The Indian education system - A plethora of excellence or a mirage of hollow illusions?

" A good education system is the one which in its truest essence can always stand the test of time". 
To ponder upon significance of education and understand why it becomes inextricable and pivotal particularly in the indian perspective, having a basic understanding of India's demographic dividend becomes a requisite.
India presently has 62.5% of its population in the working age group, the largest in the world and this bulge is going to last for the next 37 years.



The average age in India is only 29 when the world is treading past 40 and thus we can rejoice as India is the youngest country in the world. This convinces me that India has tremendous potential to be the growth engine of the world in the next 3 decades that follow and it can cross all threshold levels successfully to emerge as a world superpower.

But in the very same breath, I say that to take optimum advantage of  our demographic dividend and to make our 62.5% population, more productive ,dynamic and brilliant , proper convergence and channelization becomes an imperative which in my perception is only possible through human resource management and in particular education.

"In the absence of good education, the results would be catastrophic as our promising demographic dividend fades into oblivion and turns into a disastrous liability in no time".
What worries me is that when I write this blog and talk of education the very first thought that is bound to strike the mind of the reader is that discussing the education system is futile since it appears to be flawless because India is already a home to institutes of great eminence which are islands of excellence , like IIM's , IIT's, Indian Institute Of Science, AIIMS etc but these comprise a meagre 5% of the total educational institutions in  India . My cause  of concern here being a student is the rest 95%.

"The  Indian education system is comparable to a musical instrument which if in harmony produces a melody, but if in disharmony , it produces only cacophony."

 The Indian education system is living in disharmony and the very fundamental challenge I see to our education system is lack of indegenity. I write this substantially because our higher education system owing to reckless westernization is getting jeopardized .Be it the study material or the pedagogy, the element of Indianness lacks significantly. In the current course of my graduation , in the last 1.5 years I have failed to come across even a single book written by an Indian author. I have keenly observed that the Indian education system dismally largely revolves around American , French and Russian authors. There cannot be something more unfortunate than the fact that even the great Sanskrit literature which was born in India is  being taught from the translations of a Russian author, Leo Tolstoy.

Our education system is not progressive in nature and it lacks updation and a forward looking vision . For instance I vividly remember that the class 9 geography NCERT Book has a chapter on Water Resources. It talks in great detail of the groundwater depletion owing to green revolution of 1970s. Unfortunately instead of discussing the future and the road ahead to prevent water scarcity at which India stares today,  it is dwelling excessively on the past .
The next pertinent challenge I see to  education  emanates from governments fixed employment flagship programmes like NREGA and Jawahar Rozgar Yojana. I am not being critical of these schemes but if you analyse from another perspective you will realise that these schemes have proved to be double edged weapons as they have made education system seemingly less appealing. I say this because when government provides assured employment to the under educated and uneducated under these schemes, certainly there is no incentive left for acquiring education.

Education is not just a social  or a developmental issue but most importantly an issue of national security . Because in the void of education,one fails to see through the evil and becomes susceptible to brain wash at the hands of terrorists, militants and all those devils who are against our national interests and aim to create a ruckus by preying on the stability of our nation.
The quality of graduates India is producing is descending at an unimaginable pace  and this links me up to the next challenge I see to education which is the lack of skill enhancement and vocational training in our curriculum. In a country of 1.3 billion people we are having a serious deficit of 1 million plumbers and carpenters at a time when there is a surplus of half a million engineers. This is because due emphasis is not laid on vocational training which would help people acquire the desired proficiency required for these jobs.

By 2021 India would land in a dreadful  scenario where a plumber would be in more demand than a professional in a white collar job. For the prevalence of  severe unemployment and the declining quality of engineers and doctors we produce , majority people might blame the private colleges and universities in almost every nook and corner of India today. But I see a tradeoff here between the quality of education and the outreach of education to the masses and the realisation dawns upon me that we certainly do not have any other alternative because  government educational institutions are just not enough to cater to the burgeoning population of India.
We are significantly lacking research innovation today. Roughly 20% students in higher education across the world are Indian, despite of this India produces only 2.5% of the of the world's research output. To make it crystal clear, today  India does not require an education system which only helps its students get a high profile job in Microsoft or Google, but indeed a system which encourages them to invent and evolve something as unimaginable, revolutionary and towering as Google on your own.

Undoubtedly the examination system of India is the most competitive and rigorous in the world with acceptance rates less than 1% in most prestigious institutions. Owing to this, though India has become the centre of attraction for higher education but on a humorous note metaphorically, in terms of probability, this implies that one has better chances of surviving after jumping from the 10th floor of a building then clearing the UPSC or CA examination or getting a seat in the IIM.

 "The biggest irony I see here is that our education system is not equivalently excellent as our examination system".

I won't be doing justice to the blog if I don't make a mention of reservations in education. From the past 70 years we have been making laborious efforts incessantly to achieve equality in education and this becomes debatable because in order to achieve the so called equality we have largely compromised on merit thereby doing a severe injustice to the potential of the meritorious who will shape India's destiny in the years to come.

Abolishing the reservation system might seem to be a panacea but intellectuals will agree that an extreme step like this is simply not plausible and practical and it will always remain beyond the realm and competence of any government in India.
To overcome this problem the only practical solution I can think of is prioritising and focusing on "equity in education as it is rightly believed that in an egalitarian society like India, once equity is achieved, equality flows naturally.

To make it unambiguous by equity I mean that for instance if hundred people having different financial status belong to one backward community, the benefit of reservation must not be uniformly extended to the entire community but rather it should be extended in proportion to an individual's financial and economic backwardness.
Therefore to clearly conclude with brevity whether the Indian education system is a plethora of excellence or a mirage of hollow illusions becomes a complex and strenuous task for me. 
But what I can confidently conclude is that India would press the accelerator as it shows enormous potential and promises to be the torch bearer of excellence and the driver of prosperity in years that follow, owing to its gigantic youthfulness. It is rightly said:
" One machine can do the work of 50 ordinary men,
But no machine can do the work of 1 extraordinary man."
 To produce meticulous men of such high calibre, we require an education system driven by knowledge rather than by grades , a system which focuses more on "why and how" instead of "when and where", a system which prepares it's men not only for a 3 hour examination but a bigger and a more arduous examination called life. A due influx of investment in education is the need of the hour and we have to initiate the required reforms in  education to achieve long term gains and strive our level best to overcome and conquer the challenges we encounter today. I am optimistic that a bright future awaits India with open arms.
 I shall summarize the significance of education to a flourishing India with a popular saying:
"If a man is given a fish to eat , he eats only for a day.
If a man is taught how to fish, he eats for his lifetime".

My dear readers,
The rest I leave to your wisdom and your fine sense of judgment.
Please share your thoughts in the comments box.
Jai Hind!