Why we need a lesson in good education

Unlike previous years, the financial year coming to a close is not something anybody is looking forward to. The global economy has been beaten to a pulp and corporations are trying every rule in the book -- and outside of it – to stay afloat. Some, like TCS, have increased working hours and other global giants, like HP and IBM, are trimming salaries.
And the effects of the downturn haven’t even begun showing in India.
Does the slowdown hold any lessons for us? Definitely.
There once was a time when parents in India could think of only two options for their children – a career in medicine or engineering. While the merits and demerits of that kind of thinking could be turned into a book, it is important to understand the benefit of that approach – parents egged their children on to study, and study hard.
Cut to the late nineties/early 21st century. The job market in India – and abroad – was booming. Percentile in school and college was considered just a number. Landing a job was really easy – all you had to do was register with a website and voila! Interview date was set. One could hear youngsters talking ‘propah’ English, splurging in the numerous glitzy malls. The phrase “save for a rainy day” became redundant. Thomas L. Friedman announced the world is flat and we raised a toast to it.
Somewhere in the rush to service global clients most of us forgot something very basic – that the foundation for a stable job has to be built on good education.
That little slip has come to haunt us now. The country’s “Gods of code” will survive this downturn but what about the numerous youngsters who hopped on to the call centre bandwagon after barely finishing college? A lot of them even bought cars and houses on the devil called EMI (equated monthly instalment).
Something similar, although on a much, much smaller scale, happened during the dotcom bust. With poor revenue models, websites were springing up like fruitflies till one day it all came crashing. People who left steady jobs to work for a website suddenly found themselves having to accept drastic pay cuts.
As things stand today, there is more pain coming. The job loss meter in the US crossed the 6.5-lakh mark in February. The $900-billion stimulus package approved by the Senate will ensure that American jobs stay in America, and not get “Bangalored”. However, we’ll still be manufacturing for the world. We’ll still be servicing clients in Alaska out of Bangalore or Mysore. We’ll still be a cheap labour market. Only the breakneck pace with which we were becoming the world’s backyard will perhaps slow down.
Relying on conventional Indian wisdom, our parents encouraged us to study hard, follow the save-more-spend-less routine and basically keep our feet on the ground. But crass commercialization told us otherwise. And we listened to the latter.
Maybe we ought to have listened to conventional Indian wisdom.
Maybe students writing the II PU exams will keep this in mind when they enter examination halls – that there is no alternative to good, old-fashioned education.
Hopefully, some good will emerge out of the slowdown.