Many policy makers advocate increasing the quality of teaching, because it would have far reaching impact on professional development of students and thereby the national development. According to David Keagakwa (2011), Teachers are undoubtedly among the most significant contributors to education for national development in any self respecting democracy.
In view of this, the main objective of this paper is to give a micro view on status of teaching (professional development) and national development with a special reference to India. India is one of the poorest countries in the world. Even today 30 percent of its people are illiterates. So the biggest aim of the country is to ensure elementary education to its entire people. Education is one core element of human development which in turn leads to the growth of the country. By keeping this in mind, teachers should mould the character and the skill of the students from the elementary level of formal education itself. It is very difficult to achieve since India is a poor country.
According to J.B.G. Thilak (2001) A few countries or states could succeed in providing universal elementary education by ignoring higher education, giving an impression to the educational planners that universalisation of elementary education is possible only if one ignores higher education. The experience of Kerala also tends to show the same. But such a dichotomous approach to education, of placing one sector of education against another may not lead to proper development of education and the societies.
In order to avoid this dichotomy, I think teachers can play a big role. In many countries, for example United States of America, students are big donors of the development universities in terms of providing financial supports. This is not happening in India. This is because students are not getting such an orientation from the educational institutions. Therefore teachers should take this responsibility of conveying students the message of contributing to the institutions after getting a job. It should be a part of teacher- student and student-institution relationship.