The Chakrabarti Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to the promotion of education, especially in developing nations. The Foundation draws its funding from various sources, including the PMC Group and profits from my PCR patent royalties.
I am currently directing activities of the foundation in two major directions: 1) Higher education reform in India; 2) Science education in developing nations: reduction of brain drain and intellectual empowerment through awareness of indigenous developments.
The university systems in developing nations like India are the key to mobilizing the talented and prodigious populations of these nations to partake in the Knowledge Economy of the 21st century.
We are part of a small group of Americans engaged in scholarly research and consulting in this area.
Our collaborators include Augustine Bartning, Co-director of the International Center for Student Success and Institutional Accountability (ICSSIA, New York City, USA), Subrabhata Basu, Quest Partners (Mumbai, India) and Keeling & Associates, LLC (New York City, USA)..
We have written the first systematic article on this subject, which will be submitted to the Journal of Studies in International Education (Sage):
R. Chakrabarti and A. P. Bartning, "On the development of globally compatible infrastructures for Indian higher education", to be submitted, (2008).
We profile the quality assessment
and student support structures that
are currently deployed in various institutions of higher learning in
India.
On-site research conducted with senior administrators and student body
members
in the Indian state of West Bengal indicates that privately funded and
distance
learning institutions are outpacing traditional public schools in these
areas,
despite the central government’s ambitious plans to reform the
university
system. The implications of these
developments for
the globalization of Indian higher education are discussed.
The questions we address in this article are: Can these methodologies be effectively transported to higher education institutions in developing nations, like India? How should they be modified to coalesce with the current departmental and administrative structures within Indian institutions? Have Indian institutions begun to make similar realizations about the global economy and taken logical, subsequent steps? We focus our attention in this article on India – which has arguably the fastest growing higher education market in the world – but similar changes are rapidly occurring in many other developing nations.
Premier Indian public universities undoubtedly possess the greatest name recognition today. However, progressive institutions of higher education in India are well on their way towards obtaining seals of approval from Western institutions and international experts. Who will be the next Harvard or Stanford equivalent? Or, rather, will India develop a new model for egalitarian education ideally suited to meet the challenges inherent in its socio-economic development? With minimal international standards for assessment and student support services, such progressive institutions could witness a growth far exceeding that of similar institutions in the West, where the target audience is much smaller and more limited in scope.
The Chakrabarti Foundation, in collaboration with the Infinity Foundation in Princeton, NJ, hosts a discussion and research forum on the history of theoretical sciences - particularly applied mathematics - in India. The IndianTheory forum can currently be accessed through yahoo groups.
A group also meets locally on the campus of Princeton University for live discussions and research. Please contact me to learn more about the local meeting schedule.
A complete mission statement of the forum is available. The folllowing is a brief summary:
In the year 2000, the International Task Force on Higher Education and Society prepared a report describing challenges facing higher education in developing countries (Ahmad et al., 2000). India figured prominently within the list of countries where educational reform was deemed essential. The continued development of an advanced infrastructure for higher education was considered by this global task force to be a prerequisite for the economic development of these nations in the 21st century.
More than 6 years later, there is increasing interest in overhauling aspects of the educational system in developing nations like India, as the economic resources needed to accomplish this ambitious task rapidly become available. The details of this proposed academic restructuring must be carefully considered from various perspectives. Certainly, it is essential to fashion an educational infrastructure that can reach the rural majority of the nation’s population. However, at this critical juncture, it is particularly important to ensure that Indian higher education is not fashioned entirely in the image of western, eurocentric models, given the popular belief that countries like India are impoverished not only economically but also intellectually. In truth, many of these nations have distinguished histories of intellectual achievement, stunted by a history of colonization.
The dominant albeit misguided attitude toward this subject is that eastern intellectual traditions focus primarily on metaphysics and religious philosophy, with very little emphasis on the hard sciences. Recently, the extent of historical Indian developments in the theoretical sciences - particularly in math, linguistics and the foundations of computer science – have been hotly debated . These developments challenge the traditional conception of Indian thought as metaphysical. The outcome of these debates – in the West as well as in the East – could affect whether Indian universities and schools choose to accept these developments as factually accurate and include them within their curricula.
This present discussion forum will aim to increase awareness about and ultimately contribute to the resolution of several debates surrounding Indian achievements in the theoretical sciences, and their continued relevance to modern-day science. Educational implications in both India and the West will be an ongoing theme.