Recently, we witnessed an incredible moment in history when India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission landed and delivered the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover on the south pole of the moon.
This makes India the first country to land a spacecraft at this location, and also only the fourth ever to have probes on the moon. It is worth noting that India is only one of two Asian countries with a space programme sophisticated enough to achieve this feat.
Source: https://www.padu.edu.my
On the surface, it may be easy to assume that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) spent a lot to achieve this success. However, reports show that the Chandrayaan-3 mission is considered one of the cheapest in recent history, costing just US$74.43mil (RM345.36mil). In fact, India’s total annual space budget is only US$1.5bil (RM6.98bil), which is far lower than that of the United States, Russia and China.
What India did get right was investing heavily in its people, building a highly skilled, knowledgeable and capable talent pool in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
According to the World Economic Forum, with 34% of its tertiary students in STEM, India is producing the world’s highest number of STEM graduates annually. And the World Bank has reported that, at 43%, India has a higher percentage of female STEM graduates compared to developed nations like the US (34%), United Kingdom (38%), Germany (27%) and France (32%).
Organisations such as the Indian National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and India STEM Foundation have also played critical roles in shaping the nation’s STEM workforce.
On the other hand, if we look at our Education Blueprint (2013-2025) we have not met the project goals. Achievements appear to align with objectives for 2016-2020 and not for the 2021-2025 phase. Malaysia is to be in the top one-third of nations in global assessments, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (Timss) in 15 years. However, as of 2021, the country remain rooted in the bottom third of both assessments.
We can’t get English right (or write!), we can’t do maths or sciences and we only have limited skills to be Grab riders. And once we have drones, doing that job is also gone! Perhaps, we could provide short-stay visas for Indian and Chinese graduates to work on more complicated areas for Malaysia – a new breed of immigrants instead of those from Myanmar, Bangladesh and Indonesia. With Reformasi ditched, Malaysian youngsters will leave in droves. God help Malaysia!
References:
What we can learn from India, The Star, 30 August 2023
Education Blueprint 2013-2025 hardly a success, says educationist, Lynelle Tham, FMT, 2 September 2023
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