'Focus on education a must to keep the edge'

Industry leaders on Thursday said India must focus on education to keep its global edge in the services and knowledge sectors as well as fight off competition from countries like China, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Citing large-scale illiteracy, poor quality of education and the widening gap between the theoretical aspects and practical skills as the shortcomings, the industry captains stressed the need for a major overhaul of the education system.

They called for creating an ecosystem where education could lead to greater employability to breed excellence.

"By 2020, the world would face a huge deficit in working population. On the other hand, India's working population would witness positive growth (942 million in 2025), we must take advantage of this growth" Mindtree Consulting chairman Ashok Soota said while speaking at the 14th CII Quality summit.

Highlighting the fact that India's share of the global GDP in purchasing power parity terms was 5.9 per cent in 2005, making it the fourth highest in the world, TCS CEO & MD S Ramadorai said, "While the potential to grow is high, there is an urgent need to fix problems that hinder socio-economic development."

He further urged India to focus on skill and curriculum development to better leverage the world's largest working population. He said the reform process should empower the people and provide universal access to education and health to everybody.

"The education system must encourage curiosity and inquisitiveness for scientific pursuit. It should play a constructive role for the development of science, which can be driving force for innovation," Ramadorai said.

Sharing this concern, Ford India president and managing director Aravind Matthew said: "India produces a large number of graduates every year, but they are not directly employable as they good in theory but have very little practical knowledge".

Seeking to address this gap, CII president and Ashok Leyland MD R Seshasayee said CII had launched a mission to address the skills and knowledge gap.

"The quality of education in the country is a key issue that needs to be taken up and all-round qualitative improvements need to be undertaken," he noted.

The leaders said infrastructure bottlenecks, a talent crunch, widening economic disparities, rising cost of labour and vacillation on the policy front were other areas of concern that needed to be addressed.