India has overtaken Russia, France, Italy and Canada in terms of yearly publications, although it is still behind UK, China, and the US. Scientific activity has increased in the last decade or so, but it is generally not of the highest quality and publications generate fewer citations than those of other leading scientific nations.

The creation of an educational ecosystem that is devoted to excellence requires a few world-class universities that serve as exemplars. The best Indian universities should aim to be an attractive destination for tuition-paying international students, as universities in Singapore and Australia have become. The international higher education market is worth hundreds of billions of dollars per year, and if Indian universities can tap into a fraction of that, it will have many benefits for the economy.

One must also mention disruptive new technologies in the field of education, a sub-area of IT, as a point of collaboration between India and the US. The world education system is in a state of flux. Western universities have become too expensive, and they are stuck in a paradigm of academic disciplines in a time of fewer jobs. Although online education programs that offer Massive Online and Open Courses (MOOCS) at a fraction of the cost are becoming increasingly popular, they have their limitations.

There is a need for new affordable education solutions, which take the best of both traditional and technology-based solutions. This is where Indian companies could establish a powerful presence.

The author’s Twitter handle is @subhashkak1