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Union Minister for Urban Development, Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation and Parliamentary Affairs, M Venkaiah Naidu, presided over the 29th annual convocation at the Vellore Institute of Technology at its campus on Saturday. Referring to a Nasscom report which states that only 15 per cent of engineers are employable, he stressed that the state of technical education in the country, both qualitatively and quantitatively, needed to be improved.
He pointed out the student enrolment disparity between India and China. “China has a comparable population with us, but 34 per cent of their total student enrolment is by engineering students as against 6 per cent in our case.”
On the qualitative front, he said the true measure of it is reflected by the number of cited publications for which India accounts for a mere 2.8 per cent of such publications in the world, as opposed to China’s 9.4 per cent.
Brain drain
He also touched upon the age-old subject of brain drain. According to a UNIDO report one lakh professionals go abroad annually for greener pastures, which results in a loss of $2 billion to the Government’s kitty. He said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has prioritised retaining such talent. He advised all students who plan to pursue higher studies abroad to “Learn, earn and return.”
He indulged in a bit of nostalgia as he recalled his incredible journey from an agricultural family to a Cabinet Minister. “I studied in a street school where teachers imparted lessons by writing on sand. Once daylight faded, the only source of light was a kerosene lamp. Lanterns were a luxury for us then!”
He told the students that with hard work, discipline and consistency, one can achieve anything one sets out to do.
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