Expressions like ‘Make in India’, ‘Start up’ have become a watch word for almost every enterprising Indian with entrepreneurial initiatives. In fact, this movement is gaining momentum and has instilled a great excitement and desire among the people who want to be potential achievers. Some of the modest initiatives by young and middle aged entrepreneurs have registered a high level growth trajectory over a period of time.
Considering the minimum investment with which such ventures have begun with sagacity and grit, budding entrepreneurs have given credence to the saying “When the going gets tough, the tough gets going”. With the ease of doing business showing significant signs of improvement in India in recent times, many resourceful persons have plans to start new ventures. This is a welcome trend indeed and this needs to be encouraged by fellow Indians and adequately backed up by all social institutions, the most important being education. The success stories of individuals rising from rags to riches at once prove two crucial points. Through conviction and courage great heights can be scaled is a point to ponder over. Secondly, a win-win situation is possible through commensalism. The nation’s pride on one side and personal glory on a global reckoning are the derivatives. Many new startup ventures from eateries to education services, from car on call to care on health, the startup regime in India has registered phenomenal growth. In fact in the month of May 2022 one hundred startups have become unicorns. Unicorns are establishments with a value of Rs 7,500 crores. Our country is now home to the world’s third largest start up establishments and their total valuation has touched 332.7 billion US dollars. India has made a big leap forward since the launch of the start up initiative in January 2016.
The youth trained by premier institutes of higher learning where there is a favourable climate for such initiatives, have come a long way in keeping the start up regime to gain fillip and focus. One probable reason is that the entrepreneurs have received instructions far removed from mundane practices of caged thoughts. Therefore the educational institutions in India ought to facilitate out-of-the-box thinking for the youth to catch up with the global trends as well as blossom spirit of the nation. Divergent thought with cross fertilisation facility for ideas should be the focus in the portals of higher learning. These require a paradigm shift of executing the will through adequate backup.
An idea in the offing pertaining to the above suggestion is The Choice Based Credit System (CBCS), an educational model that seeks to bring innovation in Indian universities. To name a few, apparently disconnected domains like existentialism/mathematics, atomic physics/ modern literature, linguistics/sociology, life sciences/statistics are typical examples of opening up mental vistas in favour of out-of-the- box thinking. It is reason enough to expand a variety of combinations under CBCS to amplify and draw benefits of wider applicability of ideas. A strong foundation in trans disciplinary methodology is timely for physical ,social and life sciences. Disciplines like Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology, Political Science, History and Economics belong to the realm of social sciences. Paradoxically, the methodology existing in one discipline does not percolate to the other. Though students of one social science discipline have a chance to study one or a few papers in other social sciences under the CBCS system, by and large they do not have an opportunity to acquire knowledge in research methodology existing in other social science disciplines. A student of Political Science may not know the tools like carbon dating which the students of History and Archaeology are aware of. This despite the fact that politics is present history and history is the study of past politics. The students of Anthropology do not have a chance to learn tools in Psychology as learners of Psychology may not know what the anthropometric measurements are. Therefore, social scientists must get their act together to offer trans disciplinary methodology comprising all principles and procedures as a compulsory paper. A comprehensive material regarding trans disciplinary methodology will facilitate the youth to get transformed into interdisciplinary researchers at a later stage besides enabling them to tackle issues which call for a joint appeal of two or more disciplines. The scenario cannot be any different for sciences as well.
With the passage of time, experts in physical and life sciences realised that the individual branches of knowledge had reached a near saturation. Hence they attempted to explore contiguous areas to verify the laws in their respective disciplines and recognized that fertile scope for exploratory research is more abundant in interdisciplinary studies. Thus emerged domains of Biochemistry, Biotechnology, Bio Physics, Biomedical Engineering to name a few, with more relevant social and scientific applications. When disciplines mix there are wider opportunities for accidental discoveries (serendipity). Such events have taken the world by storm as in the case of penicillin credited to Alexander Fleming. Diehard purists would not approve of mixing disciplines. Remarkable discoveries are rendered a reality when disciplinary parochialism is broken. With fertile imagination, wealth of information, providing service or product for a fruitful proposition will emerge.
