Higher Education -a Mockery of Government or People?

It is heartening or disheartening, as you feel, to note that atleast 3 out of 10 of 10.73 lakh seats in Engineering Colleges are lying vacant. A National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) study says Engineering services are a $40 billion opportunity for India by 2020, but only one in 4 of the 4,00,000 graduates passing out of the 3,200 Engineering Colleges every year is employable. Worse, only 3 out of 10 of the teaching faculty is competent and qualified. India Today reports that Nivedita Institute of Management and Technology in Murshidabad (U.P) has only four students on its roll. "Some Colleges exist only on paper to get Government Grants. We have started an enquiry against 127 colleges which did not submit their admission lists" (N. Prabhu Dev, Vice Chancellor of Bangalore University).

What are we aimimg at? To squarely squander our scarce resources in the name of higher education? Earlier bachelor degrees in arts and science disciplines were found in plenty without assuring employment for several decades. Dignity of labour suffered at the hands of these graduates and now it is the turn of engineers and other professionals to remain unemployed after spending precious time of their adulthood and hard-earned incomes of their parents.

There is no man-power planning - at any level or at any government organisation - of technical personnel needed for India's development, be it the requiremnt of the craftmen, diploma holders or engineers. The Planning Commission of India is not aware of such a need. State governments are not bothered about the quality or quantity requirements of different categories of work-force and technocrats over a period of time. The result is that there is a mushroom growth of technical and engineering colleges disproportionate to the actual requirements of the society and the industry. Shortage of specific categories is felt by the employers but the over-supply of unwanted number of engineers is a national waste.

Interest Rates Chased by Inflation?

On being questioned whether the middle-class consumers and the employeds feel better or worse-off in the last 12 months, many of them drawing different scales of pay anything between Rs.10,000/- and 80,000/- per month feel let down by the spiralling inflation and high interest rates ensured by Reserve Bank of India. Any amount of income a middle-class family earns has lost its real value in terms of purchasing power in the market. A heavy or huge amount of currency notes in the hands of consumers give no guarantee to meet the routine expenses like EMIs for housing and vehicles, insurance premium and consumption of required quantity of vegetables and fruits, dairy products and protein foods. Education and health care are mostly not in the reach of the middle-class. The latter is hard-pressed for meeting all these expenses in view of the interest rate hikes caused by the monetary policy routinely announced by the RBI and the fiscal deficits resorted to by the Government of India with the commercial borrowings (both domestic and foreign) from time to time.

How to cut this vicious cycle? When the public debt including foreign debt exceeds the GDP like in the case of Greece, the economy is bound to collapse, with unmanageable levels of unemployment and rising costs of essential commodities and services. Unless the Government, the RBI and the full-time practising economists come around and chalk out the short-term plan, a medium term strategy and long term measures immediately without any lapse of time, the things are going to take a worse turn sooner or later.

India's External debt has crossed forex kitty for the first time in seven years. At the end of March 2011, external debt stood at $305.9 billion (17.3% of GDP) recording an increase of $44.9 billion or 17.2% over the end March 2010 level on account of significant increase in commercial borrowing, short-term credits, bilateral and multilateral borrowing. Bank borrowing from RBI touched Rs.1.04 lakh crore on Thursday - the last day of the quarter (cash crunch revealed). Demand rose as the money markets prepared for a week-end, followed by the US holiday on Monday.