Unlocking country's demographic strength

By 2020, India is set to become the world’s youngest country, with 64 per cent of its population in the working age group. With countries like the US and China aging, the demographic potential offers India and its growing economy an unparalleled edge. This can add a significant two per cent to the gross domestic product growth rate.

The key to harnessing India’s demographic dividend is through education. Increased educational standards can not only contribute to the economic growth of the country, but also lead to better living standards, with a rise in employment opportunities.Unfortunately, education in India is highly divided. Essentially, students have to go through a bumpy ride as there exist multi-dimensional inequalities in the enrolment process to different institutions. A steep rise in the cut-offs for various undergraduate courses in the Delhi University is a testimony to the fact. The cut-offs like yesteryears, did not fail to disappoint the students this year too. 

There is no reason why the students are getting higher percentages even though academic achievement hasn’t improvised. While the bars must certainly be raised, the quality of education must not be compromised. Amusingly, there was a time in the 1990s, when the highest cut-off marks would not exceed more than 80 per cent. However, in the current scenario, a student with 90 per cent is considered to be an average scorer, who cannot get into a good college or university. 

A recent report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation says that India has made remarkable strides towards ensuring education for all. “While access is now close to universal, the quality of education remains a major challenge”, it says.One of the sins involving the education industry is ‘grade inflation’. Grade-point averages are almost meaningless. Although it is excusable, it is nonetheless consequential. Some of the inflation is due to the professorial pressure put on the students so that they score well. Ultimately, grade inflation has severe consequences. First, it misleads the student, who uses his grade to analyse his strengths and weakness. Second, it makes it difficult for the employers to judge the caliber of the student. 

Institutional and intellectual integrity and the inherent value of a college degree should be ensured. There ought to be some scientific, rational and a fair system of evaluation of an individual’s real potential than the marks in the exams.The education system in India is also plagued with issues of quality. There is a long-standing shortage of faculty, lack of accountability and quality assurance. The Annual Status of Education Report said, “While India’s education system succeeded in enrolling many more children, there were wide disparities in students achievement of basic skills across the States, a finding validated in the official National Achievement Survey of grade three students. 

Teaching ought to be a nation-building exercise. The current procedure for selection of teachers archaic, bureaucratic and is often biased. What we need is trained, professional and motivated educators. As teaching is a women-dominated profession in India, those who do not do well in academics, or those who just want to keep themselves busy, are the ones who govern this profession. Just like the students have to go through a selection procedure before getting into one of the best university, there ought to be a rigorous selection procedures for the teachers as well.

Mere doubling premier institutes like the Indian Institute of Technology and Indian Institute of Management will only lead to brand degradation. No doubt, after a rigorous entrance exam, these colleges admit qualified students, but there is a need to keep a check, whether the existing colleges have proper infrastructure, good teachers, sophisticated lab and research facilities. We need to make sure that the quality of students graduating from these reputed institutes is at par with those from older ones.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done well to have professed long-term changes to the existing system of learning under the ‘Make in India’ programme. But, while emphasising on skilling, it is vital to understand that skilling is just about ‘restoration’ and it will, at best, give short-term results. To unlock the true potential of our human capital, we must transform our school and higher education systems to prepare our students for life and the workplace.