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One of the main reasons why America has dominated the world economy for so long is its supremacy in scientific and technological enterprise. There is no dispute that these have been the engines of economic growth of America. It has reaped the benefit of investing billions of dollars in fundamental research.
It still leads the world in areas of nano-science, genomics and proteomics, and advanced scientific computing. However, it faces stiff challenges from developing nations in these areas. It has already recognized this danger and is trying to find steps to maintain its competitive advantage. Infact the National Academics, America's leading science advisory group, had convened a panel of experts fearing the loss of the privileged position that America enjoys in scientific competitiveness. This panel has submitted a report giving its recommendations and asked for urgent and wide-ranging efforts in several areas by the government.

There are several areas where we need to work to maintain and also improve our competitive advantages. To begin with, we need to strengthen our education base. Though we are churning out IT professionals who have made their mark at the global stage, we need to improve the quality of IT professionals graduating from our colleges.

According to some estimates, only 1 among 30 IT professional in India is suitable to work in Tier-1 companies. This problem gets highlighted more in the period of recession when many people find themselves queuing up at recruitment agencies. To strengthen the educational institutions and bring them to the global standards should be the priority in this area. To attract quality faculty, government should do a rethink on the existing pay scales in government institutes. Offering higher number of scholarships to students for higher education would go a long way in creating a pool of talented professionals. Also adopting the Silicon Valley education model where the ideas and incubation come from universities and later made commercial with active involvement of the industry. This would also help build soft skills required in professionals.

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* Contributed by: -
Aadarsh Himmatramka, an M.Com. from Mumbai University, worked as Marketing Assistant with Pentafab Textiles Pvt. Ltd. for a year, and is currently a student of PGP2 at BIM, Trichy.