Monday, November 26, 2007

The Human Capital through education

Ten years down the line, India can be a different if not a happy or sad story. We may take a cue from Das Kapital when we research more about the human capital which is grossly deficient in India at the expense of a few good trainers. Analyze this. The government of India still fails to recognize the education sector as an industry. Even the best managed private training institutions shy away from being called a corporate. The working in quite a few is almost similar, albeit with a difference in comparative paypackets. The corporate chauvinists also label these as pesudo-corporate and do not love to flex muscles with them because they are not on an even keel as per them.
So much for the attitude. The bottomline still remains that if we keep on ignoring quality education, ultimately the graduates, post-gradiates or the phd's that we will churn out will not be employable. With all respect to the employed ones, then end up doing a shoddy job. Long term vision is forsaken at the altar of short-term profit.
Even insofar as prinamry education is concerned the situation is pathetic. The teachers are perpetually or habitually absent. There is a lot of brouhaha over the mid-day meal scheme but no emphasis on quality in primary education. Our roots are week and the stem seems to be prima facie strong at least as of now. The roots can hold sway and bring down the entire tree of our economy. if this happens we will not be able to branch out but will gradually phase out from the neo-cashrich sectors. Our cities are bursting at its seams. They are costlier and expatriates are finding it tougher to relocate to India. Almost all the metros and tier 2 cities have grown costlier as per a recent renowned agency survey. Cost apart, the infrastructure is creaking. Mr. Naik, CMD L&T, pointed out this issue by saying that IT is taking the sheen away from other sectors. His take was a good one and not biased. If you take away 8 out of 10 civil engineers, who will take care of the infrastructure? That same notion, I guess, applies to other sectors too. The flip side is that if you are not a part of a cashcow corpus, the 'grapes are sour' allegation bogs you down to critique on anything. Collectivism takes over and the individual gets damned. Ugly-goliath annihilates the real-life david with consummate ease.
However, the road less travelled can be a good one and it is optimism that is the prime mover in any perspective.
I wish that Indian economy looks up in the years to come and keeps on consistently clocking 10% approx GDP growth rate, below 3% inflation and what not. It should try to remove the greay areas as well so that nothing proves to be the nemesis.
By,
The Indian.