Rajesh Garodia on the jobs that will define India’s future

With half of its population under 25 and the unemployment rate at four-decade high, India faces an uncertain future. The question on young people’s minds: what kinds of jobs will we have? Quartz asked leaders across India’s biggest industries about that one job in their company or field that will be the most crucial in the coming decades.

The education sector in India has long been dominated by public institutions. However, a new crop of credible private universities, with an eye on global trends in pedagogy, have peppered India’s education landscape lately. Ashoka University, Shiv Nadar University, and Azim Premji University have created a niche in private education, and the government-owned Nalanda University has brought in more international partnerships. The worry, though, is that these create a wider gap between the haves and have-nots.

Rajesh Garodia, the pro vice chancellor at Ashoka University, told Quartz:

I think bioscience is going to take a much more central stage for us as technology advances. Other technologies, such as data science or computing power, will also focus on solving a lot of biological questions in agriculture, health, and food.

At Ashoka University, we started off by focusing on social sciences and humanities, but over the last couple of years we have launched programs and majors in pure sciences, first in biology and then physics. This year we’re also launching chemistry.