Letter from the Editor
This month’s cover story is likely to open up the floodgates of memory for the growing number of parents who read this publication. The rites of passage as we grew from children into troubled teens and adults, should trigger joyous memories and fond remembrances of youth. Unfortunately in the new society designed by overweening control-and-command politicians and central planners of post-independence India who derived their inspiration from Marxist gobbledygook, the passage from childhood to maturity has become increasingly difficult and stressful.Regrettably the neta-babu nexus was — with the consent of the people — given a blank cheque to introduce a comprehensive licence-permit-quota regime and to micro manage the Indian economy for almost half a century. The consequence is grave shortages of food, clothing, shelter, education and healthcare which has made life very difficult for this nation which hosts — and very grudgingly — the contemporary world’s largest population of children and youth who number a massive 540 million.
Yet perhaps the most unkindest cut inflicted by the busy-hands-in-the-public-till neta-babu conspiracy is the grave neglect of education for over five decades. With the combined annual expenditure of the Central and state governments on education seldom exceeding 3.5 percent of GDP, severe capacity shortages characterise the education system — at the pre-school, primary, secondary and tertiary levels. Moreover given the pathetic infrastructure and learning outcomes of the country’s one million state and local government schools, the pressure on middle class children to qualify for admission into the too few ‘good’ private sector and Central government run schools and colleges has been growing steadily. Consequently, today even tiny pre-school tots have to be tutored for admission interviews, and millions of students swot prodigiously to write public entrance exams in the hope of being among the 3,000-4,000 toppers who make it into the half dozen IITs and IIMs and a handful of institutions of excellence.
Unfortunately instead of putting pressure on government to apply the logic of supply-side liberalisation upon government, the great majority of anxious and well-meaning middle class parents are exerting tremendous pressure upon their hapless children to excel in competitive exams for admission into the much too few institutions of higher education. In the process they are driving a multiplying number of the nation’s children into depression, despair and increasingly, suicide. Last year over 4,000 students across the country took their own lives and an estimated 6.15 lakh seriously contemplated doing so.
Parents who love their children — as they should — need to lighten up. In the new era of economic liberalisation and globalisation, high percentages and cut-offs aren’t all that important. That’s the subject matter of our cover feature this month.
Moreover, one of the emerging options for young people with respectable averages is the acquisition of vocational skills and training. But inevitably as EW’s indefatigable assistant editor Summiya Yasmeen recounts in our special report feature, the development of a VET (vocational education and training) infrastructure has been criminally neglected by the nation’s educrats and central planners, at heavy cost to the economy.