Some food for thought
"Have thy tools ready. God will find thee work."
—Charles Kingsley (English clergyman, 1819-1875)
Word for the day
Lulu (n)
Any remarkable or outstanding person or thing.
First thought this morning
Last weekend, I had an opportunity to attend a career counseling
event for the students who have just passed their 11th or 12th standard exam. The
objective of the event was to create awareness amongst students and their
parents, about various options available to them for further study and/or
training.
On the face of it the objective appeared quite noble and useful.
However, as it turned out, the real motive was to—
(a) Attract the
"residual" students and their distraught parents and motivate them
for taking admission in private universities/institutions charging astronomical
fee, or take professional "coaching" for another year and reattempt
admission in engineering, medical or other good colleges and institutions; and
(b) Convince the
existing 12th class students that without professional "coaching"
their chances of getting admission in any good course or college/institution
are quite bleak.
The "career counselors" there were young sales
representatives of "coaching centers" or "private
institutions", mostly inexperienced and in search of a regular job.
I got a chance to interact with many parents, out of which the
following three were noteworthy:
(1) A college dropout
owner of a decent sized corrugate box making unit who wanted his son to get
admission in 3yr BBA or 5yr integrated MBA program. He was sure that a
management degree will help his son handle the business better.
(2) A Chartered Accountant
managing his own real estate development business, whose son got 69% in 12th
class and wanted to pursue a degree in management before joining his family
business.
(3) A graduate owner
of a travel agency, whose son unsuccessfully tried for 2yrs to get admission in
a good engineering college.
None of these young aspirants admittedly had any clue about
their family business. Their studies so far were limited to cramming the text
books and passing board school exams.
Would it not better if our schools give option to these aspiring
businessmen an option to learn things that would help them in handling their
family business better, rather than learning subjects, like advanced
mathematics, that are of little use to them and wasting precious time preparing
for examination of subject that they never wanted to learn in the first place.
Chart of the day
Making a puncture proof economy
As per media reports, the French tyremaker Michelin is
introducing a puncture proof vehicle tyre. As per The Economist article (see
here) "punctures can be extremely dangerous, especially if a tyre
blows out at high speed on a motorway. For decades carmakers have sought
various solutions, but with new materials and novel manufacturing methods, a
genuinely puncture-proof car tyre has finally appeared."
When I shared this news item with some of my contacts, the
reactions were mostly predictable. Few admired the innovation. Most expressed
worry about the employment of millions of people engaged in puncture repairing
occupation.
Hypocrisy of the car owners worrying about the puncture
repairing boys apart, this must trigger a larger debate in our country, where
rising unemployment is certainly the single most critical socio-economic issue.
In my view the policy makers must focus, inter alia, on
the following factors while devising economy policies for next 2-3 decades at
least.
(a) As per the latest
global trend, unskilled and semi skilled jobs in manufacturing and services
shall be increasingly handled by technology itself. The new employment
opportunities shall therefore mostly arise in the fields of developing and
managing the technology.
(b) Increased focus
on farm sector infrastructure (power, water, technology and equipments) and
empowerment of farmers shall result in large scale redundancy of underemployed
(or employed in disguise) labor in the farm sector.
(c) The demand for
semi skilled construction and other labor in traditional markets like Middle
East may ease in future as automation of processes picks up.
(d) Sectors like
telecom, modern retail and ecommerce that have added most of the incremental
employment in past 10-15yrs, shall saturate in next decade or so. This will be
the period when maximum number of new workers will join the Indian workforce.
(e) Incrementally,
the number of female workers joining the workforce may increase faster as various
programs aimed at increasing the share of female population in economic
activities begin to yield results.
I fully appreciate that creating productive employment in a
developing country like India, at present juncture, is much more complex
problem then most would like to believe. The policy makers need to focus on
enhancing productivity and global competitiveness, open the economy to global
competition, while
I would suggest the policy makers to consider, amongst other
numerous things, the following three in devising a sustainable economic policy
that aids creation of adequate employment opportunities.
1. Human resources
must be treated as a precious natural resource. Indian government must consider
itself a custodian of precious human resources for the entire humanity.
Adequate effort and resources must be invested in prospecting, development,
maintenance, utilization and preservation of this resource.
It must be appreciated that human resource is to us what crude
oil is to Saudi Arab, Diamonds are to Botswana, Copper is to Congo, Gold is to
South Africa and Alps is to Switzerland.
2. We may emphasize
more on skills that people would usually not like to be replaced by technology.
Instead of wasting resources on developing skills that are more likley to be
replaced by technology in near future, it is better to invest in technology
that eliminates the need for these manual skills. Nursing is one skill that may
remain in demand. Pakora making (cooking) may still be liked with human touch.
Spiritual teachings, storytelling, etc are some other in my mind.
3. Since Industrial
Revolution and World Wars, the global economy has travelled many million miles.
The classical economic development model where unskilled and semi skilled labor
moves to industry from farms as the share of agriculture in incremental GDP
growth falls and then skilled labor moves from industry to services, may not
work in our case.
Despite primarily being an agrarian society, the share of
agriculture in our economy is close to 13%; even though more than 50% of our
workforce is still employed in agriculture and allied activities.
The manufacturing sector accounts for less than 17% of our
annual GDP. All incremental growth in manufacturing shall mostly be capital
intensive and therefore not expected to add proportionately to the additional
number of jobs. The new jobs therefore must come mostly from the services
sector.
Therefore, as a matter of policy, the government must add larger
emphasis on promotion of services rather than industry.
Emphasizing on industries that could be developed as a
partnership between farmers and small entrepreneurs and located at the farm
itself would be an ideal solution for mass job creations. Enhancing purchasing
power through targeted cash subsidies may ensure substantial local market for
the produce of these small industries to make them sustainable.
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