The joint efforts of Great Universities, large Multi National Corporations and a large number of small technology savvy companies are creating tomorrow's world. What is more, these in turn are hosted by a network of major cities. Most of these cities are of the developed world, with co-option of some cities located in the other parts of the world.
What do these cities possess in terms of human capital and infrastructure? These have highly reputed University Departments in Information and Communication engineering. Besides they have excellent business & professional services and financial services. Health services are available to not only the very rich, but even to most of the city residents. The city s environment is usually clean and green. And of course they have a large pool of highly skilled and well-educated work force in all the areas of interest to its businesses.
Cities in Southern China are investing large sums of money to create and improve their infrastructure of water and sewage systems, arterial roads, highways and airports, internal transport systems and social housing. This is because each of them wants to be co-opted more fully into the network.
Meanwhile 48 out of 52 states of USA increased their annual expenditure on Universities. In 1999, Toronto University became the first Canadian University to have a corpus of $1.0 billion, contributed by private donations.
Whereas the developed world is engaged in sharpening its tools for a brighter future, our policy makers look at the future through the rear-view mirror. Thus I know of a state government in India, which like many others, has high ambitions. It declares every month at lavish press-meets, some new IT plans. However on the ground even the University Department, with the highest reputation in IT field has not been able to get any support from it.
After going through two years of study in Computer Science, most of the students in the developed world are able to get summer jobs in the IT departments of the industry. On the other hand in some of the states of India, a new pernicious business practice of charging the students for their final semester project has started.
Our strength is in our great human capital. However even with this endowment, the Prime Minister s dreams of India becoming a Super Power, can be realized only when all the macro and micro policies are tuned in the proper direction and when the government, the society and the business pull together.
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| Ahmedabad
1st July 1999 |
Dr. A. K. Aggarwal
Chairman |
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