Building A New India

India now has huge assets in skilled human capital, broad-based use of global business language, English; private and public sectors that are dynamic and a very diverse science and technology sector. This has been made possible because of the vision of a group of policymakers in higher education who moulded it with strong support from the political leadership after the country gained independence in 1947…

- Nimesh Chandra

At the time of India’s independence in 1947, the vision of people involved in nation building emphasised on policy making, establishing institutions and producing skilled manpower of the highest calibre through education. The policy makers accentuated that education should be firmly integrated with research and extension. While the growth and development in the education sector in the last seven decades is a perceptive issue with respect to the benefits it has brought to the nation; quantitatively speaking, the progression has been phenomenal in terms of infrastructure and number of beneficiaries.

In the last two decades, particularly, there has been an ardent shift in the vision where research and innovation now figure prominently in almost all good academic research institutions and industry organisations. This thematic section focuses on issues and facts on education, research and innovation policies through the viewpoints of people who know and understand the domain extensively.

Reflections from the past

During the British period, the Charter Act of 1813 introduced a centralised system of education which was primarily responsible for education matters. In 1871, a system was introduced in which the control of education department and some other departments were transferred to provincial governments but the initiation of this policy led to a situation where the central government practically stopped giving any financial help to provincial governments and sufficient funds were not available for education and its development.