Sunday, August 21 2005 17:39 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: India has done well as a knowledge economy but it needs to undertake much needed reforms to make optimum use of its educated workforce, says the World Bank Institute.

Stating that the Asian giant needs to grow at the rate of 10 per cent to abolish poverty, it stressed that India must keep on building a cadre of technicians, professionals and knowledge workers who will be the backbone of the economy.

According to Carl Dahlman and Anuja Urz of the Knowledge for Development Programme of the Institute, a strong basic education system is, therefore, a necessary precondition to underpinning India's efforts to enhance further the productivity and efficiency of its economy.

Highlighting the immense challenge posed by brain drain, the report, prepared for the World Bank's India Country Department, says India possesses a large pool of highly educated and vocationally qualified people who are making their mark in science, engineering, information technology and research and development but it has not been obtaining the full economic benefit from their skills.

The professional workforce emerging from India's higher education system often cannot find suitable employment and many of them leave the country in search of better opportunities.

Not only does India have to deal with the problem of the high outflow of tertiary educated workforce but those who leave also tend to be the best of their cohort.

Indian students in US

Also number of Indian students entering the US has increased from 15,000 Indian students in 1990 to almost 50,000 in 2001. In 1999, 165,000 Indian residents in the US had science and engineering as their highest degree. They accounted for 13 per cent of the total number of foreign-born US residents, more than any other country.

India will need a more relevant educational system which would focus on learning rather than schooling, and promote creativity. It would also improve the quality of tertiary education and provide opportunities for lifelong learning.

Despite such successes such as those achieved by Ranbaxy and Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, India spends only a small fraction of its Gross Domestic Product on Research and Development.

India should tap into the growing stock of global knowledge more effectively and provide incentives for international technology transfer through trade, Foreign Direct Investment, licensing and personal movements, along with informal means through imitation, reverse engineering and spillovers, it says.

India's public agricultural research and extension system is one of the largest in the world but its efficiency and effectiveness have been increasingly called into question. In the future, the public extension system must become more demand-driven, with stronger synergies between public and private extension efforts.