Perpetuating a Truth

For the past few weeks, I have been frustrated by the constant bandhs, blockades, and petty destruction of property across Hyderabad and perhaps in other cities and towns across the State.  The final straw was when I read and heard the call of Prof. Kodandaraman asking for all schools and colleges to remain closed until Telangana State was granted.  I assume that Prof. Kodandaraman is an eminent professor, and no matter what his political views, for someone to become a professor, he would have obtained a doctorate, which means that he would have applied the basic principles of logic and reasoning to arrive at a conclusion.

If there are two reasons, why the Telangana region has remained backwards, it is the lack of a single minded pursuit of education, and desire to work against adversities.  It is a simple cycle, the way I see it: first you need to be educated - I do not mean getting degrees, but education in the real sense of the word (but that is a different story).  Once you are educated, you need to get jobs, competing in a free and competitive world, Once you get a good job, your economic condition improves, and once that is achieved, it is possible to hand down this prosperity to the next generation.

The very act of denying education for a prolonged period of time is going to put every child to a disadvantage, make it difficult for him to compete in a much larger world than Hyderabad, and eventually do well for oneself.  I was aghast to learn recently that a student wrote in her exam papers that she could not prepare for her exams; she was ready to offer her services to the examiner just so that he could pass her in the exam.  This is what disruption to an education process can cause!

I have always lived with adversities.  I was born a Brahmin.  In India, being a Brahmin means that you fight your way through; there are no reservations in schools or colleges, there are no concessions or scholarships, or reservations in jobs.  In order to make a living my father had to move out of Andhra Pradesh.  That means that I was living in a new place,  learning a new language, a new culture, and yet trying to succeed. I never recall complaining about that.  Since then, I have been moving from one state to another, always an outsider, always working hard.  If I am successful  today, it is because of the two basic ideas that I was brought up to recognize: a) you cannot achieve anything without education, b) in order to achieve anything you need to work against adversities, and not try to subvert the system.

In light of my own limited understanding of what it takes to achieve something, I find it rather ridiculous that Prof. Kodandaraman has called for depriving students of the very education that could be their emancipation.  I also find it painful to see that the most simplistic way of looking at the correct picture has become to believe that another person can deprive you of what is rightfully yours.  You need to earn it, not through bandhs, and blockades but by working hard and with diligence. 

Telangana region has remained backwards, but let us stop blaming others for it.  Let us work to make our next generations stronger through education and hard work. Otherwise, we will continue to perpetuate the truth that the people of Telengana are a deprived lot.  

Let there be light...

I am now fairly convinced that India will have to chart its own path of innovation.  The initial few decades since Independence saw the country struggling to manufacture basic products that it needed.  Since the economic liberation, companies started getting into technology agreements to bring in International Technology into the Country.  The third wave started in the beginning of this century, with International Companies starting to see the talent pool in the country, and begin setting business in the country, to export out.

This process has established one fact: Indians have the capability.  Every part of the world one goes to today, it  is recognized that Indian techies are good.  However, what this sudden enlightenment has done is ensure that students by the droves were getting into IT.  Initially, the best of the cream were sucked in, attracted by the much higher salaries and glamor of foreign travel.  Over time, the next layer, and then the next layer, and then the next layer of qualified persons started getting in, lured by the lucre.  Suddenly, you had all kinds of Engineers, Mechanical Engineers, Civil Engineers, anyone with any Engineering degree was a software engineer.

Companies were so desperate for people that they would pick anyone and put him in front of clients, the operative word was "billability".  People who barely knew how to write code were routinely being 'billed', with technically stronger team members backing them up.  The Government saw the boom, and suddenly you had more engineering colleges blooming.

And one day, the roof fell through - America sneezed and the world caught a cold. Recession was in the air, jobs were being cut, and everyone started desperately to try and protect their jobs. Suddenly, a lot of people who could hide behind more productive colleagues started getting exposed, as companies decided to trim the fat.  Jobs were being lost, and people suddenly started seeing how bad the quality of the staff was.

In fact, the quality of the staff was always the same.  The profit objective of the companies employing them forced them to ignore this.  The blame lies with two groups: the colleges which churn out engineers and other 'qualified' students by the thousands, without adding to any knowledge pool, and the companies, which fail in their duty to ensure that their staff are continuously trained to get better at their jobs.

It is a matter of time before the next wave of opportunities will arise for companies, and the mad rush to select  students will start once again.  The investments need to be made in educating the students while they are in colleges.  These is where I expect the next round of changes to happen; and these are my predictions (I am sticking my neck out):

1. Companies will start recognizing the difference between education at one college from that of another. Colleges providing better education will be seen to be better.  I am not referring to the current practices of ranking colleges, which have long lost their meaning, what with the amount of lobbying that goes on, but a more informal and yet recognizable input-output measure of education effectiveness.
2. As a consequence, students will start demanding a better education system,where what they learn is more important than whether they get a job or not, and if so, the nature of the job that they get.  Again, if the right inputs are provided to them, the right education (and therefore benefits at job) will result.
3. Colleges which want to be better will need to invest in the right kind of teachers - those who are genuinely interested in the well-being of their students, and not those who are 'just doing their job'. This would automatically also create a system whereby better teachers start demanding and getting better pays as compared to worse teachers.  Also, the AICTE payscales become redundant.
4. And finally companies will stop the practice of paying based on fixed norms (such as years of experience, degree, marks) and look for qualitative norms which are assigned based on capability of the individual and not the qualifications alone.

More on this topic later...