"No one has a right to consume happiness without producing
it."
—Helen Keller (American,
1880-1968)
Word for the day
Unalienable (adj)
Not transferable to another
or not capable of being taken away or denied; inalienable
Malice towards none
What does BJP gains in real
terms from pushing three nominees in Puducherry assembly?
First random thought this morning
All confrontations are not bad;
nor all confrontationist. As all conformists are not good.
It depends on the purpose for which
someone is confronting an establishment, a tradition, a practice or a system.
Confrontations to break the
status quo for betterment of all is desirable and should be welcomed.
Confrontation to put someone down, or promote someone, without changing anything
in real term, is unacceptable.
Back to school - 1
Earlier this week I had written (see here) about the need for a paradigm shift in the
education system in the country. As promised, I would like to share my thoughts
on this in some detail.
Billions of reams have been
written about the deficiencies in the education system of the country. Many
reports have highlighted how the poor standard of education is constricting the
growth potential of the country. Without getting into much details, I would
like the readers to consider the following brief points:
(a) Most business leaders, both from manufacturing and service
industries, have frequently expressed grave concerns about the employability of
the engineering and management graduates.
(b) A host of government and private studies have shown that the level
of average students at middle school level in most populous states like UP and
Bihar is unacceptable. In many cases class 6 students failed to answer 2nd
standard questions.
(c) The business of private coaching is growing exponentially, almost
to the level of nuisance. In middle and lower middle class families, the
tuition fee expense competes with kitchen expense.
The city of Kota is glaring
example. The city’s economy, that once depended on mining, textile, cement,
chemical and agriculture and related industries, is now centered around myriad
of “coaching centers”. Numerous aspiring engineers and doctors weather extreme
heat and cold conditions to pursue their dreams. My multiple interactions with
students and coaches indicate that most aspirants are victims of their parents’
dream and a majority of them are likely to grow into “frustrated useless
unproductive reluctant workers”. Not a great commentary, certainly.
The number of student suicide
cases in Kota and elsewhere have risen almost at par with farmers' suicide
cases.
(e) After 70yrs of independence we are still struggling to formulate
an integrated education policy.
(f) I interacted with some senior officials of Delhi government and
central education departments. None of them makes a difference between
"education" and "learning". Most of them seen incarcerated
in colonial mindset. They felt that ideally the objective of formal education
should be to make people "employable". Their regret was that the
current system of education is not sufficient to even achieve this objective.
I have been highlighting that the
vast reservoir of youth energy on which Indian economy is sitting presently,
could potentially explode if not channelized appropriately. It is therefore
extremely critical to evolve an integrated youth policy that include mission
scale programs to educate and skill the youth, inculcate enterprise skills in
them from early stages, enable them to engage in productive self employment,
deal empathetically with their concerns, anguish, frustration and
disillusionment.
India has so far issued three editions of national
youth policy. The first edition was a brief 5 page vision paper which
recognized the importance of youth but did not provide any conceptual framework
for the growth and development of this one third segment of the population.
The second edition was issued in 2003 and contained a detailed
framework for the implementation. It recognized that “the question of employment
is, at present, of very serious concern for the Indian youth and that several
social issues arise out of widespread unemployment and under-employment of the
youth”. The policy emphasized that “critical issues in this area include a
mis-match between skills-requirement and employment opportunities, low
technology levels, low wages and low productivity, occupational shifts in
employment, under-employment owing to seasonal factors, excess labor supply in
relation to demand, migration of the labor force from the rural to urban areas
and limited participation of women in the work force, especially in the
organized sector”. Financial inclusion was included as one of the objective for
the first time.
The policy was supposed to be
implemented forthwith and reviewed after every five year. The change in
government in 2004 however meant that it was hardly implemented.
The extant government has issued
a draft policy in 2012 with the goal of
“empowering the youth of the nation by bringing holistic development”. The
objective, inter alia, include “Through a sustained programme of education and
training and appropriate support services, help young people become
economically self-reliant and productive units of the country, either by taking
up employment or by setting up their own business enterprises.”
The policy has yet not been
adopted.
...to continue tomorrow
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