Kapil Sibal, Minister of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences wants to see India as a knowledge-power house and so was there a CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) meet and gushes about knowledge including the awardees like Bharti Airtel, Eureka Forbes, Infosys Technologies and the over-all winner Mindtree Consulting.

Though the whole idea seems excellent but the moment we scratch the surface of this news we understand the sinisterness of it all.

Here are a few issues to ponder upon:

a) If various industries sponsor events related to education, then would they not try to push their own agendas in such events? This was education loses its hard-won humanist thrust.

b) A country is only known as a knowledge-based economy when scholarship is encouraged. How is it possible for business houses to nurture high academics? If such a thing was at all possible then surely universities would have become redundant. By making the event sound an academic one, education itself in our country is assaulted.

c) Funding is necessary for research but then we have to ask; at what cost? Is it going to be a trade-off between awarding meaningless prizes to indifferent corporates and awarding the poor, sincere scholar in his solitary den?

Kapil Sibal also wants Indians to return from abroad and work here in India. But when knowledge means something light and vacuous, why should the serious quantum mechanical scientist or the historian of Renaissance ideas return. They will be poorly paid and scoffed at by natty corporates. These events and their glamorisation is taking our students off from basic research and belittles the meaning of scholarship.

The names of the events may be high-sounding, but the heart of the matter lies in worshipping something hollow. Knowledge management cannot be successful if there are no real knowledgeable people around.

Via: Daily India

Image: ASWN