THINK BEYOND ACADEMIC RESEARCH

                                                            Bikash Choudhury

Academic Research has been one of the top most criteria for Global University ranking in USA and also in other developed countries and now the same method is being followed by Indian Universities to improve their rankings as well as building their Brand value before their stake holders. There is no harm in such a hypothesis being practiced by emerging private universities in the country; however, we need to ask if such a policy aligned to the need and goal of our country? Can’t we think of a better method that is much more challenging than ‘Academic Research’ and lucrative to our country’s development?

 Growing Economic Inequality pose the biggest challenge to our society and our country. Quality education and skill development are the immediate solution which our Autonomous Educational Institutions and Private Universities are doing very well in the recent past. However, one more thing they can do to improve the Economic Condition of a cluster of village by deploying their academic resources and knowledge pool. That should offer enough challenge to the students and faculties to find solutions for the problems of Cluster Economic Development in real time. That would also give opportunity to students to apply their knowledge and skill. Academic Research would henceforth be targeted at some real problems of real people and eventually benefit the residents of village cluster apart from creating umpteenth case studies for intellectual postmortem and academic consumption. Apart from sharpening the academic acumen of the students and teachers; such experiment if successful would help in bridging the economic inequality in the country over a period of time.

This is easier said than done; however, if our private multi-disciplinary universities and autonomous institutions like IIT & IIM could think of adopting a village cluster of 10-15 villages with 10,000 population and 5000-10,000 acres of cultivable land. First of all Universities could incubate an organization in association with the resident of cluster villages and devise a plan to improve the Agricultural productivity, generating employment opportunities by conceptualizing MSME relevant for the cluster, imparting the education & training and skill development of young people, marketing the produce of the cluster in lucrative market and finding investors for such project or raising finance by deploying their inter-disciplinary talent pool in the university campus. This could be an Indian model of Knowledge Mining in Academics designated to benefit deprived rural masses not only in India; but, in other developing countries also. With successful practice such program could be a role model globally that may be adopted by United Nations Development Program (UNDP).   

   

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