Education needs a renaissance in India -- KV Kamath

Thats the message coming from Mr K V Kamath, MD & CEO of ICICI Bank when he delivered the Inaugural Address at the 20th AIMS Annual Management Education Convention.

Said Mr Kamath, Indian industry has transformed from a manufacturing focused economy of the 1980s to knowledge and services focused. We are growing rapidly at 9%. Is our business thinking and practice keeping pace with these changes? He added, Indian education thinking and curriculum needs a fundamental re-thinking right from the grass root level.

There is huge shortage of skilled manpower, Mr Kamath added.

Sharing HR lessons from his own company, Mr Kamath said, We created Institute of Finance Banking & Insurance (IFBI) with NIIT to cater to the need for skilled entry level manpower. It was a huge success. Then, we created another programme to train managerial work force. We created a management programme that married management basics with banking industry needs. We decided to enroll students who were strong with basics but lacked communication skills or came from rural backgrounds. We were looking for 1000 candidates but over 100,000 applied. About 10,000 of them were as good as candidates going into a good B-school.

Calling the academia to collaborate with the industry, Mr Kamath said, Indian management education sector should partner with the industry and co-create the academic programme so that it is relevant for the industry.

Ending his speech on a positive note, Mr Kamath said, I see a great future for India. We will grow at 10%. There will be a job for every Indian. The role of education sector will be key in making India of tomorrow better than our past. Education as a soft-infrastructure is more important than physical infrastructure which gets into the focus a lot more.