MJ Xavier is the Vice Chancellor of Karunya University and also served as the founding director of the Indian Institute of Management Ranchi. With more than 25 years of professional experience in teaching, academic administration and research, Xavier speaks to Edex about his journey, the education policy and much more.
Tell us about your journey from a small town like Kovilpatti to founding an IIM?
Well..that’s a big question. Parents are very important, my mom used to say I am a gifted child. She always encouraged me to be different. I was always a slightly different kind of a child, so that feeling that you were born to do something big, that feeling was instilled in the early stages and that kept me going in different areas. Basically it is the spirit of exploration.
You speak aften about Thought Leadership through Erudite Fusion. What is that?
I firmly believe India has a lot to offer to the rest of the world. In Tamil literature, it says a teacher should be like a taraasu, meaning unbiased and like a flower, meaning always fresh. Our people have done a lot of work in human life or science, but unfortunately it hasn’t come to light because of the system of keeping it confidential but the western world publishes everything and gets credit for that. So they have system for codifying knowledge and furthering knowledge. My feeling is that we have to adapt the process and systems of the west and then reinvent the knowledge of the east, then we can rule the world. Now people are turning back whether it is yoga, ayurveda or medical systems. All these Indian systems died because we didn’t have a proper process to codify and pass on the knowledge in a systematic way. That is why I said Erudite Fusion, it is a fusion of eastern knowledge and western processes, that is what I meant by that.
What plans do you have for Karunya University?
As a university, Karunya has huge potential, but then it has not been fully exploited. As such they are doing a lot of good things, they are not known to the world because they are publicity shy. They have potential and they are doing things which are not publicised. So these are things I am trying to work on. We have applied for patents, actually we have made some discoveries, for example we developed a nano material which can be sprayed on burn wounds after the medicine is applied so the wound heals very fast. We are starting new courses, we have 700 acres of land out of which 400 acres have been allotted for a school of agriculture. We are also going to start a law school. We have our alumni in IBM, Reliance Jio and other big companies and they are going to help us in collaborative research We are planning to increase our student strength to 25000 from 8000 in the next 5 years.
What crucial changes do you think our education system needs to stop brain drain?
Brain drain is not a fault of the education system, of course, to some extent IITs and IIMs today train their students for global jobs. In my view this is not a bad idea because some of them come back when the situation is ideal. Anyway in another 10 years 70 percent of the global workforce has to come from India because people of all other countries are getting old. It is not like the olden days where you can’t bring money. Brain drain was an issue, but I am not sure if this is an issue as of today.
Your thoughts on the draft education policy and the ramifications it could have on universities?
In the new education policy what they are suggesting is to put all the universities under some other umbrella. They are looking at some other form of governance where you will have a super body with sub-committees. I think that is a good idea, because today you have to go to different approving agencies so they want to cut out that and have one body. But the problem with the new education policy is that it is more of what the previous government was doing, it is an incremental model and there is nothing new in that. There is no proper idea as to what kind of graduates will be needed ten years from now, if you formulate the policy without knowing what kind of skill is needed again you will have the same problem.
Are you working on a new book?
Unfortunately I am tied up with academic administration, however the idea of a book is still there back of my mind. I am into spirituality in a big way so I am working on a book called Spirituality for Success. This has nothing to do with higher education, management, but ultimately your discovery of self is the most important thing. I want young people to come into this and become more spiritual.
Reach Out: karunya.edu