INDIA 2020 & EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
DREAM vs. REALITY
INDIA 2020, a book by our honorable ex-president Dr. A.P.J.Kalam made a lot of waves when came in market. He was among few of them who felt that India can become superpower by next two decade if the same growth rate continues, and of course the way he explained this in his book left no doubt in anyone’s mind that if it is not possible. After all we got everything starting from low cost manpower to resources to our so world famous intelligent young minds (engineers specially!).
Now, I would like to come to the last point of the first paragraph and that is young intelligent minds. As a part of that same community of young minds, I have some concerns with that. Is this so called back up with the help of which we are looking forward to make this country a super power really that strong which can make this dream come true? What I feel is that with present day educational system, NO!!!
Most of you must be wondering why I am saying so, when our young generation is doing great in their respective jobs and work, growth rate of India is better than China(around 9%) and everything seems well on course. Fine, I will present some facts and conditions on the basis of which I am denying to accept this so called image of growing India.
As a fresh engineering graduate, I would like to start this discussion from the bench of professional students. Just few years back before the ghost of IT bombed the market, I remember there used to be just few of the engineering branch and most of them were of core engineering subjects. The young engineers were a much respected community and they were supposed to work in their respective field of engineering. In the society they were seen with lot of anticipation and expectation and every second family having a daughter in their family used to dream them to be there son-in-law (although it was really funny sometimes). If we go back to some more years we will find that a similar status was availed by even science graduates (before engineering started to rule!). Unfortunately arts never remained a subject of much anticipation and always got a status of subject to be studied by comparatively weaker students or who were kind of out of society person (Tragic, that’s all I can say!). This was the time of 1980s when money was not everything and status and respect was something that was of top priorities of the society, but somewhere time was changing rapidly and the ‘money matters’ was a new IN thing. When IT started to make it big in the market and started giving job to every unemployed student, it became a big favorite to everyone. Not only because it was coming as the solution of the big time problem of India, Unemployment but also because salary packages it came with were too attractive. And in a few span of time India became the favorite place for outsourcing in the world and getting into an IT job became a kind of dream to every student (and parent’s too, damn!).
Well, to some extent this should not be a point to worry, after all it was the boom in the IT that gave India it’s long time due place during 80s in the world platform. But what was the silent backfire is that in the blind race of this so called IT, everyone got so busy that everyone forgot that apart IT there are some other important factors and sectors too that need to be looked very seriously and producing and preparing a strong bench of science and engineering graduates is one of them. Now, my question is if 70% of engineers produced today are going to join IT, no matter what branch did they study, 20% moves to abroad for better higher education then how can we be assure that with having that 10% of total young mind India is going to be the superpower within next decade. Recently one report came in the newspaper that said that average expense over a student by our most prestigious institute is around 2.5-3 Lakh per annum. Well, the report was over another issue but what it shows that an institute like IIT spends lakhs of money on a student during those four years, teachers and professors put all their hard work to prepare best of them, students too keep on doing their homework, assignments, project etc. and after four year of all these goes into vain when instead of making any use of it by joining any company of their core they prefer some IT company or rather go to complete their MBA because it will fetch them even higher salary, may be highest of available. What is the use of all those efforts then in preparing an engineer? Today we see a lot of reports showing engineers should be barred from attending commission exams, there should be higher cut-offs for them in management admissions etc. and of course this shows the negative impact and insecurity it’s planting in other young minds who couldn’t make it to get an engineering degree.
And this is not it, today let me tell that getting an engineering degree is easier then getting a degree in arts!!! And more than 80% of so called produced engineers today know nothing but how to mug a many years old notes of the same professor. Today in India the number of engineers produced by private colleges and universities are almost double of that of government institutions and for a matter of fact if we filter few of these private institutions as exception we will get a bunch of institutions from where getting a degree of engineering is even easier than buying some vegetables. All you need to have is money; the other entire thing is so easy starting from getting admitted through donation to getting results and getting placed too. (Damn!). Don’t be surprised as being one of student of such a university I am very much aware of this fact and as we got our friends all over the country enrolled in various such institutions, it’s not that hard to know about situation everywhere. Students can pass the exams by just mugging a limited number of question-answers. There is no need for anyone there to do any kind of research work to prepare an assignment; all they need to do is copy-paste. And another shocking fact is that if some student tries to do anything other than this, he gets a fail in that subject. If you are feeling I am writing something craps just go and ask any student from any of engineering college, private or government, it is same situation everywhere. There was a common one-liner among the students around few years back that “you throw a stone in air, and the guy it strikes would be an unemployed arts student” even now this one liner is as popular as then but only difference is that engineering has taken the place of arts in that (all thanks to our great system and these mushroomed private institutions). But it is not that these private institutes have not given any good student, the problem is the kind of confusion this image creates. When a student gets admitted in any of such university, he sees two options either he can continue that same time pass with study as he was doing before (as that’s been the main reason why he is there) or he does some hard work now to correct his earlier mistake. Keep in mind that in both the option he is being assured that he will get placed any how after four years! So let’s suppose he chooses to do hard work, he gets very good result, also do some interesting project on his own and comes out as the best student of the university. Everything so perfect till then, quite filmy but then he gets to see the reality that all his hard work is now of no use as everyone considers him same as the guy having all those back papers and all of them gets placement in some IT company finally or gets to do something else rather than his basic talent, apart from exceptions. Few months before our honorable minster Mr. Kapil Sibbal started some legal action after watching some report of donation in some colleges of south India to merge all these private institutions to nearby govt. university. I remember this made a lot of reports on front page for few days and what happened finally is that case went to court and now everything remains the same; even news papers stopped publishing any report on the issue.
This is not only the case of just engineering; things are almost similar in every sector, starting from science to any other professional course, better to say even worse for science graduates then engineering one, as they are really running out of option. I really wonder if this remains the situation, how we will be able to become superpower. Because a small single flaw In the chain makes whole chain useless and with this much big flaw in the system, things doesn’t seem falling in right place. The kind of educational system we have vaulted in the nation is a total theoretical one rather than being practical that could help the students to grow and do something innovative on their own. Finally if we really want to fulfill the dream of becoming superpower, our educational system need to be overhauled and we need to think very carefully about how we want to proceed and what we want to produce, just a robot or an innovative mind?
To be continued…
DATE: - 27/01/2011
BY: - PRAVEEN PARASAR
