With 800 Million persons below 35 years of age, the Indian work force is considered a demographic dividend. However, recent reports about un-employability of Indian youth have put a question mark on the real value of this dividend. In November 2016, a report by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) on higher education stated that almost 93% of graduates from the Master in Business Administration (MBA) and 80% from the engineering stream are not employable. These facts were also echoed by Aspiring Minds, an employability evaluation and certification company, in its national employability report, which stated that 80% of engineers remained unemployable in the software sector.
The reasons for this dismal situation are not far to seek. Of late, getting a degree in India, albeit with some notable exceptions, has become synonymous to purchasing off-the-shelf merchandise. With money, obtaining any degree in the country is possible. Quite of few of these institutions do not even require regular teaching classes. Education too has piggy-backed itself on the online bandwagon. Increasing population has led to increasing demand for colleges. To meet the demand, colleges and universities have mushroomed in the country. People from all walks of life have entered the education business. Real estate tycoons, detergent manufactures, politicos and even sweet shop owners have set up universities and degree colleges.
As education turned into a business and barriers of entry got measured only by financial ability rather than intellectual capability, the results were obvious. Good initiatives, like autonomy to colleges, also got misused. More courses were designed to accommodate larger numbers, regardless of the fact that these courses may be of no use for the future career of students.
Contrast this with the situation elsewhere and we see stark differences. In China, if one wants to join a graduate degree course, there is a national college entrance examination (NCEE). Only those who qualify can move ahead to get a degree. Others, who cannot qualify, join vocational courses. Smaller countries like South Korea too have a similar system, where each person who wants to join a graduate course takes a college scholastic ability test. The results of such early screening are obviously reflecting on the financial growth of these countries.
Against this backdrop, if the employability index in India has to improve, the current scenario of providing degrees to anyone who can afford it, barring a few exceptions, has to change. A common graduate eligibility examination needs to be made mandatory for all aspiring students to achieve a graduate degree, be it online or offline. Only those who clear this common graduate eligibility examination for graduate enrollment can take further examinations for entrance to engineering, commerce, medical or other professions. All others who are not successful could take up vocational courses from various Industrial Training Institutes (ITI’s) and National Skill Development centres in the country.
Alongside screening for degree aspirants, institutions too, autonomous or otherwise, should have standardised courses, which reflect future skill requirements rather than help the finances of promoters. The clamour for autonomy as far as administration is concerned is fine, but the coursework builds the academic capital of the country and hence needs to be closely monitored. The formation of new institutions too should be mapped according to future workforce requirements rather than on grounds of financial avarice.
Our country’s potential has never been in doubt. With an estimated work force of 250 million in 2030, expected to take India to the position of the third largest economy in the world, changes in the current educational system need serious thought. Else this promise of demographic dividend may remain a mirage.
(Sanjay Pandey, an IPS officer, is the Deputy Commandant of Home Guards and deputy director of Civil Defence in Maharashtra. He holds a Masters' Degree in Public Administration from Harvard University, US and is a B Tech in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Views expressed in this article are personal.)
By the way, reservation has been going on for thousands of years, in yesteryears it was enforced by not rule of law, but by pouring molten lead into the ears of the hapless
Vote Banks are made from quantity not quality.
Naturally, an IPS Officer would have to tip toe around the elephant in the room which is "reservations" and the policy of making merit, competence and integrity subservient to the dregs of the ruling PANGOLIN* dispensation:
It was the season in March. My servants were begging for money to pay their children's school fees. It costs Rs. 18,000 per child in a Government School. This is what the parents earn in three months or more! (If they convert to Constitutionally protected and prospered Christianity, they would get better quality education, free for their children)
My Maternal Grand Father (K. Srinivasan) went to a Government School (Fort High School) Bangalore. Like all Government Schools in Maharaja's Mysore, it was free. He topped the ICS examination. (He opted instead for the Mysore Civil Service when his Highness came on horseback to request my Great Grand Father "Controller" Subba Raya Aiyer, who had been sent by Travancore for his integrity and competence to sort out the Mysore Treasury which had been in a mess). My Paternal Grand Father (B. S. Ramaswamy Aiyar) studied free at a Veda Pathashala in Bethelegundu (on the Highlands near Madurai). He topped the Madras Matriculation and the Jesuit Principal of St Joseph's College Tirchinopoly begged his father to send him to study free, and recommended him to Her Majesty's Secretary of State in London for appointment to the Indian Service of Engineers. His first salary of eight gold sovereigns exceeded the combined fortune of his native village. He could be and was generous to a large number of ungrateful, vicious, persons belonging to communities currently Constitutionally certified to be congenitally backward.
From a Great Power in 1947, India has been reduced to 135 out of 172 countries in Human and Social Development and 143 out of 172 countries in Internal Peace and Stability by 2016 (UNDP 2015). It is home to 30% of the World’s poor (World Bank 2016). There were more Bomb Blasts in India in 2016 than any other country. Twice as many as Iraq which came in a proud second.
This is the result of a vicious Constitution and polity that has waged relentless war on integrity, merit and competence. Sir. M. Vishweshwaraya, who raised the Mysore war cry of “Industrialize or Perish†in 1912 has been proved more than right on his resignation letter in 1918 by the villainous, sadistic, anti National PANGOLIN* rulers of the Republic of India. The idea of reservations was implemented by the British since 1921 as part of a comprehensive "Divide to rule" Policy. Ambedkar enlarged it to loot the resources of the Nation and apply them to exclusive benefit of his own community. Nehru blessed it just as he did so many other divisive policies such as partition because it helped him to capture and retain power to abuse and misuse as per his perversions. No ideal state can be achieved when founded on trash. Rose trees do not bloom from Parthanium roots.
Mysore is a classic example of what can happen when founded on ideals and what happens when those same ideals are destroyed. Mysore had universal primary and secondary education with health care and nutrition and NO reservations. Gandhi called it "Rama Rajya" though His Highness Krishna Raja Wadeyar preferred to call it "Camelot". When the British pushed "reservations" as part o their divide and rule policy into Mysore through the Maharaja, the Diwan, Sir M. Vishweshwaraya who has done more for ALL the people of Mysore than any man save Sir Mark Cubbon, resigned. The words in his resignation letter were as prophetic in its way as Sir Winston's prognosis for India. "Only the very best competence and integrity can help raise the wretched of the earth to the status of human beings. There is no short cut. You cannot elevate the wretched and expect them to do the work that the most talented and competent find arduous" Today Mysore has been more thoroughly trashed than any other state of the Indian Union because there was so much more to trash. India is a Constitutional Hypocracy, With inequality under law and exceptions to the rule of law, it is neither secular nor a democracy.
*Note: PANGOLIN: An enemy of India who believes in inequality under law, exceptions to the rule of law and persecution of some for the benefit of others. At present, the sole purpose of the Indian Republic, Constitutional or otherwise, is to pamper and provide for certain constitutionally preferred sections of society who the British found useful to hold and exploit India at the cost of those who the British hated and persecuted. The Pangolin is a creature that is unique to India and feeds on ants that are known in nature to be industrious and hard working if not quite as fruitful as bees who flee to better climes. (PANGOLIN is an acronym for the Periyar-Ambedkar-Nehru-Gandhi-Other (alien) Religions-Communist Consensus that usurped the British Mantle and has worn it with elan to loot, plunder, and rape India since 1921 and re write History and laws to their exclusive benefit since 1947)