On education, pay heed to the president’s words

For growth, the country must increase investment in research and innovation

Speaking at the seventh convocation of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hyderabad, on Sunday, President Ram Nath Kovind said the best scientific universities and institutions of learning across the world are not just teaching shops or degree factories, but sources of innovation, incubators of technology, and technology-driven start-ups. These are valuable words, and Indian institutions of higher learning must pay heed to what the president said . This is because most of them have focused more on handing out degrees, making their students market-ready, and less on research and innovation.

According to a paper published in Current Science, the research output by all central universities together is less than that of universities such as Cambridge or Stanford. The institutions that were supposed to innovate — the IITs, for example — have also failed to live up to expectations when it comes to research and innovation: According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, for example, India filed only 45,658 patents in 2015, compared to China’s 1,101,864, the US’s 589,410, and Japan’s 318,721. However, this is not surprising because at present we spend less than 1% of the GDP on research and innovation. India’s attitude towards research and innovation needs to change: Innovation is important at all stages of development; specifically, the creation and diffusion of technologies are important for economic growth.