00:00:00
Transcriber: Riaki Poništ
Reviewer: Denise RQ
00:00:11
I'm here to talk to you about
Indian education,
00:00:13
higher education in particular.
00:00:14
But I'm actually going to
start with demography.
00:00:17
How many of you here are under 35?
00:00:21
OK, that seems pretty
representative of the country;
00:00:25
65% of India is under 35.
00:00:28
How many of you are under 25?
00:00:31
Then you are not representing
00:00:33
because half of the Indian population
is pretty much under 25.
00:00:37
We are an amazingly young country.
00:00:40
In fact, if you just take
the age group from 10 to 19,
00:00:43
there are 226 million Indians,
poised, in other words, to enter
00:00:48
higher education, going through school
and ready for higher education.
00:00:52
This is amazing
00:00:53
because it's happening at the time
when the rest of the world is aging.
00:00:56
If you look at the average age
in India today, it's 28.
00:00:59
Of course, don't ask about the gap
- since we heard about gaps -
00:01:03
between the average age
of the Indian person
00:01:06
and of the Indian cabinet.
00:01:07
I think we hold the world record for that.
00:01:10
But, that's another TED talk, right?
00:01:14
But what you've got
with the average ages
00:01:16
at a time when the rest
of the world is changing,
00:01:19
is that by 2020, the average age
in Japan is going to be 47,
00:01:22
in China it's going to be
heading well past 40,
00:01:25
Europe, 46, the United States,
beautiful US, also 40,
00:01:29
and India's average age
is going to be 29.
00:01:32
So we are potentially the people
00:01:34
who are youthful, productive,
dynamic, young population,
00:01:38
ready to work, and transform
the world, the kinds of role that, say,
00:01:41
China played in the last generation
could be ours in the next.
00:01:44
In fact, International Labor Organization
has worked out that by 2020,
00:01:48
we'll have 160 million people
in the age group of starting work,
00:01:53
- 20 to 24 is what they calculate -
00:01:55
and China will only have 94 million,
at the same time.
00:01:59
So we really are poised to do that.
00:02:01
But, and by the way, other countries
will have a serious deficit
00:02:04
that's estimated
that the US will have 17 million short
00:02:08
in terms of how many people
they need of working age.
00:02:11
We, in India, have the people.
00:02:13
But do we have the ability to equip
the people to take advantage of this,
00:02:17
to be the workforce
of the work engine for the world?
00:02:20
See, if we get it right, we educate
and train them, we really transform
00:02:24
not just our own economy
and our society, but the world.
00:02:27
If we get it wrong,
the demographic dividend
00:02:31
that I'm talking about becomes
a demographic disaster.
00:02:34
Because, we've already seen
in 165 of our 625 districts
00:02:39
what happens when unemployed,
frustrated, undereducated young man
00:02:45
become prey to
the blandishments of the Maoists
00:02:48
and prey to the gun and the bullet.
00:02:50
So education in our country is
not just a social or economic issue,
00:02:55
it's even a national security issue.
00:02:57
We've got equip our people
00:03:00
to take advantage
of what the 21st century offers them.
00:03:03
This is the story in a nutshell:
00:03:06
4 E's, Expansion with our
first priority in education.
00:03:10
Why? Because the British
00:03:12
- and I wouldn't even ask
if any of you are here -
00:03:14
left us in 1947, with a 16% literacy rate.
00:03:19
there were only 400,000 four-lakh students
in the entire country in higher education.
00:03:23
We had 26 universities,
fewer than 700 colleges.
00:03:28
So obviously, expansion was essential;
00:03:30
we've gone right from that 16%
to 74% literacy today,
00:03:34
we've gone from 26 universities
to 650 universities,
00:03:38
we've gone from those
400,000 students, four-lakh students,
00:03:42
to 20 million students
in higher education today,
00:03:45
and we have 35,000 colleges as well,
instead of 700 colleges we had then.
00:03:52
So expansion has taken place.
00:03:53
We've also had to fight
for the second E of Equity.
00:03:57
That is, including the excluded
from the education,
00:03:59
trying to reach out to the unreached,
00:04:02
the people who didn't get
a fair shake in education
00:04:04
for reasons they couldn't help:
gender, an obvious reason.
00:04:07
When we had had that 16% literacy rate,
00:04:09
do you know what
the female literacy rate was?
00:04:11
8.9% at the time of the independence.
00:04:14
Just one out of 11 Indian women
could read and write.
00:04:18
Caste, region, religion, all sorts
people got left out of system.
00:04:22
We had to bring them in.
00:04:24
And that became a big challenge
and a priority for education.
00:04:27
In getting those two things
more or less right,
00:04:29
I don't know how well
we did on the third E,
00:04:32
which is the E of Excellence.
00:04:34
Obviously, you need quality.
00:04:36
And we set about setting up institutions
of great quality in our country.
00:04:40
The IITs are a good example, in fact,
it's part of Jawaharlal Nehru's vision
00:04:45
that IIT in Kharagpur was
established in 1956, the year I was born,
00:04:50
and it was done on the site
of a British detention center,
00:04:53
the Hijili detention center.
00:04:55
So a symbol of political oppression
became instead a symbol of hope,
00:04:59
of technology, of looking to the future.
00:05:01
But, for the IITs, the IIMs,
a few good institutions,
00:05:04
I'm sure you could all pick
your few around the country,
00:05:07
these have tended to be
islands of excellence
00:05:10
floating on the sea of mediocrity.
00:05:12
The average Indian higher education
institution is simply not of the quality
00:05:17
that you and I, all of us,
in this audience would like to see.
00:05:21
And that ties into the fourth E I've added
to this catechism: Employability.
00:05:26
Talk to employers, talk to CEOs,
what would they tell you?
00:05:29
That they're simply not satisfied
00:05:31
with the quality
of the graduates they're getting.
00:05:33
Even in the T of TED,
the technological area,
00:05:36
engineering graduates, half a million
engineering graduates a year,
00:05:40
but if you talk to the Federation of
Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry,
00:05:44
they did a survey and 64%
of employers are not satisfied
00:05:48
with the quality of graduates
they're getting.
00:05:50
Some companies are running,
essentially, re-education places,
00:05:54
like the gigantic campus in Mysore.
00:05:57
And it's not on the job training
which big companies tend to do,
00:06:00
it is, in fact, a full-year's education
for the people they've already hired,
00:06:06
to make up for the deficiencies
00:06:08
of what they've learned
or not properly learned in the college.
00:06:11
Now, that's the scale
of the challenge that we face.
00:06:14
What are we doing about it?
A great deal needs to be done.
00:06:18
Of course, we are trying to put in
kids into the system at an early age,
00:06:23
the RTE, the Right to Education Act,
00:06:25
if kids were out of school
in the old days,
00:06:27
it was their parents' fault;
00:06:29
today, if there are out of school
it's a state's fault.
00:06:32
The government is committed
to actually getting them an education.
00:06:35
We've got more and more money
00:06:37
being pumped in
by the system at all levels.
00:06:40
For example, many of you
may have gone to prestigious universities;
00:06:43
lots of people in India don't.
00:06:45
They go to state universities
which are grossly under-financed.
00:06:48
We've come up with a scheme to pump
central money into the state universities,
00:06:51
so they actually have
the resources to do something
00:06:54
with the students they have there.
00:06:56
Money isn't the whole answer.
00:06:57
There is an entire challenge,
in terms of addressing things
00:07:01
like the gender gap - that's a gap,
but despite what mister...
00:07:05
or what an earlier speaker said,
we don't want to embrace, right? -
00:07:08
that we must, must overcome.
00:07:10
Right now, women's literacy is 66%,
better than the 8.9, but it still means
00:07:16
that, you know, one out of every
3 Indian women still can't read and write.
00:07:20
We have to overcome that.
00:07:22
And we need to catch the ones
who've been left out of the net:
00:07:25
adult literacy; huge challenge.
00:07:26
I went off to a village in Tamil Nadu,
not far from Khan Jibran,
00:07:30
but I've met women,
who in their 50s and 60s,
00:07:32
were learning to read and write.
00:07:34
And people think sometimes
what's the point,
00:07:36
some of their own family members,
their husbands, think what's the point.
00:07:39
The answer is it changes their lives,
it empowers them in real ways.
00:07:43
I spoke to a woman called Chitra Mani,
00:07:45
who proudly wrote her name
in Tamil on a piece of paper.
00:07:48
I said: "So, what does being able
to read and write mean to you?"
00:07:52
And she said: "Now I can see
the destination of a bus,
00:07:56
where it's going;
00:07:57
I don't need to ask somebody
where that bus is going.
00:08:00
I know where I can go.
00:08:01
When I get to the big city
of Gandhi Puram,
00:08:03
I can read the street signs,
I can find where I need to go,
00:08:06
I don't feel helpless anymore."
00:08:07
That kind of empowerment is
what literacy gives people
00:08:11
in a very fundamental and real way.
00:08:14
And we're trying to do that of course,
for those who've dropped out early on,
00:08:18
in the days before we got to that 74%.
00:08:20
Younger kids, we've got them
into school now.
00:08:23
We've something called
a gross enrollment ratio,
00:08:26
the percentage of children
of a certain age,
00:08:28
of the appropriate one
for a particular level of education.
00:08:31
But at our primary school now,
our gross enrollment ratio is 116%.
00:08:35
We've actually enrolled more kids
than we thought existed at that age group,
00:08:39
because some of the older ones
are coming in too.
00:08:42
Bad news is, as you go
up the level, it starts dropping,
00:08:45
So by the 8th grade,
I'm afraid it's down to 69%,
00:08:49
by the 10th grade, 39%,
00:08:53
and by college, our gross enrollment
ratio is about 18%,
00:08:57
against the global average of 29%.
00:08:59
So, clearly, we still need to do more.
Our expansion hasn't gone enough.
00:09:03
We haven't managed to get
everyone to stay in the system.
00:09:06
Some of them actually
need vocational training.
00:09:08
They're not all going to become
white collar clerks,
00:09:12
or officials, or IAS officers, right?
00:09:15
We need to try and catch them,
and get them into vocational training.
00:09:19
But how do you do that in the culture
where, for 3,000 years,
00:09:22
if you wanted to become
a cobbler or a carpenter,
00:09:25
you'd better have an uncle or father
who's a cobbler or a carpenter,
00:09:28
because nobody else is going to teach you.
00:09:30
The transmission of knowledge,
of trade craft in our country,
00:09:33
has always been through the gene pool,
00:09:35
the reason why the sons of politicians
tend to be politicians also, you know.
00:09:39
And with the Bollywood movies stars,
same story. (Laughter)
00:09:43
So we need to get master craftsmen.
00:09:45
Why is it with a country of 1.2 billion
that we should have a nationwide shortage
00:09:50
of masons, of plumbers,
of certified electricians?
00:09:53
We need to get more
vocational training into the system,
00:09:56
we're doing that, we're now rolling out
the whole concept of community colleges
00:09:59
so that kids can go in,
have some academic learning,
00:10:02
lots of vocational training,
00:10:04
and at the end of 2 years, if they show
tremendous academic promise
00:10:07
they can go back to a university, if not,
00:10:09
they leave with a 2-year certificate,
and they go off and do a useful trade
00:10:13
in a society that is clamoring
for these skills.
00:10:15
So these are the kinds of changes
00:10:17
that we're trying to bring about,
and move along.
00:10:20
But there's a change that
the government alone can't do.
00:10:23
You know, if you look at the need
for research and innovation,
00:10:26
- you've heard a lot of that, I'm sure
in the course of the TED talks -
00:10:29
research is something which...
00:10:32
The government wants to double
the amount of money
00:10:34
they are spending on research
for 1% of GDP to 2%;
00:10:37
we haven't had the money
to pump into it yet,
00:10:40
but, innovation requires
new ways of thinking.
00:10:44
I heard you had a talk about
hyper-thinking; I've missed it.
00:10:47
But new ways of thinking means
learning to think out of the box,
00:10:50
learning to create, I know we're
famous for ”jugaad”, right?
00:10:53
If you Google the word
'frugal innovation, '
00:10:55
and top 20 hits will all relate to
Indian inventions.
00:10:58
We invented the world's
cheapest electrocardiogram,
00:11:01
the simplest and cheapest EKG,
the cheapest insulin injection,
00:11:05
the world's cheapest small car,
the TATA Nano,
00:11:08
but all these've been things
invented elsewhere
00:11:11
that we have stripped down,
made more affordable, more replicable,
00:11:15
more relevant to our conditions.
00:11:16
We need to do things
that others haven't done before,
00:11:19
which we used to do in our culture
where Nalanda invented the zero.
00:11:22
Remember how the Romans used to write
their numerals in long strings of letters,
00:11:26
till an Indian thought of the idea of zero
emerging from the notion of "śūnyatā"
00:11:31
in Hindu and Buddhist thinking?
00:11:33
That came into the zero "śūnya"
which transformed global mathematics.
00:11:37
We need to think like that again;
we need to come up with ideas.
00:11:41
With 17% of the world's brains,
why do we only have 2.8%
00:11:44
of the world's research output
coming out of our country?
00:11:47
Well, perhaps we need to start
in the classroom.
00:11:52
Get our kids, not just to
have their heads filled full of facts,
00:11:56
and textbook materials,
and teachers' lectures.
00:11:59
Because frankly, that gives you
a well-filled mind,
00:12:01
but in the era of the Internet,
you don't need a well-filled mind,
00:12:05
you've got Google, right?
00:12:06
Find everything you want
with 2 clicks of the mouse.
00:12:09
What you need is a well-formed mind.
00:12:11
A mind that reacts
to unfamiliar facts and details
00:12:14
that can actually synthesize information
that it hasn't studied before.
00:12:18
A mind, in other words, that can react
to the bigger examination called 'life, '
00:12:22
which doesn't actually only give you
the things you're prepared for.
00:12:26
And for that you need a mind
that's shaped by original thinking,
00:12:30
a mind that doesn't just ask
the teacher, "Why?", but "Why not?"
00:12:33
I've actually had a little experience
of out of the box thinking myself.
00:12:36
I wear glasses, I don't need them to read
or to see you folks on the front,
00:12:40
but if I want to catch
somebody in the back row,
00:12:42
there I have to look though glasses.
00:12:44
But because I hardly ever wear them,
I keep losing or breaking them.
00:12:48
I shove them in the pocket,
bang them against the wall or something,
00:12:51
they crack, I put them on the lap,
when I get up, they fall down,
00:12:54
somebody steps on them, they break.
00:12:56
In the first 3 months of this year,
I lost or broke 6 pairs of glasses.
00:13:00
So I was telling a friend about this,
00:13:01
and he said: "A simple solution,
why can't you think of one?"
00:13:04
I said: "Look, there is no easy solution
00:13:07
because for 150 years,
glasses have been made in one way, right?
00:13:10
They join together at the center,
then hang over your ears.
00:13:12
That's what I've found
an inconvenience, so I take them off."
00:13:15
And he said, "No, no, no, no, no,
you will find a different way.
00:13:18
You can re-imagine glasses in a way
they're not going to hang over your ears,
00:13:22
or join at the middle,"
and this is what he did.
00:13:25
I'm wearing them right now;
and if I want to see anybody at the back,
00:13:28
I just pull them together,
00:13:30
it has two magnets
in the middle that click together,
00:13:33
and I can see you all at the back.
(Applause)
00:13:36
Now, it's just a silly example perhaps,
00:13:38
but it's an example
of how one can think out of the box.
00:13:41
Things, familiar objects can be thought of
00:13:44
in ways they haven't been
thought of before.
00:13:46
And that way, we can move
forward in the world.
00:13:49
I have no doubt
that the challenges are enormous,
00:13:52
there is simply no question
that here, in our country,
00:13:56
we have to become literate.
00:13:59
But there's one piece of good news.
00:14:01
95% of our 12 year-olds
across India can read and write.
00:14:06
So the future looks good.
00:14:08
And as far as the workforce is concerned,
00:14:11
if we can get all
these other pieces in place,
00:14:13
we can say to the rest
of the world, "We are coming."
00:14:17
Thank you very much.
00:14:18
(Applause)