Kochi: Technical education for the future has to be oriented in the direction of growth of socio-economic factors of the country, says M S Ananth, director of IIT-Chennai, at a seminar on Orientation of Technical Education here under the aegis of the local chapter of the IIT Alumni Association.

Ananth drove home the point that the disciplines and syllabi of technical education must be in tune with those sectors of the national economy, which will receive the maximum thrust in the next decade or two.

He said the percentage of the value added by the service sector is growing faster than that of production of goods. Therefore, technical education for the future has to be adjusted to serve the service sector of the economy.

Even though India still continues to adopt a planned system for its economic development, the current emphasis has shifted from the public sector to the private sector, making future projections more complex and complicated, he said.

Build, operate and share (BOS) and build, operate and transfer (BOT) methods are emerging as a new national policy, resulting in the private sector becoming a larger employer rather than the government, he said. Employment in the private sector will require marked adjustments in psychological and social set-up of future engineers.

They will have to face challenges like hire-and-fire policy, periodical relocation of work geographically, competition from national and international peers and continuous upgrading and updating of technical knowledge, he said. The growth of the service sector will concentrate on utilities, financial services, trade and commerce and social services.

According to Ananth, the nationalised banks have to go a long way to incorporate networking of all branches and inter-bank transactions. Tele-banking, universal banking and ATMs have to come into effect in all bank branches to keep pace with the speed required in the financial transactions of a modern society.