Education is said to be an answer for all social evils and I wonder how? The fundamental reason why one seeks education is to get employment and enhanced standard of living. As against this, education is only creating a frustrated India. Traditionally, due to limited numbers only the meritorious could enroll for higher education and eventually got jobs. The rest of them settled for vocations that best suited them and thus the country was endowed with both types of labor, white and blue collared. The present day pseudo education has changed the entire landscape of the labor market. Today, by making education reachable to all and sundry, the country is producing far more engineers, doctors and other graduates than that can be employed gainfully and privatized education has miserably lowered the standards making them disguised educated who are worthless to say the least.
The impact of this has been profound on the rural populace. With monsoons being erratic, thanks to climate change, a consequence of global warming, coupled with poor irrigation system even after 6 decades of planed economy, thanks to swindling of money meant for irrigation by vested interests, the rural community is disengaging from their primary occupation and want their children to get educated and seek employment in the cities. As a result, they sell everything in their possession, primarily land and cattle, to educate their children with a hope that they will get employment and take care of the family, though the reality is, such children barring exceptions, are just not employable in the private sector. That leaves them with the only choice of somehow getting into a government job and the supply-demand disparity has created enormous opportunity for corruption. Virtually every post is sold for a price and there is an informal auction that takes place. The ones who can afford get in and the others are left in the lurch. There are other indirect forms of corruption too. Every time there is a government examination, the trains overflow and the ticket collectors do brisk business at the cost of reserved passengers and even the AC coaches are not spared. Effectively, the family looses their priced possession in return for a pseudo educated child/children who can’t get employment and are not willing to do small jobs. While wealth has changed hands leaving the poor poorer, it has robbed the youth’s willingness of doing vocational jobs.
Here is some revealing statistics that appeared in the local news paper. Of the 14000 students admitted in engineering colleges affiliated to Nagpur University in 2009-10 only 4366 students took final year examination of which 3956 passed and shamelessly the university is boasting of 90% results. The reality is that almost 10,000 students fell by the wayside after spending a lot of money. The infrastructure of some of the engineering colleges are so pathetic that the High Court had to order a ban on them. One such institution belongs to former AICC General Secretary and minister in the Maharashtra government.
These colleges attract rural students with 40-45% in standard XII and provide no teachers and conduct no classes. These institutions also share laboratory facilities with other institutions to optimize cost. Can such students studying in such third rate institutions can ever become employable engineers? As a result, on the one hand we get to see thousands of engineers, doctors and other graduates sitting at home waiting for a miracle to happen and on the other hand there are large number of frustrated youth floating around directionless. As a consequence society struggles to get blue colored labor even for day to day maintenance work.
I wonder how education has contributed to this country, except for developing a false pride with eventual frustration in the youth and creating wealth for the rich and the corrupt. Though late, thankfully this realization is gaining ground and hence these so called institutions of higher education are forced to shut shop.
Hopefully, this will correct the labor market situation in the next few decades at least!!!!
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