Academia and industry collaboration needs

Cultivating a skilled workforce becomes a rock solid pillar for the country’s progressive economy. In this fast-pacing competitive world, fresh young minds, ready to enter the industry, should be trained for the future, i.e., instilling creative thinking in sync with academic knowledge. As we are preparing for the future, this is where we should increasingly leverage research advances along with technical expertise.

Hence, academic-industry collaboration is fast becoming a rage all across the globe, especially in developing economies like India, as the gap between education system and industries’ expectations has widened in the last few decades. Unmindful of what industries needed or the existing trends were, academics rather focused on just providing education, whether it is science, humanities, technical, professional and others. This is the reason why successive market research on technical and professional education by industry bodies like ASSOCHAM paint a grim and gloomy picture of what is being provided to the students in the name of technical and professional education.

Now it is increasingly recognized across the globe that close interface between academia and industry not only prepares students as per the changing needs and aspirations of the industry, but also promotes innovation and growth. A partnership between educational institutions and industry prove to be instrumental in advancing research and development, besides creating a skilled workforce which companies need.

Most of the time, industry is prone to innovating new ways, processes and technologies to reap rich benefits and broaden economic horizons and activities, however majority of the institutions get accustomed to working on a set pattern, which keep them away from the fast changing realities of the industry. The western world recognized this fact very early that the task of commercializing creative ideas lies with the industry and it is possible only when academia has close collaboration with the economic activities going on in the market.

In the present times of knowledge economy, it is a critical requirement to have such an interface. Close interactions among universities, research institutions and private companies also help prepare the students for the required work, which also saves precious time spent on training the new recruits upon joining a company or industry.

The constantly changing paradigms and complexities of the industry, business, technical processes and people, necessitate that these two come closer for greater benefit of both. A productive collaboration between these two is critical for the knowledge economy and, for that, the curriculum for schools, colleges, universities and all technical and professional courses should also be designed in such a way that ensures that the education imparted should lead to creation of expertise and skills that the industry needs. And fortunately, the New Education Policy (NEP) is set to help in this direction.

Gains in Gender Gap Report

Gender parity or gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable society. It is heartening to note here that India’s overall ranking in attaining gender parity has seen an improvement in 2022, thanks to a number of women centric plans, programmes and policies being worked vigorously upon for last several years by the government at the Centre. Good thing is that such programmes promise a lot more for the years to come as their execution work is gradually getting on to the ground. More women are now serving in the positions of power, leadership and laws. More girls are going to school and there’s hardly any region now in the country where people force girls into doing early marriage with stringent laws in place. India, as a nation, has undergone a transformational change as today, women are getting equal opportunities as men in terms of education, profession, choices and pursuits. Government and administration have also started taking into due consideration the concerns related to women safety, hygiene and sanitation.

All these factors have contributed to the country jumping five places to 135 out of the 146 benchmarked this year. Last year India was ranked 140 out of 156 countries in the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) latest Gender Gap Report, which benchmarks the current state and evolution of gender parity across four key dimensions such as economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment. On a 0 to 1 scale, where 1 represents the optimal situation or parity, India scored 0.629 on gender parity, which is its seventh-highest score in the past 16 years. In 2022, India’s overall score has improved from 0.625 in 2021 to 0.629. Of all the sub-indices, in terms of political empowerment of women, India was ranked the highest 48th out of 146.

India registers the most significant and positive change to its performance on economic participation and opportunity, however, the global gender gap score of India has oscillated between 0.593 and 0.683 since the first index. The WEF report also suggests that with a female population of approximately 66.2 crore, India’s achievements on these parameters weigh heavily on regional rankings. The report has also appreciated the increase in the share of women legislators, senior officials and managers in India from 14.6% to 17.6%. The share of women as professional and technical workers also grew in India from 29.2% to 32.9%. The gender parity score for estimated earned income has also grown in India. However, the educational attainment and health and survival sub-indexes have reported small developments. The economic participation and opportunity sub-index increased mainly because of the gains for women in professional and technical roles and a decrease in the wage gap.

Comparing with the top ranking countries, India still needs to improve a lot more especially in terms of economic participation and opportunities, educational attainment and health and survival among others to give its women folk a much more respectable position, that they deserve. This is very much achievable given the change that has come in last 7-8 years due to fair promotion of gender-equitable attitudes and practices among India’s children and youth. For the first time since availability of records, India has more females as compared to males. The number of females per 1,000 males increased from 991 in 2015-16 to 1,020 in 2019-21. The sex ratio at birth has also witnessed an increase from 919 in 2015-16 to 929 in 2019-21. Further, India’s Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) has dropped by 10 points. Also, the data shows a decline in the crime against women during the year 2020 (3,71,503) as compared to 2019(4,05,326). Today women are not only working in every wing of the Indian Army, but now they are also getting permanent commissions. The number of women officers has almost tripled in last 6 years.

Since, the Vedic times, women play a crucial role in the upliftment of society, and by paving way for more & more avenues for women, in not just defence but also in other sectors would lead to a ‘New India’ where men & women are making equal contribution in the overall development of the nation.

Philanthropists needed for Old Age Crisis

The number of aged people, who end up being in old age homes in the last leg of their life, is growing with social transformation and evolving lifestyles. The changing notions of the family and relations, fast urbanization, movement of the youth to different places in search of better life & career, growing nuclear family system, generation gap, weakening cultural ethos and scarce of resources are also some of the factors that adequately add to this process.

With Amitabh Bachchan making an announcement on Twitter about the dream of late Lata Mangeshkar to build an old age home named Swar Mauli near Nashik for ageing artists from the field of theatre, music, cinema and the performing arts, who have fallen on hard times, the issue has again shot into limelight. Bollywood celebrities like Pravin Babi, Meena Kumari, Vimi, A K Hangal, Rajendra Malone, Naseem Bano, Cuckoo, Bhagwan Dada, Bharat Bhushan, Chandra Mohan and a few others are among many stars who spent their last days in loneliness and penury. Even Dada Saheb Phalke, the father of Indian cinema met a lone and tragic death with no one around. We often tend to remember the tragic part of only top personalities, however, a lot more are forced to live in dark and doom, whom hardly anyone cares for.

Here comes the role of philanthropists, playing a vital role for welfare of the society. Though, this trend is not quite popular up in India, it is fast picking up with a few corporate benevolent pledging big sum of money for the humanitarian causes. Only recently, Gautam Adani, India’s richest man pledged to donate Rs. 60,000 crore towards charity, which is one tenth of his total net worth of around 95 billion dollar and this money will be used for a range of social causes including healthcare, education and skill development. The chairman of Wipro has consistently been by far the biggest philanthropist among Indian billionaires. With his foundation established in 2001, Azin Premji is doing a lot of works to improve the quality education especially in rural India. Having worked with over 3.5 lakh schools in the country, Premji has donated over Rs. 17,600 crore in the last two years and Rs. 7904 crore in 2020. HCL Technologies founder-chairman Shiv Nadar too has been at the forefront, donating money for humanitarian causes (Donation of Rs. 1263 crore in 2021 itself).

Mukesh Ambani, the head of Reliance Industries donated Rs. 557 crore in the last fiscal and occupied the third spot in EdelGive Hurun India Philanthropy List 2021. Similarly, Kumar Mangalam Birla and family donated Rs. 337 crore in the same year and stood at fourth spot on the list. Aditya Birla Group donated Rs. 400 crore to the PM CARES Fund and 50 crore to FICCI-Aditya Birla CSR Centre for Excellence. Among top donators, Infosys’ Nandan Nilekani with Rs. 183 crore, Hindusja family with Rs. 166 crore, the Bajaj family with Rs. 136 crore, Anil Agrawal and family with Rs. 130 crore and Burman family of Dabur Group with Rs. 114 crore in financial year 2021, occupy space among the top 10.

The growing challenges thrown upon the people in old age, besides a large number of people already facing poverty, deprivation, malnutrition and all sorts of shortages, there is always a need to make an effort to help and support social welfare causes by way of donations. This is the reason why most of the CSR efforts in India are guided towards education, health, women and children, skill building and old age people.

PIMS to correct wrongs of Paper

The dumping is seriously impacting the economic viability of Indian paper mills. Moreover, this trend jeopardizes the income and employment of thousands of people including farmers engaged in agro-forestry and supplying wood to the industry, besides leading to a loss of revenue for the government. According to the Ministry of Commerce & Industry, India, imports of paper and paperboard in India increased to 742.45 million dollar in 2021 from 482.94 million dollar in 2020, which suggests the pace of import growth.

Considering the concerns of the domestic industry, the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) has now rightly introduced Paper Import Monitoring System (PIMS) by amending the import policy of major paper products from ‘Free’ to ‘Free subject to compulsory registration under PIMS’, which will come into effect from 1st of October, 2022. The PIMS will be applicable on import by a domestic territory area unit on a wide range of paper products covering 201 tariff lines, such as newsprint, handmade paper, coated paper, uncoated paper, litho and offset paper, tissue paper, toilet paper, cartons, labels, account books, bobbins, parchment paper, carbon paper etc. However, paper products like currency paper, bank bond and cheque paper, security printing paper among a few others, have been excluded from mandatory registration.

The introduction of Paper Import Monitoring System (PIMS) is well intended to curb imports under ‘Others’ category tariff lines. The previous regulation was marred with loopholes allowing dumping of paper products in the domestic market by way of under-invoicing, entry of prohibited goods by mis-declaration and re-routing goods through other countries in lieu of trade agreements. Countries like China and Indonesia, which have considerable amount of excess domestic production capacity, have been using this opportunity to push their excess inventory into India at very low prices, which attract either zero import duty under the India-ASEAN FTA or a preferential import duty under the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement. This had given a surge to the paper import at the cost of the domestic paper manufacturers who are operating under challenging conditions caused by Covid-19, import and price related issues among others. A large quantity of paper products is imported under the ‘Others’ category tariff lines only.

This move of the Government of India is set to pave the way for the promotion of ‘Make in India’ and ‘Atmanirbhar’ initiative in this sector too. Further, despite digitalization and Covid-19 related shock to the paper industry, the paper consumption in the country is likely to grow at 6-7% annually and may reach 30 million tonnes by 2026-27 by industry estimates. The per capita consumption of paper in India is very low in India comparing with developed countries, holding immense potential for the growth. India consumes around 5% of the global consumption, while its population is almost 16% of the globe. Now with the increasing focus of the government on education and literacy coupled with continuous growth of the retail industry, quality packing of FMCG products, pharmaceuticals, textiles, booming e-commerce and other segments, the consumption is expected to pick up fast. The domestic paper market presently estimated to be of Rs. 80,000 crore, is expected to expand fast.

Building momentum towards Digital Agriculture Mission

Digital agriculture may sound odd to our ears, but it is fast becoming a reality, thanks to continuous and greater policy interventions by the Government of India into promoting farm and field-based development and advancement. This transformational journey promises big for crores of agricultural households, who need constant addition to their earnings. Since digital technologies are powerful means for connecting faster with the concerned people, streamlining processes, supporting innovations, bringing in transparency, ensuring efficiency and creating revenue streams, the Centre is putting in a lot of efforts to harness their power to pilot innovative ways, tools and approaches for agriculture sector. Digital agriculture doesn’t only intend to increase the income of farmers and rural households, but also inspire youth entrepreneurs to involve in agriculture and rural economy, which does generate jobs for the youth.

The ubiquity, mobility and agility of digital technologies have already transformed agriculture and food production in many parts of the globe. The widespread use of mobile technologies, remote sensing services and computing tools make it much easier for the farmers to access relevant information, inputs, markets, supply chains, higher productivity, besides reduction in operational costs, which invariably result in greater income. The Union Budget 2022-23 outlined a clear policy vision for delivery of digital and hi-tech services to farmers with involvement of public sector research and extension institutions along with private agri-tech player and stakeholders of agri-value chains.

‘Digital Agriculture Mission’ is yet to be finalized. However, a number of activities and initiatives are already on. A high level task force is in the process of finalizing India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture (IDEA) report. Based on the views of subject experts, farmers, Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) and general public, the concerned department is in the process of finalizing a framework for creating ‘Agristack’ in the country, which will serve as a foundation to build innovative agri-focused solutions leveraging digital technologies to contribute effectively towards increasing the income of farmers and improve efficiency of the agriculture sector.

To give momentum to this process of digital agriculture, leading technology, agri-tech, start-ups have been invited to collaborate with the Government of India and develop Proof of Concepts (PoC) based on data of select districts and villages. Companies were invited to sign MoU on purely pro bono basis and develop the PoCs, which will help in understanding the uses of Agristack and service & solutions that can be built using available data. If found beneficial to the farmers, it would be scaled up at national level. Under National e-Governance Plan in agriculture, funds are released to the states and union territories for the projects involving use of modern technologies such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, block chain technology, internet of things, robotics among others.

Various mobile applications including KisanSuvidha have also been developed to facilitate dissemination of information to farmers on the critical parameters like weather, market prices, plant protection, agro-advisory, extreme weather alerts, input dealers of seed, pesticide, fertilizer, farm machinery, soil health card, cold storage & godowns, soil testing laboratories, veterinary centre, diagnostic labs, crop insurance premium calculator and the government schemes. And all stakeholders like state governments, state agriculture universities, ICAR, agritech start-ups, agri industry, banks, think tank, civil society, and farmer organizations have been involved in the process. Clearly, digital doesn’t remain to be just a fashionable word meant for technologists, now it is also empowering millions of farmers.