On Engineering
We all know that Engineering as a discipline, is important for any country’s growth. For almost all the time, except the last 3 years, I have been a teacher and I have been teaching robotics, control theory and AI techniques. For a long time, I believe, Engineering as a discipline, and teaching engineering, both are challenges.
On Regulation
As a regulator, in the last three years, I have come to realize, there is always a problem. If you do something, somebody comes upto you. If you don’t do, someone else comes upto you, and so on. It’s a difficult job, in the sense of regulation. But having said that, I believe its time for all the regulators, to move out from pure regulatory functions, to enabling and facilitating approaches. Any regulation, will mean that, on the other side of the system, you will have rebellion, and that would always bring in conflict. Therefore unless you regulate with enabling provisions, it never works.
On eGoverance @ AICTE
As far as AICTE is concerned, we have tried to put in e-governance in place. Today, a person, who wants an Institution to be set up, can sit at home, and make an application, and he can even print his letter of approval at home. That’s the amount of computerization that we are trying to bring in.
On Transactional Vs. Process Orientation
The basic difficulty with most of the functions, be it technical education, whether it be 2G or 3G or whatever, it has been transactional. Most of the operations that take place are transactional. And therefore you look at it as a transaction. Therefore you look at what the other guy needs, and therefore you figure out how that need can be met. Your implementation and your thought process would be changing from transaction to transaction. That’s where the difficulty comes in. So, very soon you will find that you dont have a single policy. You keep changing as the system goes on. So, that’s where the trouble is.
So, I believe that we need to move from a transactional approach to process driven approach. Process driven approach means, upfront you have to define the processes, and those processes would have to be built into a certain framework. You can always debate on the framework, right, wrong, indifferent, whatever, there is a framework. That framework is coded, and that results into a process of automation, and we need to push that vigorously, and over a period of time. You will find that your systems become much more streamlined, and the rule position becomes the same for everybody across. So therefore your transparency is better, your accountability to systems is better and so on. So, you create a robust process, and improve on those processes over a period of time, rather than keeping it simply transactional. So, this is what we try to do in the system that we have implemented.
On AICTE Data Bank
AICTE has over 8 Terra byte data. We have information upto city level. In fact we are working with the World Bank to create a technology-health report for the country. There we will inform, where this is spread and all.
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On Engineering Watch
But this is a very good start that Engineering Watch has made here. Something that will be very useful for people to depend on. And, as authentic the information is, so much the better. And we are trying to work out something on that account, and probably will be working on the long term.
On the size of higher technical education system
We have a very large system. We have 1.5 million seats at the engineering entry level, and total of 2.3 million seats at all levels in engineering, architecture, pharmacy, management, all put together. And as far as polytechnic education is concerned, we have 1 million more seats. We have got 17000 different courses, and different levels of programs, polytechnic, undergraduates, post-graduates. So, by any means you have a large system in place. It has allowed you, in such a large country where the population is so large. Therefore access is a must, which is possible today.
On Quality
But, with access you augment quality. Having said that, that’s not as simple as we talked about. We don’t set up a quality institution, because of a lot of interventions including money. Money is coming from the State Government, from the Central Government in order to build a quality institutions. I still remember when I was in IBM for sometime, we had about 20 Nobel Laureates at their rolls, at that time. 60 percent of IBM’s profits go back into development.