The very purpose of education is to provide life and livelihood skills set on the one hand, and functional and behavioral skills, with ethics and a value system, on the other hand. These requirements change with times.
We may agree that barring a few, most of our institutions of higher learnings fail in imparting education with a purpose. So is the case with primary and school education. Despite recent attention on the New Education Policy, the education system in India is primarily designed to delay entry of people in the job market. This is a bitter truth. We would be able to take corrective measures as soon as we come to terms with this reality.
Optimum level of regulation is required in every sector, but overregulation suppresses implementation of innovative ideas. Due to overregulation, especially in management, medical and technical education sectors, India is not yet able to reap full benefits of its demographic dividend.
The situation is grim with the education system expected to grapple with intense and frequent disruptive changes taking place all around us. The world is changing fast and as a society, India must keep pace with this fast-changing world. Our efforts must be accelerated to be in sync with these disruptive changes.
Let us consider some real-life examples of some of the disruptive changes. Diagnostic equipment plays an important role in modern medical sciences. There is a clamour in India like elsewhere, for setting up such manufacturing plants; and investing in R&D to get better, reliable, and higher resolution diagnostic equipment. The entire investment and R&D efforts are likely to be wasted lest the early warning signals are read by the industry concerned.
What are these early warning signals? Many of us might have been aware of the recent announcement made by Sundar Pichai during Google’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) conclave. According to him, the world will be soon saying goodbye to CT scans, MRIs, Xray etc., as cardiovascular events can now be predicted by a simple eye scan. Doctors can get clear view of what is inside the body of a patient by a simple eye scan.
Another example of disruptive force lurking at our doorsteps is called AI. It is going to make a serious dent on the ways we think, transact our businesses, and carry other functions. Let us think of a selection process to choose some candidates from a set of applicants. There are norms and processes such as essay writing etc., to assess the intellectual ability of individuals.
AI has blurred such well-established traditional means of distinguishing intellectual abilities of people as all of them will now have access to similar AI tools.
Disruptive developments are taking place at a frantic pace jeopardizing financial and social security of individuals. Not only this, both blue- and white-collar jobs, in their unique ways, are going to face unprecedented challenges. These are not isolated examples. The coming years are going to pose serious existential challenges to human civilization.
Whether it is climate or other technological changes, we must keep abreast ourselves to grapple with the mind-boggling frequency and intensity of such challenges.
Education is the only tool available with humanity to equip us to face these challenges. From primary to higher education at every level, the education system should be geared up to impart necessary life and livelihood skills. A nimble regulatory framework encouraging educational institutions to take innovative approaches will go a long way.
To sum up, in so far as imparting life and livelihood skills are concerned, one such model could be introduction of co-curated, co-managed, and co-delivered courses by educational institutions in collaboration with life gurus and prospective employers. Life gurus are one who teach us to face stress and strains of modern life; and be the support system for each other. This requires unprecedented flexibility from a rigid regulatory framework and ability to read the early signs of cataclysmic changes hovering on the horizon and able to act on them. May the tribe of innovators, experimenters, risk-takers taking bold initiatives continue to grow in our country.
