Make curriculum more relevant to country’s needs: PM tells IITs

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday called upon the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) to make their curriculum more relevant to the country’s needs, so as to ensure that whatever investments being made on higher education contributed more directly to nation-building.
Coming out with some home truths during his address at the golden jubilee convocation of the IIT-Bombay, Singh said: “India currently lags behind many other countries in terms of research and development and we must work much harder to bridge this knowledge gap”.
“As India’s economy becomes bigger and more developed, so too must our knowledge base. A developing country like ours has to catch up with other more developed nations and this ‘catch-up’ process depends vitally on our ability to harness human resources for development,” the Prime Minister said.
“Another challenge is to ensure that the investment we make in higher education in fact contributes more directly to nation building. Here the IITs face an immediate challenge of making their curriculum more relevant to our needs. I am aware that this is a subject of much lively discussion among your faculty and alumnus,” Singh said.