India's demographic (dis)advantage ?

Rajan Kshirsagar, general secretary of the All India MGNREGA Employees Federation reveals an interesting and startling fact in his blog that: “Thirty percent (30%)of the NREGA workers in rural Maharashtra are graduates and 20 percent of the workers are post-graduate.’’

Paying them Rs 127, per day is too little, argues another editorial website.

I don’t want to comment on the actual money paid to MGNREGA workers. I even don’t want to ask whether payment for work be dependent on the nature/economic benefit of work performed or the qualification of worker??

The MAIN problem, as I see is this:

Why even graduates and post graduates (requiring 15-17 years of education), aren’t skilled enough to hold semi skilled jobs like Gramrojgar Sevak under MGNREGA have to demand further training?

If such is the case, then doesn’t this prove that the education standards in the country are actually abysmal and useless? They provide absolutely no practical use or training to students who are putting in 15-17 years of their life being “educated”? “Purists” may argue that education should not be seen as a means of employment but should be a source of knowledge.

I differ. I believe that if even after putting in roughly 70% of their life at schools and colleges, at 21 years of age, if the graduate is unable to find ANY jobs without going in for some kind of training or coaching, then what is the point of all this academic drama? To put it bluntly, old school todays BA, BSc and BComs taught throughout colleges in India are actually a waste of taxpayers’ money and a dangerous play with the future of India.

Most of the students are aware of this problem, but the problem is that there isn’t ANY viable alternative available for the formal education system system. Most of the well to do students know that these courses are a waste of time and instead prepare for Engg./ CA / CS / MBA / MCA / CFA etc. other qualifications which will at least help them secure some employment.

But sadly, the vocational training options end there. Rest of India is forced to be content with ITI / IT software or Hardware courses which are of dubious quality and often don’t train students adequately enough to properly grasp and master the subject.

Some data Googled from the internet says:

Every year 5.5 million students pass out of Class X, of which 3.3 million go to Class XI, leaving 2.2 million out of the education stream while those who drop out after Class VIII are approx. 20-21 million. Meanwhile, the Available formal training capacity of the country is just adequate of only 2.3 million students. 

Interestingly, while ~95% of the world youth (15 - 35 yrs) age learn some type of vocation / skill / trade, with a choice of 3000 vocational streams, in India ~5% of the youth (15-29 yrs) goes in for formal vocational training.

In the global markets India’s main strength was of having a large young workforce. 

However, this may well become a ticking time bomb if the current system continues to produce unemployable “graduates” and “Post graduates”. 

Is anybody listening??