Aparna Marwah & Daljeet Singh Bawa work with Bharati Vidyapeeth University Institute of Management & Research, New Delhi.
Institutions of higher education, particularly universities, have a significant role to play in the global transformation to socio-ecological sustainability. Higher education in India has the potential of a fire that can spread through the country bringing a positive radical change.
The societal transformation requires participation of a broad – section of stake holders in the Indian society, facilitated by knowledgeable and ethical people who are aware of both the consequences of inaction and the opportunities for change. Herein resides the significance of higher education.
For people to effectively enter into conversation and contribute to desired outcomes they must be equipped with at least a common understanding or perspective of the situation at hand. The leaders need to be prepared to proceed in a trans-disciplinary way.
The pillars of higher education i.e., universities act as a potential force for integration of sustainability principles in both theory and case-based practice. Because of the important role of universities in research, relationships with industry, government and non-governmental organizations (NGO), and in the preparation of young professionals and educated citizens, they can be seen as “leverage points” for vast socio-ecological innovation toward sustainability.
Subjects such as business and social sciences amalgamated with scientific, technological advancements has now started dominating the Indian mindset. In all walks of life – business, research and government – the demand for the ethics and values governing policies and practice to be made explicit is increasing.
But now, an increasing number of national governments and transnational organizations are encouraging institutions of higher education to come up with a formal course structure or an educational course that integrates sustainability competencies successfully, ethics and values that can effectively shape its contents and govern the way educators and learners work together.
The government is now trying to implement an OCR (Open and Collaborative Research) model through its wide plethora of M.Phil and PhD programmes in a wide array of subjects ranging from technology to social sciences. Many universities are now trying to foster industry – academia partnerships so as to ensure that academia can nurture innovation and at the same time, industry can provide the need – based alignment.
The syllabi of higher education programmes is being revamped with a view to inducting the student into a community of participant citizens, a new kind of institutional culture and ethos is now being created.
Management and Doctorate programmes today provides a sufficient room for the use of local data and resources to make the knowledge covered in the syllabus come alive as experience. In order to build strong epistemic bridges between different fields of professional education and the different disciplines of science, social sciences and humanities, it is essential to bring out feasibility and practicability lending sustainability.
Sustainability should become the guiding principle of business. It an no longer be viewed from a theoretical perspective alone as sustainability today is rapidly becoming an internationally acknowledged framework for economic welfare and application of social sciences.
A cohesive approach towards sustainability is required where more research institutions should offer postgraduate education and training in niche areas of energy, biosciences, environment, public policy, infrastructure management and business sustainability.
The above approach will allow young scholars to study real life problems through a systems approach within the constraints of analytical human behavior reflexes and ethical practices to lend sustainability there contributing to needs of the society at large.