National Research Foundation (NRF)
In the light of the new tenure of our Prime Minister Narendra Modi, our country is all set to witness some revolution in the field of Education. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that India possesses the potential of raising the standard of our education. She proposed that NRF (National Research Foundation) will focus on research ecosystem of our country. NEP (New Education Policy) would also be set up to ensure that the quality of the education in our country is at par with the world over. This initiative aims at making India an educational hub that may attract foreign students. She said that in the present scenario there is a deficit in the fund that is allocated to research programmes, but her proposal is that research grants from all the ministries would be assimilated in to the NRF to give a major push to the research and innovations.
The research programmes in NRF will be categorised in four major sector- Social Sciences, Humanities, Science and Technology. There would be a provision to add more sectors. Since Humanities and Social Sciences do not get their due in terms of respect, strengthening its position would be a primary target. With the establishment of the NRF and the NEP students all over the country can expect major over haul in their school system. Sitharaman’s motto behind the establishment of this foundation is to have more of our institutions listed in the top 200 in World University. At present only 3 of our institutions feature in the top 200 list. Apart from the research activities NRF would also look in to increasing research capacities in Colleges and Universities. NRF will take utmost care in gathering a team that is the best at the global level in nurturing the seed of innovation and research.
We would love to hear your opinion and views on this in the comments below.
This seems to be good proposal, but any plans on the real implementation needs to be worked out. First we have what is called Premier Institutions and these institutions think of higher standards, however even after hundred years their international ranking in questionable?. Before we make the proposal finalised, I request that the premier institutions which do not come under the gamut of UGC be made international, and get their funding and even governing from International agencies/Institutions (with ranking less than 10 consistently for five earlier years) and bodies. These premier institutions should not be included in NIRF.
The NRF should cater to only Universities of higher learning which show promising results (as per NIRF standards), and they should be under the strict supervision on Premier Institutions (excluded from NRF).
