FUNDAMENTALS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP

PROJECT REPORT ON

“A well educated mind vs a well formed mind: Dr. Shashi Tharoor at

TEDxGateway 2013”

by

Syeda Sumbul Fatma Bilgrami – AUD2703

Submitted to:

Prof. Raunaq Dubey

Programme Leader, BBA (Regular Programmes)

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Bachelors of Business Administration – Class of 2014-17

At

Amity University, Dubai Campus

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE
TOPIC NUMBER

INTRODUCTION 3

ABOUT THE TOPIC 4

ABOUT THE SPEAKER 5

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE TALK 6

AFFECT ON ME 9

CONCLUSION 11

REFERENCES 12

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 INTRODUCTION

It is usually believed that a well educated mind is the same as a well formed mind.

But in his TEDx Gateway talk, Dr. Shashi Tharoor underlines the difference

between the two and explains that a more open approach when going through

education is required, so that the mind is not just a ‘well filled’ one, but has

actually grown and is prepared to deal with the many challenges that life will

throw his/her way. Not only that, but only then will he be able to innovate and

create entirely new things, just like we introduced the ‘zero’ into mathematics and

so on. He aptly puts the various requirements of the current situation in the

competitive World and how our country India should focus on this to inculcate the

values to our young generation to take them to the next-level.

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 ABOUT THE TOPIC

TOPIC: A well educated mind vs a well formed mind

Unlike aging countries in the majority of the developed world, India has a large

pool of future workforce with half of its current population under 25. Supported

with an array of statistics, from the basic education system to the quality of

institutes, explained with the support of the 4 Es – Expansion, Equity, Excellence

and Employability; Dr. Shashi Tharoor discusses the country's potential as well as

the results that the Indian government has achieved in education since its

independence, then addresses the biggest challenge that it is facing in educating its

population and what to do about it.

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 ABOUT THE SPEAKER

An author, politician, and former international civil servant, Dr. Shashi Tharoor
straddles several worlds of experience. Currently a second-term Lok Sabha MP
representing the Thiruvananthapuram constituency and Chairman of the
Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, he has previously served as
Minister of State for Human Resource Development and Minister of State for
External Affairs in the Government of India. During his nearly three-decade long
prior career at the United Nations, he served as a peacekeeper, refugee worker, and
administrator at the highest levels, serving as Under-Secretary General during Kofi
Annan's leadership of the organisation. Dr. Tharoor is also an award-winning author
of works of both fiction as well as non-fiction, with sixteen books under his name,
including the classic The Great Indian Novel (1989), India from Midnight to the
Millennium (1997), Nehru: The Invention of India (2003) and recently Pax Indica:
India & the World of the 21st Century (2012). He has won India’s highest honour
for Overseas Indians, the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, and numerous literary awards,
including the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

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 HIGHLIGHTS OF THE TALK

This talk has a lot of concepts, well supported by facts. Let’s look at them one by one.

- India is an amazingly young country. If we just take the age group from 10 to 19, there
are 226 million Indians, poised to enter higher education, going through school and ready
for higher education.

- The average age in India today is 28. By 2020, the average age in Japan is going to be 47,
in China it’s going to be heading well past 40, Europe -46, the United States 0 also 40,
and India’s average age is going to be 29.

So Indians are potentially the people who are positioned to be able to perform the kinds
of role that China played in the last generation. Also, International Labor Organization
has worked out that by 2020, India will have 160 million people in the age group of
starting work — 20 to 24— and China will only have 94 million, at the same time.

- That leaves two possible results :

To be the workforce of the work engine for the world. If India gets it right.

If India gets it wrong, it becomes a demographic disaster when when unemployed,

coaxation
frustrated, undereducated young men become prey to the blandishments of cults like the
Maoists, and prey to the gun and the bullet.

- Dr. Tharoor then goes on to explain the 4 Es:

 Expansion – The British didn’t invest much for the education of the Indians.
Hence expansion was essential.

India has gone from 16%, to 74% literacy today; from 26 universities to 650
universities; from 400,000 students to four-lakh students, to 20 million students in

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 higher education today; and 35,000 colleges as well, instead of the 700 colleges
then. So expansion has taken place.

 Equity - All sorts of people got left out of the system due to Caste, region,
religion and had to be brought in. And that became a big challenge and a priority
for education.

treated as
 Excellence – The IITs, AIIMS, IIMs have tended to be islands of excellence
Ordinariness/Poor performing/Generality
floating on the sea of mediocrity. The average Indian higher education institution
is simply not of the quality that is expected from a country like India.

 Employability - The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and

Industry did a survey - 64% of employers are not satisfied with the quality
of graduates they’re getting. Not only that, but if one talks to employers, to
CEOs; they would tell that they’re simply not satisfied with the quality of
the graduates they’re getting. Some companies are running, essentially, re-
education places; for instance - Infosys’ gigantic campus in Mysore.

- Dr.Tharoor also gave an interesting account to explain the importance of ‘adult

literacy’.
“ “Chitra Mani, who proudly wrote her name in Tamil on a piece of paper. And I said: “So,
what does being able to read and write mean to you?”

And she said: “Now I can see the destination of a bus, where it’s going; I don’t need to ask
somebody where that bus is going. I know where I can go. When I get to the big city of
Kanchipuram, I can read the street signs, I can find where I need to go, I don’t feel helpless
anymore.” ”

That kind of empowerment is what literacy gives people in a very fundamental and
real way.

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- Vocational training - The transmission of knowledge, of trade craft in our country,
has always been through the gene pool. Then again with the use of statistics,
Dr.Tharoor raise d a very important question: Why is it with a country of 1.2 billion
stone/rock workers
people that we should have a nationwide shortage of masons, of plumbers, of certified
electricians?

- Jugaad Innovation – Or ‘Frugal Innovation’ was also something the speaker touched on.
But in a different light than usual. That is, through jugaad, all these things have been those
which were invented elsewhere that has then been stripped down, made more affordable,
more replicable, more relevant to our conditions.

- “We need to do things that others haven’t done before, which we used to do in our
culture, we’re the land that invented the zero.” Through all the previous concepts,
Dr.Tharoor then finally shared this idea: that we need to need to think like that again;
we need to come up with ideas. With 17% of the world’s brains, why do we only have
2.8% of the world’s research output coming out of our country? Well, perhaps we
need to start in the classroom. Get our kids, not just to have their heads filled full of
facts, and textbook materials, and teachers’ lectures. Because that gives you a well-
filled mind, but in the era of the Internet, you don’t need a well-filled mind.

“ What you need is a well-formed mind. A mind that reacts to unfamiliar facts and details
that can actually synthesize information that it hasn’t studied before. A mind, in other words,
that can react to the bigger examination called ‘life, ‘ which doesn’t actually only give you
the things you’re prepared for. And for that you need a mind that’s shaped by original
thinking, a mind that doesn’t just ask the teacher, ‘Why?’, but ‘Why not? ’ ”

- To conclude, Dr.Tharoor presented a positive outlook, with another piece of

statistic - 95% of 12 year-olds across India can read and write.

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 AFFECT ON ME

As a Speaker: For starters, the fact that Dr.Shashi Tharoor used absolutely no visual aid
whatsoever, and still managed to deliver the talk, filled with statistics, and so many
different concepts, in a calm, composed and eloquent manner. That spoke a lot about his
intelligence and the hard work that he must have put in to understand and memorise the
speech. It was also not just mugged up, as in between his talk he kept giving references to
an earlier talk related to ‘gap’ that happened at the same conference. That showed how
well versed with the facts, confident and clear about the concepts he was. These are the
result of hardwork and discipline, especially with a schedule that is as heavy as that of
Dr.Tharoor’s.

The Concepts: Although in the beginning it was tough to understand how Dr.Tharoor was
to relate all the concepts he was talking about to the title of the talk, in the end it all made
sense. Also, I personally was someone who was proud of the Indian concept of ‘Jugaad
Innovation’, as that was so much Indian. But he urged us to look beyond, giving the
example of ‘the land that created zero’. It forced me to think to create, not just improvise.

The adult literacy story of empowerment was also one that stuck, as it was a simple story,
but that brought so much power in the hands of the old lady. Empowering seems like such
a heavy word, but how simple things like being able to read and write, or the like can
empower a person, again, forced one to think, and think simple.

And of course, the importance of a well-formed mind, not just a well-educated/filled

mind, refreshed my belief that education is not just inside, but even out of the classroom
in all walks of life.

There’s a reason why our creativity is being limited. The typical Indian society wants
marks and percentages, whether or not the child is thinking and pondering over what s/he
is studying. And the general student population doesn’t get the time, and is not rewarded,
for asking questions which are not usual.

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It made me realize that a well educated mind could be ones who got good jobs; but
entrepreneurs would be those who had well formed minds. That is why Bill Gates was
able to hire those classmates of his who, while he failed, got more ‘marks’ than him.

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 CONCLUSION

Higher Education is not just about getting degrees and then running out into the

world ready to earn bread, but it is about actually broadening the mind’s landscape

and arming oneself to be able to apply it to all walks of life, especially during

hardships. This talk asked us Indians to let go of our traditional “ratta-maarna”

(mugging up) to earn marks in Board exams, but to think and believe in the

impossible, as that will be the stepping stone to becoming cutting edge innovators.

“Why not”?

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 REFERENCES

http://singjupost.com/dr-shashi-tharoor-on-a-well-educated-mind-vs-a-well-
formed-mind-full-transcript/2/

http://www.shashitharoor.in/know-me.php

http://www.amara.org/en/videos/7Dj87zyhzago/info/a-well-educated-mind-vs-a-
well-formed-mind-shashi-tharoor-tedxgateway/

………………………………………………………………….

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