India’s key to future success — its youth — is a ticking time bomb. It is a growing mass of largely undernourished, undereducated, unemployable young people who aspire for a better life but don’t have the means to get there. Why? Because they aren’t qualified for the job market, and even if they are, jobs don’t exist. The above is the central thesis of a must-read Tehelka essay by Avalok Langer that demolishes the easy comfort of Indias so-called youth dividend. Where for decades, we have worried about illiteracy, we now have to wrestle with a new crisis in education: A generation of functionally uneducated Indians being churned out of a fourth-rate education system. They are functionally uneducated in a variety of ways. Many in government and mushrooming un-certified private schools are filled with kids who can barely read or write, schooled by indifferent or unqualified teachers. The RTE rules that make it impossible to fail a child adds to the likelihood of millions of children who will fritter away their childhood, and in the case of private schools, their parents hard-earned money. All aspiration, no vocation Today in India there are supposedly three safe paths to professional success: engineering, management and medicine. This thesis is unquestioningly embraced by all aspiring parents, from shopkeepers to maids to urban professionals. These are also most expensive and fiercely competitive fields of specialisation and yet increasingly lead to an employment dead-end. As Lanker notes: Some 200 management schools have shut down in the past few years due to poor placement. Of the 1.5 million engineering students in India, over 70 percent are unemployed. The IT sector has also suffered, with 75 percent of graduates going unemployed. So what is to become of the lower middle class kids who are in engineering and management tracks who went to Kannada-medium schools like Sharana? Or the son a janitor who is likely to end up jobless after his parents pay through their nose for a private school, and perhaps a B.Com degree after? There are plenty of jobs out there, but they have not been trained for them. This is partly the fault of a blinkered Indian mindset. As Surjit Bhalla, chairman of Oxus Investments, tells Lanker “People want to do computer engineering and not textile engineering. That is not going to work in India because that field is already saturated. We need to look at things that can create employment.” This is also the reasoning for the DU 4-year degree which supposedly offers application courses closely tailored to the needs of India Inc. But heres the catch: Students dont specialise until the third year. On the other hand, they can drop out after two years of general education -- foundational courses in everything from Computer Science to Geography -- with a liberal arts diploma that will qualify its holder (at best) for a primary school teaching job. In contrast, the community college model puts the cart where it belongs -- behind the horse. Students can earn a two-year specialised diploma, closely tailored to industry needs, and still retain the option of going on to a four-year degree. DU, for instance, could set up a parallel network of community colleges and offer third year seats to the highest achievers. But those who prefer to opt for a two-year diploma will be armed with a degree that ensures a decent job -- unlike the 30-40 percent who presently just drop out. Thinking small The national discourse of aspiration is driven entirely by the IIM/IIT fantasy. All the messages we receive insist that all of us can and should devote our lives racing up the engineering/management track. All this think big mumbo-jumbo has obscured the real opportunities for mobility at hand. Construction and manufacturing are just some of the large-scale sectors where there is an alarming shortage in skilled labour. Construction companies, for example, were forced to import labour from China to complete the planned Commonwealth Games projects. As an Economic Times op-ed notes, Already, wages for vocationally-trained workers have risen faster in some moderately skill-intensive sectors, such as construction, than for workers without training. Increasing use of capital - through automation and IT - and shifts in employment towards knowledge-intensive jobs will drive higher skill demand than India is equipped to supply.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 11:15:45 +0000
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