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India's investment in education-as a percentage of GDP-is lower than not just of countries in the West but also some of the emerging economies, including China. The percentage of population in the relevant age group enrolled in higher education too is the lowest among countries with which it must compete. Clearly, there is a need to scale up substantially the physical infrastructure and attract better faculty by offering market wages. India is well known for its large pool of technical manpower, a fair proportion of which finds employment in developed countries, especially in the West. As a happy sequel to the story, India has witnessed a big boom in the IT and BPO sector. In order to sustain this trend, and to ensure that India does not throw away this key advantage, it is imperative to produce a critical mass of highly skilled manpower at an accelerated pace. India has developed one of the largest system of higher education in the world with over 230 universities and 6,500 vocational colleges catering to about 10 million students. Most of these are publicly funded although some may be privately run. The financing of higher education, however, is often reprioritised due to competing demands for budgetary funds from primary and secondary education sectors. While India has pointed out some of the deficiencies and some action points, there is need for a massive movement in our society to improve the education scenario. Neither the students nor the teachers seem to demand better quality of education. The quality of higher education and the training of our future generations should become an integral aspect of our value system. An enabling academic and economic setting is a key factor determining the fate of our nation in the wake of the knowledge sector boom. The structure of higher education institutions in India needs to be changed. Investment in science and higher education in India is very poor. For reasons which are not clear, the higher education sector has been ignored badly by the government. There is a wrong impression in some sectors of our society that the main responsibility we have is towards universal education at the primary level. The quality of education taught in Indian institutions is not considered to be high particularly in some areas of engineering and science. This is mainly because of the poor quality of infrastructure and teachers. To improve infrastructure, we need a much greater investment in higher education. The private sector could contribute not only by supporting research and development, but by directly supporting the education system in this country. India at present invests 2.5 per cent or less of gross domestic product (GDP) on education. This needs to be increased by at least four times, to 8 to 10 per cent just like Japan, UK, China, South Korea, Singapore and neighbouring countries. The University Grants Commission needs to take a better leadership role instead of its preoccupation with distribution of funds. Educational reform has created more a euphoria and fake optimism rather than real quality-improvement in educational system. Opening or closing of a college or a course in the university or research institutes should not depend on the job market indication. But the fate of a subject/degree/college should not fluctuate with the fluctuations in the job market. Knowledge-base of the country should not afford to dance according to the tuning of the market. As the World Bank is a major funding agency for many developing countries, it is important to understand the extent to which the Bank's own orientation to decreasing subsidies to the social sector, and promoting market efficiency as a model, have influenced the orientation of the state towards education. The impact of external funding agencies seems to have been legitimised and accepted for all sectors of developing countries including the social sector. Education as an investment in the social sector is given wide publicity in this decade. These trends suggest a movement towards a neo-liberal economic orientation in which capital and the market (rather than policies and the state) gain hegemony; and ideas of competition, productivity, efficiency and profit, prevail over ideas of equity and social desirability.
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