India draws blank in top 100 universities: Minister

 Union Minister of state for Home Mullappally Ramachandran today said not even a single Indian Universitys' name figures in the top 100 universities of the world.

Inaugurating a national seminar on 'Higher education: challenges and opportunities" at Vatakara, about 170 km from here, he said "It is not that we do not have world-class faculty in our country. We have best of students in our country".

"It is also not true that all our institutes lack funds and resources", he said, adding "in my view what we lack is the vision and confidence in our capability".

Ramachandran said that we need to create a culture of exchange, synergy and vibrancy in higher education in India.

Emphasising the need to devise a strategy so that the country does not lag behind in scientific research, he said "research in the field of science is in fact essential to achieve higher rate of development and it is more so in our country".

The high literacy has paid rich dividends to the overall socio-economic development of Kerala, but "it is a fact that we still have to go a long way to exploit the full potential of education and it is in this context that higher education sector assumes greater significance", he said.

Speaking on the occasion, Prof Ved Prakash, Chairman, UGC, said that in the last 64 years India had made remarkable progress and had set up the largest system of higher education in the world.