When I think of higher education, I am reminded of the years I spent learning Aeronautical Engineering in the Madras Institute of Technology (MIT), Chennai (1954-57). During the third year of my course, I was asked to design a low-level attack aircraft along with six other colleagues. I was specifically given the responsibility of System Design and System Integration. I was also responsible for aerodynamics and the structure of the project. My design teacher, Professor Srinivasan, the then-director of MIT, was our guide. He reviewed the project after four months and declared that my work was gloomy and disappointing. He didn't listen to the difficulties I faced in bringing together databases from multiple designers and multiple minds. I asked for a month's time to complete the task since I had to get inputs from five of my colleagues, without which I could not complete the system design.

Professor Srinivasan told me, "Look, young man, today is Friday afternoon. I give you three days. If by Monday morning, I don't get the configuration design, your scholarship will be stopped." I was taken aback as the scholarship was my lifeline. My team worked together round-the-clock. For the first time, we realised the importance of system management. On Sunday morning, I almost completed the design when I felt someone's presence in our laboratory. Professor Srinivasan had words of appreciation: "You have done a great task in system design, system integration and system management. This experience will go a long way in your career."

Through this activity, Professor Srinivasan injected the necessity of understanding the value of time by each team member and brought out the best from the system design team. The message is that the young, during their higher education, whatever the specialisation, should be trained in multi-disciplines through systematic approach. This experience taught me the importance of multidisciplinary approach in system design, system integration and system management, which subsequently became the base for my various missions including hovercraft development, SLV-3, strategic missile system, weaponisation of missiles and the evolution of India Vision 2020.

EMPOWERING MINDS:
I am inspired even today, whenever I read Lord Buddha's verse:
"All that we are, is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become."

Lord Buddha had given great importance to the minds of human beings 25 centuries ago and explained how the mind leads to multiple thoughts and actions. I am convinced that with the multireligious, multi-cultural and multi-lingual environment of our nation, the future definitely needs to be built using the multiple capacities of the minds of the youth. Let me describe the capacities based on my analysis:

DISCIPLINARY MIND: This requires the mastery of major schools of thought that may include Science, Mathematics, History and Religion. Apart from this, the disciplinary mind has to be enriched with expertise in at least one professional field.

SYNTHESISING MIND: This is the ability to integrate ideas from different disciplines or spheres into an integrated system and to be able to communicate the synthesised thoughts. With the increasing volume of information in the present-day world, the capacity to synthesise assumes great importance. CREATING MIND: It is essential to build capacity to uncover and create solutions to new problems, questions and phenomena. The creating mind seeks to remain at least one step ahead of even the most sophisticated computers and robots.

RESPECTFUL MIND: It is a uniquely developed mind, a mature mind that has awareness and appreciation for differences among human beings.

ETHICAL MIND: This mind conceptualises how the youth can serve a purpose beyond self-interest and work unselfishly to improve the quality of life for all. The higher education system has to cultivate these among the youth, so that they learn to respect others, are tolerant and perseverant for realising their goals in life.

Our higher education system should nurture these capacities for cultivating positive human potentials. Such an approach will enable our educational system to produce quality human resource with ability to innovate and meet the needs of the national development. In summary, the higher education of the next two decades is all about developing enlightened citizenship for a knowledgeable society. Hence, we should see how we can empower people though university collaborations, student-faculty interaction, lab-to-lab collaborations and through widening world-class quality teaching and research through a virtual classroom environment. In view of this, I’m happy that The Times of India is bringing a special publication on higher education.