Minister of Finance, Dr Haseeb Drabu today called for revamping the higher education sector in J&K to make it more relevant to the local and market needs.Delivering the keynote address on the concluding day of 2-day national seminar on “Commerce and Management education Under New education Policy” Dr Drabu said J&K’s education system is alienated from the realities of life, which needs to be changed.The seminar was organized by Islamia College of Science and Commerce, Srinagar.He called for making the education socially and economically relevant. “We have MBA in finance at a time when we have just one robust financial institute in the state to absorb the pass-outs,” he said and added that the State has a lucrative horticulture sector with an annual output of Rs 7000 crore yet no MBA in horticulture is available in any institution of higher learning in J&K.
“Give me 100 MBA pass-outs in horticulture, I will provide them jobs within 24 hours,” he said and added that the professionally qualified graduates will revolutionize the horticulture sector which has been stagnant for the past 150 years in the state.The minister asked the officials and educationists to look into the past to reinvent the education. While appreciating the bottom-up approach of New Education Policy, the Minister said that one should also look into the past to get new ideas. Start management courses in handicrafts and see how this sector progresses. The education has to match with skills that are relevant to the State, he said.The Minister asked the scholars to undertake research in the state which is aimed at solving the local problems. The approach should be to build a conscious civil society that will contribute to resolving every issue confronting us, he said.
Dr Drabu praised the richness of Kashmiri heritage and asked the educationists to harvest the best ideas from them and incorporate it among the new generation.The minister said that government will be supporting the modernization of education is every possible way and it is upto teachers and students to benefit from the initiatives.Commending the path-breaking measures being taken towards streamlining and modernizing the education sector in the State on the initiative of the Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and the Education Minister, Mr Naeem Akhtar, Drabu some sort of classic education should also be incorporated with smart classes so that it brings something new to our society. “Our system should be such that it will export new values, ideas and solutions, and not the other way round, he said while referring to Sheikh-ul-Alam (RA), whose ideas are reverberating all round the world even today.