Saturday, June 4, 2016

Education and Employability

Education and Employability

Lord William Bentinck and Lord Macaulay introduced western concept based Education System in India and made the sector open for all. However, at the end of British Rule in 1947, the literacy rate was only 12%. India was living in villages and was dependent on Agriculture and allied activities along with traditional trades of cottage and rural industries. Children were following the family professions and were learning from parents. Population was under control through epidemics and wars. People were complacent and accepted the life whatever they had as the will of God. As feeding of the stomach was the main objective, and due to division of population into castes and classes, there was no fire to change the quality of life through different professions. There was no fire for education. But the Governments post Independence, have emphasised more on education as a mean to improve the quality of human resources, to enhance their capacity to work and to meet with the demand of work force in commerce and industries. Urbanisation and Industrialisation have been accepted as the major pathways of growth and development.

As per 2011 census, our literacy rate of the Country is 74.04%. The youth (15-24) literacy rate (2015) is 90%. 25% of India's population go to educational institutes everyday. Approximately 5 million teachers are teaching to 315 million students. 3.8% of GDP is the expenditure of education by the governments. Approximately more than 0.5 million ₹ are spent on education every year. But what is the output? More than half of the students are drop out before 10th. Hardly 10% (3million) of the total lot cross the graduation line. Of which 37% are in Arts, 18% in Commerce & Mgt, 18% in Science, 16% in Engineering & Technology, 10% in medical/paramedics and other streams. And the outcomes are: 80% of engineering and 95 % of other streams (excluding medical-paramedics) students are unemployable.

The mean education level of the Country is below 5 Std. Majority of literates are non metric, mostly are working as the labour force of the country. The new generation neither carry skill of their  family profession nor have skills required in the market. They may be good in using mobile, chewing pan-masala-gutaka, but their employability is the biggest question mark in front of the policy planners of the Country. Majority of the population still believes in superstitions and are dependent on luck than on their action. It is the family net culture of the people working in trade, industries and commerce; accommodating their youths, otherwise, they are the same like other unemployable lots.

What are the goals and objectives of our educational system? Is it only literacy of reading writing skills or to build employable human resource?

Are we working on right goals and objectives?

The capacity of raising resources of the governments have been enhanced and simultaneously their spending on educational infrastructure has gone up. Are we simply spending resources on building educational infrastructure, creating jobs for the teachers, and giving place to the youths (25% of the population) to spend 5-15 years of their life in educational institutes before they start their marriage life of population productivity?

Indian Traditional trades are disappearing. It's a IT and machine age, where the youths prefer soft skill jobs with better work environment. Are we making the generation softer? The questions about modern civilisation and mechanisation raised by Gandhiji in his book Hind Swaraj (1909) are still relevant. Unless we build the system of learning and working (Buniyadi Siksha) together, the quality of life of all our people will not go up. The reasons for poverty of human life are the same as they were. The success of 10% human resource is not the success of the remaining 90% human resource of the country. Like the farmer who takes care of his land from the beginning to the end of each crop season, we shall think to cultivate our human crop with better productivity to ensure better tomorrow for India.

HRD must be on mission mode.

Punamchand
4 June 2016

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