Education Summit: Leading The Way

The BW Businessworld 3rd India Education Summit, held on 30 June in New Delhi, heard strong calls for improving educational standards in the country through more investment in infrastructure.

The summit was inaugurated by Gopal Jain, founder and managing partner of Gaja Capital Partners, and Anurag Batra, chairman and editor-in-chief of BW Businessworld. There was also a fireside chat between the two about the emerging challenges in Indian education.

Jain pointed out that India lagged far behind developing economies like China in terms of proper allocation of education resources. He said there was a lack of political will in the country to make pertinent policy changes.

There were five panel discussions on relevant topics that ranged from "Emerging Challenges in Indian Education", "Role of Technology" and "Emergence of Education Startups" to the "Transformation K-12 landscape" and the "Future of Higher Education".

The day-long event concluded with a panel discussion on “higher education”. The panelists, which included policymakers in education, emphasised the need for introducing value education, where subjects apart from the curriculum such as spirituality should be taught to students. “Rise and fall of any country largely depends upon the human resources and these can be leveraged in best possible manner to benefit the environment. Higher education is very critical to developing thinking, synthesising and asking questions, while using it in unfamiliar situation,” said M. Jagadesh Kumar, vice-chancellor of India’s reputed insitution, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).