Education : From Darkness to Light

Today's copy of the Economic Times carries two articles that, taken together, highlight the disastrous corner that India has painted itself into in the area of education, and then offers some hope of finding a path through which it could extricate itself ! If this is too confusing, consider the following :

First, Rajrishi Singhal [ End License Raj in Education ] has very elegantly made the point, known to most of us in academia that it is the license-control mindset India's bureaucracy -- led by the last two, regressive and venal, education ministers -- that is at the heart of the darkness that has eclipsed the academic landscape. Jurassic institutions like the AICTE -- that insist that educational institutions cannot have a profit motive but must pretend, hypocritically, that they are charitable organisations -- have ensured that educational services cannot be delivered to the citizens unless it is through entities that are controlled by politicians. This includes both the Public Sector Institutes ( like IITs, IIMs) as well as private institutes owned by crony capitalists. Can this control mindset change ? Can it be made to change as has been the case in telecom or airlines ?

Which brings us to the second article by Niranjan Bharati & Rajeev Jayasway[ The Professor as a Businessman ] where we see a glimmer of hope. Apparently, the government is considering the option of allowing academic institutions to pick up an equity stake in companies formed by faculty. While this may certainly benefit the entrepreneural academician, what is at stake is something that is far more fundamental. An entity that delivers educational services could now be allowed to behave like commercial -- and god forbid, profit seeking -- entity ! Which is a revolutionary thought for our fossilised socialists. For to make this happen, the AICTE/UGC -- or hopefully the Higher Education Regulator -- must discard the requirements for a hypocritical, not-for-profit business model and replace it with the more pragmatic and efficient corporate structure ... and then who knows Dalal Street might start dreaming of and IIM or an IIT coming out with an IPO.

But that could be too much to hope for. Let us be happy to dream about publicly owned, board managed corporate institutes that give Public Sector Institutes a run for their money.

NScAI : National School Authority of India

I have always been fascinated by the possibility of high volume education delivery and the immense potential this has to transform the country ... without taking recourse to divisive tactics like reservation.

My first attempt to articulate this was in 1999 when I participated in the CSIR sponsored New Millenium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative and proposed the idea of Shikshaajaal. The proposal, like most proposals sent to the government went -- i suppose -- straight into some bureaucratic dustbin.

My second attempt was in the CII Eastern Region Meeting on Talent Management in 2007 where I delivered the keynote address and presented the idea once again ... but all to no avail. The distinguished delegates, had their lunch, dozed through the lecture and went back to their mundane existence.

My third attempt was directed at

Big Idea Contest that asked participants to send in ONE Big Idea that can change the face of the country and to articulate this in less than 50 words

My ideas was as follows : Modelled on NHAI, the National Schools Authority of India, will raise finance through tax-free bonds, and build a network of primary schools in every district of the country. After construction, the schools will be leased out to local entities through transparent bidding and operated as franchisees of NSAI.

This idea has been adjudged by the FE panel as the best idea and the results were announced in the paper on 11 April 2008. New Delhi Edition, Page 2 - International section.

I am unable to find the link but here is an imagefile of the news :





Financial Express has kindly promised to present me with an HCL Laptop computer for which I am very grateful but will this idea go anywhere after this ? I hope it does but am also very sceptical ... If you like this idea please spread the word.

Kollaborative Klassroom : A Web 2.0 Platform

Web 2.0 means different things to different people but perhaps the most authentic -- and original -- definition is given by Tim O'Reilly in his now classic articulation of What is Web 2.0.

One of the key aspects of his articulation was the premise that Web 2.0 is less of technology and more of a platform -- or if you use the analogy of "Hindu" sanatan dharma, less of a dogma and more of way of life !

The word platform -- like the word architechure -- is widely used and abused in the world of computers. So to make things easier for us, let us first look at a more traditional platform : the ERP as implemented in SAP or Oracle. An ERP consists of a collection of applications developed using a one or more technologies. At the core there would be a database management software and on top of this would reside application, integration and presentation software. Woven into this is a set of business logic which in a sense should be common to or at least relevent to a vast number of business entities.

This platform is now used to support a wide range of business requirements : finanancial accounting, human resource management, sales and distribution, material management etc., for companies ranging from steel plants to retail stores. The magic lies in the fact that the platform is flexibile enough to meet the requirements of almost any company. All that is needed is some customisation of the platform and some flexibility of the client company to adapt itself to the platform.

What are the components of a Web 2.0 platform

1. A network of trust -- or as they say, a social network best exemplified by Orkut or Facebook and others of the same genre. Web 2.0 needs the wisdom of the crowd and a social network is perhaps the best way to create one.
2. User generated content. A network cannot be built by one or a restricted group of people. That is why company sponsored networks -- like AOL or MSN could never keep up with the Internet. The content in the network must be generated by the users. The best example of this is of course Wikipedia where legions of users generated tons of content to overwhelm established brands like Brittanica or Encarta.
3. Rich content. Human beings are accustomed to the audio-visual experience -- certainly not text. Hence the content in the network must consists of images, music and video. This is why image networks like Flickr and video networks like YouTube are essential icons of the Web 2.0 platform. Of late, 3D virtual worlds like Second Life offer a whole new experience in terms of rich content
   
4. Web 2.0 is ever evolving and it is impossible to state that the platform is NOW ready for use. It will never be ready .. it will always be under construction and so the technology that will drive it has to compatible to what is loosely referred to as "mashup"s. There will never be a SAP for Web 2.0. There will be hundreds of small components -- and widgets are a good analogy -- which will be assembled and made to work together to deliver results.
5. Finally -- and perhaps axiomatically -- Web 2.0 cannot run either on isolated machines or on restricted networks. By its very nature it must run on the internet : it is a living example of Sun's tagline "The network is the computer"

So to qualify for a Web 2.0 tag, a platform must

• be based around a social network
• encourage user generated content
  
• support rich media
• extend through mashups

The Kollaborative Klassroom is an experiment to develop a Web 2.0 platform to support management education at the Praxis Business School, Calcutta. It is based on

• A social network based on technology from Ning that is used to support the community of students and faculty
• A wiki created with Zoho that is used to create teaching material in a collaborative manner
• Rich multimedia that is supported on FlickR, YouTube and the virtual world of Second Life
• Extensions like widgets, calendars that can be integrated to the main platform.

In an earlier post I had discussed how the corporation may be change under the impact of Web 2.0. With the development of platform like the Kollaborative Klassroom the day when this will happen has just come closer !

The (not-so)Innocents Abroad : The case against IIMs

The Globalisation mantra is one that is routinely chanted by most sections of Indian civil society with the possible exception of those of at the xenophobic fringe, both left and right. However in the case of IIM-Bangalore we need to look at the issue from a slightly different perspective.

Comparing an IIM with a Indian multinational like Infosys, L&T, Telco, ONGC or SBI or the IIM brand to something like Kingfisher is erroneous and to understand why let us look at the structure and charter of IIM vis-a-vis these other organisations.

A shareholder owned company, whether listed or otherwise, exists for the creation and enhancement of shareholder wealth. If by expanding abroad, the management feels that it will earn more business and hence enrich its shareholders ... then there is no question that it must do so.

But in the case of IIM, who is the shareholder ( or stakeholder ) ? It is the people of India, the tax-payer, acting through the Government of India who have set up these Institutes. How does this shareholder, or stakeholder, benefit by the IIM setting up a branch in Singapore ? He does NOT and this is the simple reason why both Arjun Singh as well Murali Manohar Joshi is, perhaps for the first time in their respective lives, correct in their opposition to IIMs setting up branches outside India.

But let us analyse why the IIMs are so enthusiastic about setting up branches outside the country. The reason is money, not so much for the Institute but for individual professors. And we cannot really deny them this (ulterior) motive. After all what does an IIT or IIM professor earn ? Something around Rs 500,000 / year and that too at the end of their career. Their students on the other hand routinely earn an identical amount on the day they step out of the institute. Naturally, this huge discount from the market price makes a professor's job extremely unattractive for talented people. [ It is of course a different matter that when talented people seek teaching assignments, even at these abysmal salaries, they are kept out by the old, incompetent incumbents ... but that is a different story ]

Net-net this attempt at opening IIM branches abroad is a ploy by some of the smart and enterprising professors to earn more money. Which is perfectly commendable but falls foul of the basic ground rules ... so is there any way by which the rules can be changed ? Here are two options ..

[a] Let faculty salaries be market driven. Which means that a professor of Computer Science should be paid what his or her counterpart in the IT industry makes and a professor of sociology or history or bengali should expect what a graduate or post graduate in these disciplines currently gets in the industry. By adhering to phony socialistic principles and paying the same money, at "UGC scales" to all teachers we have created a severe distortion in the market that results in smart teachers having to take such dubious and devious ways to get money that they should be getting anyway.

the other option is more radical.

[b] Let us 'privatise' the IIMs and IITs through an IPO. Education is a service business that has enormous potential and there will be no dearth of individuals who would want to invest in the same. The proceeds of the IPO, the money raised from the market, belong to the people of India and should be invested by the Government in more schools and colleges within the country. Given the huge brand value of the IITs/IIMs this money should be fabulous and if used well can create twenty more Institutes in the country.

The existing Institues on the other hand would now be accountable to their new owners, the shareholders, and would have the freedom to pursue whatever course they wish to choose. Should that lead them outside India, so be it, it is none of our business ... just as it is none of our business to ask where Infosys decides to open its next office.

Pervasive Learning Environment

Convocation Address delivered on Sunday, April 3rd 2005 at the College of Engineering & Management at Kolaghat to graduates who have passed out in 2003 / 2004

Friends …

I am sure that you all realize that this is perhaps one of the most important days in your life. You and your parents have worked very hard and have made numerous sacrifices of in terms of time, money and the cost of lost opportunities – to reach this point where you will receive a diploma. By the Grace of the Divine Mother and through your own diligent efforts you are now an Engineer.. with a capital ‘E’.

Congratulations. It is a day of great joy and rejoicing and I join your parents, your teachers and other guests in congratulating you on passing the second important milestone in your career. You may be wondering what the first milestone was .. it was your admission to this institute and I am sure that you recollect how happy you and your parents felt when that happened. I am also sure thatthere will be many more happy milestones like this in the years ahead.

I am told that it is customary for the Chief Guest to deliver a convocation address. However when I look back on the two convocation events that I have attended as a student – one in nearby Kharagpur and the other in far away Dallas – and I try to recollect what the speaker had spoken about, I draw a blank. To be fair to them, the speakers must have spoken about weighty matters that I should have listened to and remembered but after years and years of listening to my teachers it was a time for extreme lecture-fatigue. I just could not focus on and listen to another knowledge-filled speech …. All I wanted to do was to get the diploma and run out into the wide wide.

So why do you think I am giving you a lecture today ? It is because of my arrogance .. and as you grow old and rise in life, through designations and organizations, this arrogance will grow on you as well. All of us have this unfortunate tendency to believe that we know a lot and it is our right and our duty to tell the worldabout it …

We seem to have a Point of View about virtually everything and we are not hesitant to talk about it with the full power of our vocal chords.

So here is my first, and perhaps ONLY piece of advice for you : Do not get a swollen head. You have achieved a lot but you have miles to go before you sleep. You have learnt a lot but you have many, many more things to learn. Learning is a process that does not end when you step out of college … a college is justa place where you learn how to learn, So let us explore the world of learning.

You must have done a lot of good deeds in your previous lives to be born in India in time to see it enter the 21^st century. … For indeed this century belongs to India and her youth. After nearly a thousand years of alien rule India is rising today. Rising through the deep, dark depths of ignorance that had sought – but failed – to destroy its native genius. Rising towards the bright and shining lights that herald the beginning of new age – the InformationAge – and the emergence of a new society : The Knowledge Society.

What is this Information Age ? What is this Knowledge Society ? Since these two ideas are very closely linked let me try to explain them together. From primitive times, human society has moved through certain eras. First there was this era of hunter-gatherers … people who roamed the forests in search of food. With the passage of time, mankind learnt farming and that era is known as the Agricultural Age. Wealth, and to an extent happiness, accumulated with those
who had access to agricultural land and the means to cultivate them. However the total wealth (and happiness) that could be generated through this route was limited and so man had to find other means. This gave rise to a new era …. the age of machines This was the Industrial Age.

The Industrial Age was good in terms of improving the physical quality of life … houses, cars, televisions, GSM phones … have all become far more affordable. But yet the Industrial Age brought along with whole set of social and ethical problems that we are still grappling with. The industrial age created a set of entrepreneurs – some ethical, some not so ethical – and a set of industrial laborers. The former grew in wealth and influence and this in turn created a set of have-s and have-nots. I do not wish to go into the details of the class struggle that followed but net-net the situation became such that making money especially through the industrial route, came to associated with certain unsavory practices : nepotism – through political or family connections, unscrupulousness – forgery, cheating and exploitation, or sheer money and muscle power. It seemed as if the relative position of the have-s and have-nots had become fossilized into a corresponding matrix of ‘us’ and ‘them’. To many of ‘us’ it seemed as ‘we’ would be condemned to be a part of the have-not society whereas the society of have-s would be the private domain of ‘them’ … that is those who are born into the privileged world of inherited money and good ‘connections’.

And then, very fortuitously, came the Information Age and changed the rules of the game altogether.

The revolution began with Information Technology and then it spread quickly through the other parts of the economy.

Relatively speaking, the importance of ‘know-who’ seemed to decline and was replaced with the importance ‘know-how’ or ‘know-what’. Thanks to the rise of digital communication links and the Internet it has now become possible to sellour knowledge to world that lies beyond the borders of the traditional economy.

For the first time, knowledge could be transformed into money. Our knowledge of the COBOL language coupled with our knowledge of ENGLISH language was a heady cocktail that took the world – frightened by the Y2K problem – by storm. Thousands of people who would have rotted in either low paying jobs or in employment-exchange waiting lists suddenly found that they could exchange their knowledge for moneyand so was born the peripatetic Indian programmer.

And it was not a small amount of money !! We have the shining example of Mr. Narayanmurthy and others like him … essentially middle class people like you and me, educated, ethical and enterprising who have not only become extremely wealthy and have managed to break through into the high society of the erstwhile“have-s” – the so called “Tata-Birlas” of the old Indian economy.

This wealth is not confined to the Narayanmurthy-s of India. Many of the so-called ‘average’ Indians are buying a car and a house early in life. So money earned through selling knowledge is now percolating down quite rapidly to fill the purses of those run motor garages and the coolie-mazdoors who are building houses in the new townships that are sprouting up beside the highways that arebeing constructed along the Golden Quadrilateral.

Obviously knowledge of COBOL and English was good to start with but with more and more knowledge more and more money earning opportunities have opened up. Since I am from the field of IT, I know how knowledge of Java, of SAP, of Project Management, of Quality Management has made more and more of our people valuable“resources” whose knowledge can be sold for profit in the global market.

Of course, this selling of knowledge does not stop with knowledge of computer technologies. If you look around you will see that many other skills are now selling freely. The skill to answer a phone call is the backbone of the vast BPO industry that is employing a vast number of people. Climbing up the value chain we have additional pools of knowledge that we can tap. Knowledge of insurance claim processing and financial accounting, ability to draw picture and animate cartoons, engineering design, research on financial markets … the list can go and on and on.

Net-net the point I wish to make here is that for the first time knowledge can be converted into wealth. The relationship between Lakshmi and Saraswati need not be antagonistic and Saraswati can, does and will lead Lakshmi intoyour home. That is what we should be celebrating today.

I started off by saying that no one listens to convocation speeches and yet we old timers love to talk more and listen less but as you would have realized by now I have digressed significantly from that point and you may be feeling that I am living by the rule of “do what I say but don’t what I do”. I really wish I could do things differently and use this opportunity to learn something
from you all today but unfortunately the format of this event is such that there is a practical difficulty. Nevertheless before I leave this college and this institute I would have learnt something more about it and the people associated with it. That is what I will gain today ( in addition to the wonderful lunch that I am sure would be served soon ). And in its own small way that additional knowledge would be a good antidote to my egotist arrogance of believing that I, because of my age and position of life, I know all that there is to know.

That brings me to the next point that I want to share with you. You would have heard in Hirak Rajar Deshey that “janar kono sesh nei, janar chestha britha tai”. Satyajit Ray was of course being utterly sarcastic when he coined this dialogue and there is not an iota of truth in that particular vile phrase. However old you grow and however powerful a position you acquire in life, there is no end to the process of learning. Knowledge is power, knowledge is the key to wealth and happiness. But … and this a very big BUT … the world is a dynamic place and knowledge that is valuable today can become commonplace and utterlyuseless tomorrow.

The knowledge and ability to read and write is a source of power and money to a scribe or a letter writer in society where literacy is rare. But if everyone knows how to read and write the value of that particular piece of knowledge disappears. You have to move on. If you are COBOL programmer you would have made a lot of money before the year 2000 but today you would be even more valuable if you have knowledge of Java or even more esoteric things like Enterprise Application Architecture. Let me give you a very specific example from my personal life. Till about 1996 I was an ace Database Administrator and was doing pretty well in life but suddenly I realized that that there was something more significant that was looming on the horizon : the Internet. I was a master of Database technology but knew nothing about Internet but still I chucked away a career in Databaseand jumped into something new … … I have never regretted that decision.

Let me recapitulate what I have said so far ….

• One should not have the arrogance of being a know-all but instead have the humility to learn from all situations at all points of time.
• What you need to learn about and know will keep changing. Youwill have to keep learning new things to maintain your position or relevancein the social and economic ecosystem.

This leads me to my next and last point …. which for the lack of better phrase I shall refer to as MetaKnowlege or the Pervasive Learning Environment andI will use two examples to illustrate this point. First is the English language and second the Internet.

The English language is of course a good thing to study for its own sake but in our environment it has an added value because it is door to a whole new world of knowledge and opportunity. Suppose you wished to be a COBOL programmer you would need to read up books on COBOL and the best of them would be written in English. Tomorrow when you wish to move on to Java or SAP .. you would need, not so much COBOL, but English again. English is the framework that you will use to perpetuate your learning experience. COBOL is knowledge, English is MetaKnowledge. COBOL is something that you learn, but English provides you with a Pervasive Learning Environment. So if someone tells you that English is not important tell him, politely and firmly that he is wrong

An even more Pervasive Learning Environment is the Internet or the World-Wide-Web. If English opens the doors and lets you out of your home, the Web is your passport to the world that lies beyond the borders of your country. The reach of the web, both in breadth and in depth is tremendous and you – and even your teachers and your parents – must use it as much as you can to learn more and more – first about what to learn, and then about that particular subject that you believe will be useful to you. Go to Google. Search and you will find a world of knowledgethat will reveal itself in front of your eyes.

I have been speaking for a while now and if I continue to do so any longer … you will suffer from speech-fatigue. So let me circle back to what I had said earlier … Learning is a process that does not end when you step out of college … a college is just a place where you learn how to learn …. Your college is one of the very important components of the Pervasive Learning Environment and be thankful that you have used it well. But there are other components like the WorldWideWeb …. And still others that I may not be aware of. Look for them, locate them, use them and make them a central componentof your life.

Thank you for listening to me for so long, now go forth into the world and once again, may the Grace of the Divine Mother be with you. JAI HIND.

About Prithwis Mukerjee

Prithwis Mukerjee is an engineer from IIT, Kharagpur and has done his Masters and PhD in Associative Information Systems from the University of Texas at Dallas, USA.

He has been a footnote in the Great Indian Software Story and was worked in Tata Steel, Tata IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers and IBM doing – and in the process learning – all that can be done with and around the software business in India and the world. From in-house software development, through experimenting with new technology, management consulting and global delivery of software services to corporate training there is little that he has not done in career spanning 18 years.

As an extension of his intense involvement with in-house training programs he switched careers, entered academia and is currently a Professor at the Vinod Gupta School of Management at IIT, Kharagpur, India.
For a detailed and updated bio data please visit http://www.linkedin.com/in/prithwis.

Prithwis won the Financial Express Big Idea contest with his unique idea of creating a National School Authority of India and expressing it in exactly 50 words ! His professional motto is “Resources are Limited, Creativity is Unlimited”