Thomas Friedman in his report titled ” Pass the books . Hold the Oil ” in the New York Times [ reproduced by Deccan Chronicle today ] praises Taiwan- a country with hardly any natural resources and yet becoming the fourth largest financial reserves in the World . This status has been achieved not by mining any natural resources but by mining its 23 million people , their talent ,energy and intelligence ! He also talks about the PISA [ Program for International student Assessment] Examination scores in OECD [ Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ] Countries and the correlation with lack of natural resources in those countries with higher PISA scores.
We have a great lesson in India from this observation. As of now , India is enjoying a great demographic dividend in having about 60 percent of the population with a median age of 26 or around – Ideal target group for talent mining and development . Dr V K Saraswat , the Scientific Adviser to the Defense Minister of India recently made a plea for revamping our Education system based on the so called STEM methodology , STEM being an acronym for Science , Technology , Engineering and Mathematics . He advocates this initiative from the secondary school level to prepare a future work force based on STEM .
Thomas Friedman also quotes his friend K R Sridhar founder of the Silicon Valley fuel cell company Bloom Energy who said “when you don’t have resources , you become resourceful ” . A very relevant comment for the Indian Talent pool .