Saturday, November 24, 2012

Inbuilt innovation in higher education will boost defence industry: expert


Chennai:
India should have an inbuilt innovation and experimentation focus ingrained in their system of higher education like that of developed nations so that adopting to defence needs is easier, according to an expert.
Delivering the inaugural address at the Conference on Defence Education in India, Governor of Chattisgarh, former deputy national security advisor and defence secretary Shekhar Dutt said India cannot suddenly change its orientation of education but it can do so selectively.
He said Indian universities offering defence education should transform from a mass based system to an exclusive and individualized model that can lead to innovation and experimentation as the skill sets required in this model is quite different.
Dutt said the defence industry needs a base of this nature from which it can draw talent to meet its crying need.
He said national level task forces have looked into the matter of security and defence industry recently. “Although their recommendations are still being examined, I suspect we may have considered changed structures and greater decentralization as well as encouragement of private industries but I haven’t read much about defence education,” the former defence secretary said.
He said unless something is done about defence education, there is little that we would be able to gain from downline instruments of progress.
He said without defence education, defence public sector undertakings can’t expect private capital and private industry to be enthused in defence industry.
He also rued the fact that while the defence public sector undertakings have delivered critical requirements to three services, it has not been able to produce any subsequent model model or newer generation of the technology bought from other countries. “We are stuck at the technology level at which we started in a production line,” he said.

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