To keep up growth tempo, India should focus on education: Arvind Subramanian

Greater Noida: India will need to focus on education and produce more and more graduates if it wants to maintain growth momentum and become an IT powerhouse again, Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian said on Saturday.

"In the last 10-20 years, India has grown very rapidly. The information technology and services sectors, which had slowed considerably in the last 4-5 years, have boomed,"Subramanian said."So, if India has to maintain its growth momentum, it hasto be a powerhouse once again... If that has to happen, wehave to be producing more and more graduates."

He was speaking at the first convocation ceremony ofthe Shiv Nadar University. Making a case for greater participation of the private sector in higher education, Subramanian said: "If we don’t have intellectual capital, we won't be able to negotiate trade pacts. We need educated elites to have intellectual capital.”

He further said many big global companies want to come to India because the country has "a good higher education system". "Now, Google, Amazon, Facebook all want to come, and all of this would not have been possible had we not had a great system of higher education. Education has become a symbol of aspirations of India. Higher education has become the ultimate aspiration for middle class Indians," he said.

The CEA, however, regretted that the while focusing on higher education, the leaders couldn't provide adequate attention to primary education.