India to scale up innovations next year: T. Ramasamy

Expressing concern about the country's varsities not figuring among world's top 100 educational establishments, union Science and Technology Secretary T. Ramasamy Tuesday said India would target scaling up of innovations next year.

"There would be scaling up of innovations...some programmes to that nature. But policies are already set for the next few years at least," Ramasamy told reporters on the sidelines of the 58th annual convocation of the Jadavpur University here.

In his convocation address, the senior bureaucrat termed as "valuable and most relevant" the trend of ranking universities across the world.

"There is now a tendency in the world to rank universities based on matrix. Such measurements are valuable and most relevant in the context of modern times. Indian universities do not figure among the 'Top 100' universities in the world. Some of us are rightly concerned."

He stressed on the "universality of education".

"One of the measuring parameters for global ranking is the number of international students enrolled. This, to some extent is an indicator of the education process being relevant to different social contexts and geographical needs. In other words, context-neutral component of education is also important."

During the ceremony, the honorary degree of doctor of literature was conferred on noted theoretical physicist Ashoke Sen, actor Naseeruddin Shah (in absentia) and distinguished nuclear scientist Sekhar Basu.