Education and the System

Over the last few years it has been fashionable in India to say that the country is just not providing enough human capital to sustain its fairy tale growth story. In the corporate sector too, almost anyone that I get into a discussion with, with regards to human resources, talk about the dearth of employable talent. Almost anyone and their dog, expects this to the a problem that needs to be sorted out by the government, and has for reasons best known to them, left the very important task of talents development to the government of the day.. To leaders of corporations in India, I say I am absolutely hyper stimulated by the confidence that you have in government, a government which by policy has allocated low resources to talent development than any other nation of the same stature.. To those in the public sector, I bow to your acceptance of the fact, that the government in all its flawed temper possibly always knows the best.

Let us look at facts as they are, in India in terms of education , employment and economic growth, the statistics are mind numbing. It will take more than an Einstein to make sense of the madness that the numbers point to. The growth that India has seen over the last two decades, unlike most other Asian economies, has been in the white collar sector. Unlike China, Vietnam, Malaysia or Thailand, where growth has been driven by the manufacturing sector, in India, growth has been driven by the Information Technology industries, or to be more precise by firms in the business process outsourcing space, a space that has by definition been driven by white-collar employees. In the inside pages you will find insights and explanations into the many reasons that the Indian economy shows up. It will however be difficult to find reason or even a rhyme to the apathy that the Indian Government in singular and Indians as a whole have treated the education sector with. We have hardly invested in developing assets that will develop our future assets and yet we expect employable and productive human capital to appear at our respective doorsteps like ‘manna from heaven‘.

It is only recently that the Ministry of Human Resources has deemed it important enough to be aired in national television that the country faces an alarming dearth of qualified teachers and mentors. We also keep hearing about stories about people who are well educated and are yet unemployed. It is a strange puzzle in a growth economy, to have a dearth of talent and yet have educated unemployed in numbers that boggles the mind. In this edition of The Human Factor we try to analyze and against insurmountable odds try to find the reasons to the anomaly that the Indian learning and teaching system is.

In this issue we have strived hard to get you perspectives from across the globe. Teachers who have taught in India and now are teaching in a system that is new. Teachers who keep trying to better the system from inside. And teachers who, while having an Indian perspective, have spent most of their educational career’s abroad. This was an issue close to heart, I have two school going children, and as always I look forward toward your comments and analyses. Happy Reading.