Knowledge Economy

It is heartening to note from a press report in Times of India, Bangalore a few weeks ago in regard to the steps being taken by the University Grants Commission to substantially enhance the salaries of the teachers. Better late than never. It is an effort in the right direction and I hope the powers that be would agree with such a decision and implement them without hesitation. After all, the power transferred by the teachers to its student body will be essentially empowering the same student body when they succeed in the Civil Service examinations and become bureaucrats and therefore they should not grudge if they get less paid initially. Teaching is a noble profession and encouraging the community of teachers would truly enrich the country. One should realise that it is the teaching faculty that has trained the young scientists of our country who have today excelled in their sphere of work through the Indian Space Programme. Perhaps lack of financial motivation may have hitherto resulted in migration of talent to other spheres of work as compared to teaching - brain drain within. This is one side of the coin.
Let us look at the other side of the coin. Here comes the politics. While there is another encouraging decision taken by the Standing Committee of the IITs Council (SCIC) that there should be no reservations in the recruitment of faculty to the IITs, the HRD Ministry of the Government of India has conveniently censored this decision from the minutes of the meeting. While we have intellectuals in our country who think that the country has to progress, the politicians think that they need the chairs very much for themselves and therefore play the vote bank politics of 'reservations'.