Panaji: Anil Kakodkar, Padma Vibhushan awardee and former chairperson of the Atomic Energy Commission of India, said it is a tragedy that academics in India still struggle to identify the country’s most pressing problems and focus research on addressing them. Speaking on Tuesday at Goa University’s 42nd foundation day on the topic, ‘Higher Education and National Development’, he said India still has no university in the world’s top 100, a gap that must be closed.Gaps between Tier 1 institutions and Tier 2 and 3 institutions will exist, Kakodkar said, while emphasising that the overall average quality must rise. He said Tier 1 institutions must play a leading role by partnering with Tier 2 and 3 institutions through joint, collaborative programmes, with a focus on making India “great again”.He said researchers must address major social and environmental challenges such as poverty and pollution, which are critical to improving living standards. He said educationists often find it difficult to identify solvable problems, calling it a tragedy, and urged them to treat adversity as a challenge that must be understood and addressed.Kakodkar said the global shift from manufacturing to technology development and then to research has intensified competition, citing China’s rapid progress over the last 25 years driven by education policy changes that have even made the US uneasy.On India’s National Education Policy (NEP), he said outcomes depend on implementation, and warned against blindly following central circulars. He said flexibility, diversity, and alignment with local needs are key, and institutions must preserve the policy’s spirit rather than treat it as a box-ticking exercise. He called for student-centric and faculty-centric implementation and autonomous thinking.He said he was pleasantly surprised that an Indian university allows students to design their own degree, and said such steps reflect the NEP’s intent.Kakodkar said institutions must also help shape people with strong human values. He said both instinct and values drive humans, and the issue is which becomes dominant. He added that while a transactional mindset may be necessary for survival, society becomes more virtuous when it engages in creative work, addresses local challenges, and derives satisfaction from helping others.“The ability to look for challenges in the problems that exist and derive joy in helping people will take the world to a different level,” he said.QUOTEInstitutions need to ensure that we become the right kind of human beings. We are humans, but we are all animals in the first place, whether you like it or not. The question is whether the animal instinct or human values are stronger in us. Animal instinct to dominate etc, is not bad. But the question is whether we are forgetting our human values– Anil Kakodkar | Padma Vibhushan awardee
