Thought for the day
” Some single mind must be master,
else there will be no agreement in anything."
-
Abraham Lincoln (American, 1809-1865)
Word for the day
Qualm (n)
An uneasy feeling or pang of conscience as to conduct;
compunction
(Source:
Dictionary.com)
Teaser for the day
What is more important (a) Planning Commission or (b)
Commissioning the plans?
"Vote" over "voter" - II
“Although poverty and inequality play a powerful role in
shaping our children’s educational opportunities, inequality is not inevitable,
and poverty is not destiny,” said Sean Reardon, a professor of education who
helped to establish the workshop on Poverty, Inequality and Education at
Stanford University to examine the challenges to closing the growing
opportunity gap in USA.
While it is popular to examine the state of economy on usual
macro parameters like price conditions, growth rate, employment level, trade
balance, business confidence, consumer confidence, savings, investments, and
productivity etc., in my view the true scale and primary lead indicator of the
economic conditions is the level of human development. Especially in a people
centric (against resource centric) economy like India, the importance of human
stock can hardly be overstated.
I therefore believe that complete failure in developing a strong
education, skilling and training system aimed at equalizing the society is a
one of the weakest link.
It is widely acknowledged that the extant education system is
grossly inadequate. The poor standard of education and educators in a large
majority of public educational institutes is not only perpetuating the
socio-economic inequalities in the country, it is also proving to be a serious
challenge to (a) economic growth in terms of shortage of skilled workforce; (b)
fiscal consolidation by increasing the dependency ratio of people on the
government; and (c) internal security by forcing youth to undertake unlawful
and disruptive activities.
A large majority of Indian workers, artisans and laborers
acquire their occupation skills and training on the job. Their exploitation
aside, the skills they acquire are mostly of poor quality. By the time they
realize or try to become independent of their masters, they are already casted
in a rigid mold. They are usually their past prime learning age and have no
option to chose a different occupation.
With this state of populace, the dream of upgrading 700mn
Indians from poverty to middle class will remain only that a dream. The fabled
India story that is quintessentially built on the premise of a strong middle
class who will earn, consume, save, invest.
The government and the industry needs to understand that a
uniform, good quality education system and skilling and training program should
be much higher priority than building airports and smart cities. Appointing
almost uneducated graduates as teachers to win their votes is sufficient.
CAG also needs to examine whether the government has optimally
used the 3% education surcharge collected from all taxpayers, or an alternative
mechanism is needed to administer this huge corpus.
Those who are regular visitors to Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine
(J&K) from pre Shrine Board days would understand better what I am
suggesting here....to continue tomorrow
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