NEW DELHI, AUGUST 5 Father of the massive PCO network Sam Pitroda said today that it was time India revolutionised its university education and e-governance set-up.

Delivering the fourth annual Darbari Seth Memorial Lecture of The Energy Research Institute (TERI), Pitroda said, access to knowledge — through broadband, internet portals and a revamp of education — are necessary before India can face globalisation.

‘‘India needs portals on energy, environment, aviation, economy and on the hundreds of other issues that people, rich or poor, need to know about,’’ said Pitroda, a day after he briefed the Prime Minister on how the Knowledge Commission he heads will ‘‘shake up’’ the system.

Pitroda said portals must be one-stop shops for all information, and not extensions of ‘‘The Raj philosophy’’ of creating barriers between rulers and people. On the Internet, he said IIMs and IITs have created ‘‘peaks’’ in India’s performance chart, that new technologies can level.

‘‘It is not good enough to have peaks like in the IITs and IIMs in a country where less than 6 per cent of people go to college. There is a need to modernise education delivery, bring the politics out of universities, train teachers better, create more universities, have more PhD holders, and encourage people to be more than just doctors or engineers. Only then will the performance average of the country go up,’’ Pitroda said.

‘‘We have to think about how the best minds all over the world have been focussing on solving the West’s problems. As a result, the problems of the poor do not get enough attention from the best minds. Even the IIM and IIT graduates prefer to go to the United States!’’ he said.

For any of Sam’s goals to come through, he said the mindset will need to change. The to-market strategies will have to be altered to do well at more than services.

‘‘Till date, I have seen very little product development in India. You need stronger intellectual property rights, and a different strategy to take a product to global standards. That is why most innovations the world sees have come from the United Staes: The transistor, laser, computer or Windows software.’’

Sam, who is credited with the plans that brought about a PCO revolution in the country in the 1990s, said Indians need to lose their fear of failure to build an ‘‘open, accessible’’ system.