Highly educated/qualified people ( general, professional or vocational) from India migrate to countries with green pastures is a well known and well accepted trend for the last few decades as the entry to these countries is controlled for highly qualified people. Recently, with growing anti feelings to immigrants and thus imposing restrictions for their entries in many countries, there was a news about USA that it (USA) will prefer only highly qualified people with highest education degree (like Ph.D.) for giving visa.
Allowing highly qualified people to immigrate, these countries are no doubt in an advantage as qualified people are supposed to be disciplined, systematic, thinkers, developers, hardworking and overall good citizens. Over all these countries are getting human resources with such desired attributes without spending a penny for their grooming into an educated personality. Here, the aim is not to debate on the advantages and disadvantages to parent country or to host country of immigrants but only to highlight that educational qualification which has been totally undermined in India is still getting due respect in other countries.
There were days in India few decades back when people with only requisite or minimum qualifications used to get jobs/employment and they later on if getting chance and interest keep on enhancing their qualifications to higher level with due advantages. Thanks to uncontrolled growth of education sector with a motto of not only education for all but education with highest degrees is not out of reach to anyone who wish to have. The quest for higher degrees is well supported by growing unemployment in the country. Employment generation in private and government sectors both have almost stagnated for the last few decades and now when protectionist approach is being adopted by countries like USA, Australia, Germany, France etc., unemployment is going to increase in India. Recently, many IT industries in particular are forced to reduce their share of employment to Indians in favour of local people. Due to growing incidences of hostile environment (whatever may be the reasons) faced by Indians in foreign countries, forcing them to think to came back to India which will again put more pressure on the already shrinking employment sector.
In an era when only power (political or office chair) and material (money) are recognized, respected and worshiped, educational qualification has no meaning. Moreover, with the trend of entrance tests for each and every job, when merit is least important, many of the times people with higher education find it difficult to make an entry into a job due to their out of touch with syllabus and not prepared due to business in acquiring higher education and thus are left behind to face the growing unemployment. However, as the jobs are very less and number of applicants are more, people (if lucky enough) with much higher educational qualifications than the pre-requisite can be found in any job not only in government offices but also in private sector making a total transformation in the education levels of employees in India. For example, a graduate or postgraduate, doing sweeping, peon, or MTS jobs can be easily found in offices. In schools, Master’s and Ph.D. holders are teaching to elementary and primary classes. In panchayats and municipalities, people with degrees of B.Tech, M.Tech, MBA or Ph.D. are doing jobs as clerks, panchatyat secretaries and patwaris. In police, paramilitary and army also, there are many cases where at lowest entry level (as Jawan) people with qualifications like MBA, post-graduation (MA/M.Sc) are finding themselves lucky enough to get an opportunity to serve the tough life of these forces. B.Tech/M.Tech and Ph.D. people are opting for jobs as Multi Tasking Services (MTS) & clerks in Banks. There are chances that in an office, a graduate will be PCS, IAS or any higher ranking officer where as a clerk or peon can be B.Tech, M.Tech, MBA or Ph.D.
These are some of the few examples of complete transformation in the employee’s education level in the country. People with higher educational qualifications are joining lower cadre posts not with a devotion to serve the nation but only due to serious dimensions of unemployment in the country and whether this transformation will bring fruitful results or will be a deterrent towards progress has to be seen with the passage of time. Here are some news items taken from internet to highlight the educational transformation taking place in India. The list is long and it is not produced here to criticize anyone but just to highlight that there is a real employee’s educational level transformation in the country and employee at every level from group D to A with highest educational degrees need to make a great contribution towards the development of the nation and society.
• An unemployment crisis has forced PhD scholars, B-tech students and other lakhs of graduates and post-graduates to apply for the posts of peons.
• As many as 17, 47, 824 people have applied for the 368 peon posts available in the UP Secretariat and among these 201 have completed their Doctorate degree and around 20,000 have Master’s degree in various disciplines.
• 60,000 applicants with qualifications of B.Tech, M.Tech. or Ph.D. for the 562 posts of clerks in subordinates courts in Punjab having to qualify typing and computer proficiency test after qualifying the required competitive recruitment test.
• According to Aspiring Minds National Employability Report, which is based on a study of more than 1,50,000 engineering students who graduated in 2015 from over 650 colleges, 80 per cent of the them are unemployable.
• Candidates who have done M Tech, B Tech and post graduation were among more than 7,000 successful candidates who have been selected as police constables in Punjab.
• Graduates, postgraduates and even PhD holders are among the 25 lakh candidates who responded to an advertisement seeking applications for 6,000 Group D posts in the West Bengal government secretariat.
• 34 Research Students and over 12,000 Engineers have applied for Fourth-Grade government jobs in Madhya Pradesh. Vacant posts advertised by Madhya Pradesh Government require candidates to have passed just standard 10.
• Similar scenario exist for banking recruitments even for the posts of MTS, data entry operator or clerk where the competition has become 3-4 tires, even though the interviews for class D and C posts have already been abolished by governments on the initiatives of Honrable PM Mr. Narindra Modi.
Author:
Dr. S. S. Verma, Department of Physics, S.L.I.E.T., Longowal, Distt.-Sangrur (Punjab)-148106.
