Education System

15-Sep-2021: Food for Thought

Just watched the OTT serial “Kota Factory”. It’s based on a real life situation of tough competition for entry into prestigious educational institutes.

This stimulated my mind to think that these coaching institutes help the students to pre-learn certain fundamentals of technical institutes as well as screening non-serious candidates. Even candidates themselves realise that they aren’t made for certain situations. Not everyone is suitable for all situations. On the other hand we see a sizable number of school / college dropouts doing extremely well in all spheres of life. Fine, so far so good!

Now let’s just try to see this from a different prospective: Imagine a candidate, say Ashok is very studious and hardworking from a well to do family. He joins a reputed coaching institute and gets a seat in a reputed IIT. He finishes it with distinction and made himself eligible for an IIM. He clears that too in good grade. Now a job, sure he gets a highly paying overseas job for a global assignment.

Over a short period of time, he found no mental satisfaction, and on the other hand he discovered that he is good at writing and gets pleasure out of it. Slowly he developed his writing skills and became famous as a writer. Eventually, he quit his job, came back to India and pursued writing as a full time engagement.

What happened in the process- the technical training went waste, management training too went waste. Of course it helped in the mental & personal development of the individual. But the nation / society didn’t get any return on the educational expenses (scarce resources utilisation) it incurred for this candidate. Another candidate could have been trained in place of him, to serve the nation / society.

For this phenomenon, I have coined a word “CB Syndrome” after a famous fiction writer & columnist. If it stimulates your thinking process, let me know. Thanks!

Population of India

Think Seriously on 30-Oct-2017: 

Population: Many may know it already, but let me refresh our info about Population. The latest figures are: (0) World- 7.58 Bn, (1) China- 1.40 Bn, (2) India- 1.34 Bn, (3) USA- 325 Mn, (4) Indonesia- 265 Mn, (5) Brazil- 215 Mn, and so on. Our state of Uttar Pradesh has a population of 225 Mn. If it was a separate country, it would be the 5th most populated country in the world. Delhi and NCR population at 22.5 Mn is almost that of Australia at 24.5 Mn. Every year we are adding one Delhi NCR or an Australia to our population. At this rate within 5-8 yrs we will surpass China. What does it imply?

Though, there is some positive signs like a strong young population, more working hands, there is a bigger dark side to it. Like more mouths to feed, more starved / semi-starved jobless people, more stress on resources. Remember we are a poor country- roughly 30% don’t get a square meal a day, another 30% don’t get two square meals a day. Our education and training systems are such that we don’t have good quality / productive white collar / blue collar workers. Moreover, the huge mass is a burden to any public service like, transport, agriculture, housing, education, health, public works, banking and so on. Past experience shows no remedial measures work.