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De-license schools: Murthy

— Photo: S. Gopakumar

On rising India: N.R. Narayana Murthy, left, chief mentor, Infosys Technologies Ltd.; Kris Gopalakrishnan, centre, chief executive officer of the company; and A.K. Balyan, president, National Institute of Personnel Management, at the inauguration of a conference of the institute in Thiruvananthapuram on Thursday.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Chairman and chief mentor of Infosys N.R. Narayana Murthy has said that achieving universal literacy, building up world-class educational facilities, large-scale generation of skilled manpower and creation of competent leaders are some of the major challenges before “rising India.”

Mr. Murthy was delivering the keynote address on “Rising India: Human resources challenges in creating world-beating companies” at the inaugural session of the silver jubilee national conference of the National Institute of Personnel Management”(NIPM) here on Thursday.

He said the country would not be able to tap its much-talked about demographic advantages when large portions of its people were illiterate. There must be a concerted effort to provide adequate nutrition to the children through schemes such as the mid-day meal programme for students.

Mr. Murthy suggested that primary- and secondary-level education must be de-licensed. Let hundred flowers bloom. All those individuals and groups prepared to start schools should have the freedom to do that. Market was the best mechanism to ensure that the new institutions maintained quality. Access for the poor in good institutions could be ensured through voucher or scholarship systems.

Only the rich and influential would get opportunities for quality education if the licensing regime continued in the educational sector, he argued.

Emphasising the need for generating skilled manpower on a large scale, Mr. Murthy said the country had failed miserably in the efforts to create skilled manpower through the network of technical training institutes.

Chief executive officer and managing director of Infosys Kris Gopalakrishnan, in his presidential address, emphasised the need for creating bodies to certify the institutions which trained semi-skilled people. He said transparency had become an important component of HR management in the liberalised economies and this was particularly important as the regulating bodies had become more demanding.

Mr. Murthy and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Kerala M.K. Ramachandran Nair distributed awards instituted by the IIPM.

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