The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Southern States lay out development plans

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Tuesday, Apr 15, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Southern States lay out development plans

Special Correspondent

Industry role in vocational education stressed

— Photo: R. Ragu

lighter moment: P. K. Mohapatra, chairman, CII Southern Region (right), greeting B. V. R. Mohan Reddy, deputy chairman, CII Southern Region, at a CII meeting in Chennai on Monday. N. Kumar, past president, CII, is in the picture.

CHENNAI: Some of the aspirations of the people across southern India are similar: better infrastructure, healthcare, education. Other issues vary from State to State.

Leading industrialists from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala spelt out their plans in a continuation of the Confederation of Indian Industry’s “Vision 2025” exercise here on Monday. Kerala is the only State worrying about an aging population and aiming to leverage its NRI population to better the quality of life back home. Karnataka faces the challenge of uneven regional development, the lack of political stability and an unusually fast growth outpacing infrastructure. Andhra Pradesh farmers expect to be involved in partnership with the public and private sectors for PPFP projects. The speed of urbanisation in Tamil Nadu—70 per cent by 2025—calls for liberalisation in governance and infrastructure to mirror the economic liberalisation process. As CII state leaders shared their agenda to deal with these challenges, stakeholders from other fields offered their advice.

IIT-Madras director M.S. Ananth said that while primary education was the primary responsibility of government, industry had to play a major role in vocational education— through active public-private partnerships—and in higher education —by chipping in for visiting lectures, sponsoring research and creating an ecosystem for innovation.

“Discovery is the result of chance meeting prepared minds,” he said, quoting scientist Louis Pasteur. “I’ve been preparing minds for the last 50 years; chance meets them in the U.S.” Amid laughter, he urged industrialists to make education and research a financially worthwhile enterprise.

Senior trade union leader R. Kuchelan advised industrialists to pay their workers a decent wage, and not resort to casualisation, contract labour or outsourcing.

N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief, The Hindu, said that obsessing about whether India would be a developed country by 2025 was counterproductive, since a number of different indicators was involved. He listed the shortage of skilled personnel and the gaps in medical education as immediate challenges, while welcoming the gradual shift towards primary health centres from reliance on private health practitioners.

New NASSCOM chairman Ganesh Natarajan said that correcting gender injustices was vital to building a new India. “Who cares how many billionaires India produces when we can’t prevent young girls from being married off at the age of 11 or 12,” he asked.

Retired Lieutenant General S.S. Mehta, who heads the CII as director-general, said India needed to grab the unique opportunities to move from labour arbitrage to knowledge arbitrage and to promote innovation.

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