The first important task in the educational field before our government was to open more schools and colleges. Along with these many technical training institutes and engineering colleges were to be set-up. In 1950-51 we had only 2.23 lakh primary schools. But 1996-97 the number had gone up to 7.75 lakhs.
Now there are 1.10 lakh secondary level institutions, one thousand one hundred twenty-eight polytechnics, ten thousand five hundred fifty-five colleges and about two hundred twenty-one universities in our country. University Grants Commission (UGC) was set-up to supervise the universities.
All the states have well known engineering colleges both government as well as private. We have world class engineering colleges in our country like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT’s) at Kanpur, Delhi, Kharagpur, Mumbai, Chennai, and Guwahati.
Industrial Training Institutes exist as well in all the important cities and towns where people can acquire training to work in various industries. Apart from these research bodies like Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, excellent medical colleges, management and other kinds of institutes have also been established.