Odisha HRD

Learning from other states: central sports university pursued in Tamil Nadu and cabinet approval of a national center on molecular materials at Thiruvantapuram

Following is from the PIB release http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=66858.

A proposal was received from the Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports to convert Rajiv Gandhi National Institute for Youth Development, an institution deemed to be university, at Sriperumbudur into Rajiv Gandhi Central University/National Institute of Youth and Sports. In order to examine the proposal and to make suitable recommendations, the Government has constituted a Committee …

In the past we have suggested a similar institution in Rourkela, the cradle of Hockey in Odisha and India.

Following is from another PIB release http://www.pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=66771. (Thanks to kalahandia.blogspot.com for the pointer.)

The Union Cabinet today approved the establishment of a National Centre for Molecular Materials (NCMM) at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala as an autonomous institute of the Government of India (GOI) under the Department of Science & Technology (DST) at a total cost of ` 76.7 crore for five years with an outlay of ` 14.55 crore for the Eleventh Plan Period.

The Centre will be located on 40 acres of land provided by the State Government, free of cost.

The Centre will be the first of its kind in the country and will pursue high-end science and develop technology in niche areas like sensors for biomedical devices, materials for solar energy harvesting and space electronics. Through the Centre, the Government attempts to create a national innovation infrastructure that channels knowledge systems to wealth creation in the long run.

The Centre will collaborate with other academic institutions and actively interact with industry and user groups. It will generate human resources in the form of well-qualified researchers, technicians and entrepreneurs who can help develop the use of such materials for technological applications and exploit the market potential in this area.

For long Odisha has been trying for a research center on materials along similar lines, but without much success.

November 9th, 2010

Yale President’s thought on Innovation Universities in India

Following is an excerpt from a interview in http://chronicle.com/article/Yales-President-Talks-About/125273/.

Q. By "innovation," what do you mean? Could you give me some examples?

A. The biggest one is this: If India is going to build some truly high-quality institutions, it is going to have competitive compensation on a global scale. One of the things the Chinese have done, … they have essentially decided to break their salary scales to recruit back Chinese expats working in the U.S. and U.K. to be leaders and senior professors at their top institutions. And India has an extraordinary expat academic population. But it is very hard to get those people back in the public universities [here], because they are not attractive-enough jobs. So "innovation universities" offer hope that they’ll be able to provide competitive compensation and merit-based compensation.

Q. Did you talk with Kapil Sibal, India’s minister in charge of higher education, about this?

A. Yes, with the minister and many other people here. … The whole point of innovation universities is that both public and private innovation universities in the legislation [to allow for their creation] will have the possibility of not paying [faculty salaries] according to the standard scale.

Q. Why is that issue here in India important to you at Yale?

A. If the question posed to us is, Help us build world-class institutions, my first piece of advice is you can’t do it and pay people 20 percent of what they earn in the U.S. [He laughs.]

The last point is a very important one. While there are many top world class researchers in India, who are only paid 20% of what they would earn in the US, it is not possible to have a university full of such top (in terms of research) faculty by paying them only 20%; let alone have 14 such universities.

That is why there is a need of deep pocketed private benefactors of such universities. 

1 comment November 9th, 2010