By Dr. Duggaraju Srinivasa Rao
During covid19 pandemic every sector was affected and education was no exception. As class rooms turned virtual and teaching and learning turned to distance mode many people started expressing on the quality of output in the education sector. They feared that we may be producing students who are not well trained and employable because of the changed mode of teaching. There is an implied meaning that pre-pandemic period has produced quite a good skilled and ready to take up the job responsibility. But the reality is different. Even before the pandemic Indian is producing graduates and postgraduates in huge numbers, in all the streams including technology and medicine, in quality but not in quality. Whatever the little talented groups we are trained and produced are, unfortunately, moving out the country to serve the American and European nations. India is hailed as the prime human resources supply country by the multinationals who are making huge profits through the marketing of their products in the developing nations including India. While China, our immediate competitor, could provide jobs whether skilled or unskilled with in that country in huge numbers through the development of extensive manufacturing hubs we in India just coined ‘Atmanirbhara Bharat’ slogan and is yet to give shape to that. For achieving the targets which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is setting for the platinum jubilee year of our independence is our human capital is properly tuned is the question.
It is in this context a four decade old cartoon of R.K. Laxman comes to my mind. In that cartoon a youth was shown carrying a head load of earthen material at a civil project site and his supervisor tried to give him a suggestion the caption read “don’t give me any instruction I my self is engineering graduate”. That was the time when civil engineering graduates were found to be underselling themselves as there was no jobs available. After four decades and so many reforms there seems to be not much of change in the qualification of the youth and the jobs they are aspiring to settle.
The recent report from Bihar is shocking where engineering, science and management graduates formed the bulk of applicants for the Grade IV posts at that state secretariat. All of them may not be from Bihar as considerable number of candidates are from the neighbouring states like Jarkhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal suggesting situation is no better in other states regarding the job opportunities.
One wonders why a MBA graduate would like to stand in queue for the post of a peon or attender where the required qualification is school final or plus 2. Is Indian states are not having jobs for general graduates? Are we producing more graduates than the required or the graduates we are producing is not worthy for higher jobs? It is quite fashionable in Indian circles to blame the British and Macaulay, who introduced their education pattern as the intention of the colonial power was to generate young people with English and Mathematics suited for the clerical jobs to run the their administration. That criticism may be valid till we got the independence. Now after over seven decades of independence and extending the education to all sections of the society through a multitude of universities in India is not even producing good graduates worthy to be clerks in the offices and that is the irony.
There are other reports where the private companies complaining lack of suitable candidates with the kind of skill required for the jobs available with them. Nearly 60% of the engineering Indian graduates are not employable says the reports. The situation in India is such those skilled or brainy are quickly moving out of the country for higher education. The middle class, who took advantage of the economic reforms got their kith educated in good institutions and encouraged them to move to US or other European countries for bettering their life economically. That those parents who sent their children abroad and encouraged them to settle are now suffering from loneliness with none to attend on them in the old age is different sociological issue altogether.
Coming to the policy on education India may have erred in preferring mass education at the expense of quality education. Now we see a society where we failed not only to achieve social justice and also failed to retain the meritorious students in the country to be part of the nation building. Our highly acclaimed IITs, since inception, became centers of the supply of talented, well trained young brains for serving the USA companies to make money. Our governments spend thousands of crores of public money on IITs and other reputed institutions to produce meritorious students but there are no schemes with the governments to accommodate them in jobs to utilize their services. The same is the case with other stream like Medicine, Agriculture. All these technical and specialized subject holders are turning out be ordinary job hunters along with poor arts and commerce graduates.
In the recently held initiation ceremony of the 56-59th training batch of Deputy Superintend of Police (DSP) held at state police academy at Rajgir, Bihar out of the 119 trainees good number of them were found out be from medical and engineering streams. It is surprising 4 of the trainees are holding Ph.Ds in some subjects. We pride in young India and proclaim the advantage of youth which no other country in the world can boast. But we are not properly channelizing the energy of youth by giving them gainful employment. By doing so India will end up as the nation which withered the natural advantage. Across the globe the same academic model is followed but the foreign universities which retain the world top rankings are the ones which give preference for grinding the students with academic rigor, exposure to new ideas and recognition for merit. In contrast we have more universities where students agitate for non-academic issues encouraged by the political parties. It is more of political atmosphere in the campus and less of academics. There is urgent need for the students to shift focus on to the academics and for the governments to make policies that not only stop brain drain but get some brain gain from abroad.
(Author is retired professor and occasional contributor for dailies and magazines on politics and environmental issues. The views expressed are personal opinion of the author. He can be reached at duggarajusrinivasarao@gmail.com)
