While browsing different blogs, I just came across to this article in Whitney Tilson's blog. The title of the article is "Worried About India's and China's Booms? So Are They" and it was written by Thomas L. Friedman and it was originally published in The New York Times. In this article, Thomas L. Friedman recalled his recent visit to Mumbai to the annual meeting of Nasscom (the leading ICT Association of India).
Nasscom leaders are worried that now a days Indian students are entering into science and engineering in large numbers and humanities subjects are losing students. Why are leaders of a technology association worried? Should not they be delighted with the fact that students are coming into the science and engineering subjects in multitude and thus supply flow of skilled tech professionals would remain intact?
Their concern is not misplaced as proper combination of Arts and Science can ensure the best innovations. Arts and Humanities have their own place in market economy- books (fictions) and movies are perhaps the best examples. Just think of making a movie. You need a lot of technical professionals and especially if the movie includes a lot of special effects then surely you need the support of many techies. However, if there is not a good writer behind the script, a good director behind direction, a musician and a choreographer, then special effects have little value.
What is your idea about this matter? Is India heading in the right direction?
Hi Razib, great work on maintaining SouthAsiaBiz.
I think that the crux of all of these issues is India's education system. Like Nasscomm says, we need to deregulate education and make it more adaptive to industry needs. Part of this would involved making technology related education more multidisciplinary, and efforts should also focus on providing avenues for integration and collaboration with the Arts and Humanities.
Ram
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