Radical Notes
Journal
Archive for Education
Posted by Radical Notes December 3, 2009 at 11:30 am in Economy, Education, India, Labour, Students, Working Class
Craig Jeffrey
There is mass unemployment among India’s graduates. What can be done for them?
In 2005 I spent time with a student named Rajesh in Meerut College, in Uttar Pradesh. Rajesh was in his early 30s and had been studying in Meerut for 13 years. Like many long-time students there, he described himself as “unemployed”, someone “just waiting”.
There are many like Rajesh in Meerut and across northern India. Behind the image of tech-savvy IT specialists in India lies a dispiriting picture common throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America: a multitude of educated but unemployed young men.
The sources of this problem are not difficult to identify: rising education rates have led to higher aspirations around the world. At the same time, governments have often cut the public sector jobs upon which educated people formerly depended. The result in numerous places has been the “overproduction” of educated people: the “men hanging out on the street” that seem to feature in so many travel accounts and contemporary anthropologies of poorer countries.
Over the past 15 years I have been doing research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council on the problem of educated unemployment in Uttar Pradesh, whose 190m people make it India’s most populous state. Many parents in Uttar Pradesh are able to finance school and university education for their children. But these graduates find it impossible to obtain salaried jobs.
The sheer scale of the problem of youth unemployment is staggering. There are regularly more than 10,000 applicants for a single government post in Meerut. Students there tell me that to get a job it is now necessary to possess “source” (social connections) and “force” (the money for bribes).
Students’ anger is compounded by their fury at educational decay. Lack of investment in higher education and widespread corruption in many universities has undermined the value of students’ degrees. Things came to a head in 2006 when it emerged that, as an economy measure, the registrar of a prominent university in Meerut had been sending masters theses to be marked by school pupils, some allegedly as young as eight. When students discovered what had happened, they came into the streets to burn their degrees.
Some young people in Meerut give up on the search for salaried work and return to farming or manual labour. There are MAs, even PhDs, working in the fields of Uttar Pradesh. But like Rajesh, many students respond to unemployment by simply remaining in education, collecting degrees, and hoping that their luck will change.
What are the social and political implications of this mass unemployment? At the family level, the impact is marked. Those unsuccessful in finding decent, permanent jobs often face parents who resent scrimping and saving for their sons’ education. Parents often complain about the sacrifices they made to educate their children. Moreover, young women sometimes work in the field to keep their brothers in college – and this has led to many tensions between siblings.
What of political unrest? Commentators in the past have tended to imagine these men as either politically apathetic or violent threats to civilised society. My research – which involved years of interviewing and hanging out with young men – has tried to move beyond these stereotypes. To be sure, some unemployed young men have been involved in violence, such as the Hindu/Muslim riots and pogroms that erupted in India in the early 1990s. But the reality may be more mundane. Jobless young men have adopted one of two strategies in contemporary Uttar Pradesh. Some use their free time and skills to advocate on behalf of the poor. There are many such “social reformers” in Meerut, who often voice critiques of the Indian state, but tend to avoid violence.
A second group work as political entrepreneurs at the local level: they call themselves “fixers”. These men traded on their knowledge of how politics works at the local level, to sell places in private universities, extract bribes from government officials, or steer contracts towards favoured businessmen. These men do use violence and their actions encourage the further proliferation of corruption in Uttar Pradesh.
Mass unemployment among the educated in India may have contradictory implications. On the one hand, it may lead to the emergence of a set of people who can play key development roles in the countryside and small towns. These bright young “social reformers” are keen to find outlets for their zeal. On the other hand, there are many young men whose joblessness has provoked aggressive individualism and an “anyhow” mentality when it comes to making money. The Indian government and international organisations need to get much better at enrolling the first group into processes of planned development, and persuading the second group to redirect their energy in more positive directions.
The time is also ripe for a broader discussion of mass unemployment among educated young people across the world. What do they have in common? How do their responses differ? How might governments and others address the problem? The answers to these questions are likely to reveal a great deal not only about youth the world over, but about the chance of progressive social change in places like India.
Courtesy: Guardian
Posted by Satyabrata April 5, 2009 at 11:32 pm in Education, India, Labour, Politics, Students, Working Class
A Leaflet
Today is the time of economic crisis. All national and multinational companies are feeling the effect, especially, the workers in them. Millions of workers have lost their jobs throughout the globe. This is not the first time that the workers are facing such problems. Several times in the last century similar problems have been created for workers. In the beginning of this century, after the 9/11 attacks, there was a similar period. Production of workers, i.e., students coming out of universities have outnumbered, by more than a hundred times, the intake capacities of companies. The only solution that has been offered is competition. Study hard… compete and get better appropriated than your fellow mates. There can be just one solution – the “better” students/workers, i.e., those who are compliant to the bosses’ interests and demands, will get or sustain their jobs; and, in that case there will be a growing brigade of unemployed and underemployed (underpaid, casual and temporary) workers, still expecting and competing to get accommodated. All this is because something needs to be sustained in the companies, namely, high profits. That can’t be compromised or shared with workers!!!
Some of us are over-optimistic about getting out with an MBA degree and joining some company in a highly paid managerial post. This section needs to realise that the intake capacity with regard to these posts in companies is much more restricted than that of workers proper. They share the same fate in a much larger magnitude. When there is a reduction in the number of workers, managers who “manage” them will be more and more redundant.
In this process of profit realisation, the sufferer is the student and/or the worker community. They compete and struggle amongst and against each other, weakening themselves ‘as a whole’.
It is high time for this community to get organized and cooperate in their struggle for liberation, rather than compete against each other. It is high time for them to ask themselves what they have lost in the process of competition and assess the magnitude of what they are going to lose if they continue competing blindly. It is high time they get organized and ask the big bosses of companies and the governments as to why ‘we’ have to lead a life of subjugation so that the profit is maintained. It is high time for them to choose between this alternative path of questioning the present state of affairs and the path of blind competition.
Science-Technology-Students’-Workers’ Union (STSWU) is an organization that provides this alternative platform to students and workers to meet the challenges of their class – locally, nationally and internationally.
To join, contact Satyabrata.
Email: satyabrata@radicalnotes.com
Mob. No. 09238535626
Workers of all countries, unite!
Posted by Ravi Kumar December 12, 2007 at 9:22 am in Education, India
Ravi Kumar**
Policies and programmes are not constituted outside the governing principles of the system, which in today’s case is mindless urge for profit seeking. For instance, it cannot be denied how committedly the Indian state pursues the agenda of private capital. The ’social sector’ is the most grievously hurt victim of this onslaught. The recent debates and policies in favour of privatisation of higher education and the emphasis of the Planning Commission or the United Progressive Alliance Chairperson (the ruling alliance) on the need to encourage participation of private sector in education are some of the most recent and vital contexts within which any decision of the state in education needs to be read.
While reading the context what also becomes necessary is the need to unravel the farcical employment of certain concepts such as ’social justice’ by the state. It has been amply clarified by the Government of India statistics itself that over 70% of Indians live on Rs.20 or below per day. This reflects in a certain sense the condition of the Indian masses and the debate on justice needs to consider this as a constituting variable of its understanding. Hence, the government would argue that precisely because of such profound marginalisation, apart from those based on caste, etc., that ’schemes’ to uplift the downtrodden masses are required. But then, and quite ironically, it also pursues a relentless agenda of privatisation, which inevitably converts education into a commodity as any other in the market and creates a situation of exclusivity for some and denial for millions. The social justice remains only rhetoric. Then, the big question remains whether the majority of Indians can purchase this commodity of education? Answer will be negative. Therefore, if social justice means making education accessible to all or if it means equipping everyone to compete in market then it has to be seen as something contesting marketisation of education.
Another aspect of this context is the absence of democratisation. Dialogue is one of the vital constituents of democracy and it can be identified at two levels – horizontal as well as vertical. Despite all rhetoric of participation and decentralisation, the way things happen in India it can be identified only with vertical dialogue. The Government one day feels that the curriculum should be revised, so it begins a process, which involves the ‘intellectuals’ concentrated in and around the power centre. The school curriculum as well as higher education curriculum is transformed in the similar manner. In the name of dialogue, seminars in various cities are organised and thereby a ‘consensus’ is reached. Would these ‘dialogues’ would have same responses if debated across over 500 DIETs (District Institute of Educational Training) or across as many Village/Block Education Committees (VEC, BEC)? It still remains something that the ‘intellectual-administrators’ need to work upon. Such a process would have not only generated a horizontal dialogue but also a process of ‘conscientisation’ on some of the most vital issues including religious sectarianism. The horizontal dialogue would have allowed withering of notions such as someone from the metropolitan centre of Delhi is necessarily better equipped to understand the educational deprivation of Dalits in a Bihar village through the active participation of the local VEC or BEC members on these issues. It is about ending hierarchies, including the thoughts of those who are intentionally kept out of policy making and implementation. But we tend to avoid debates and critical gestures made at our thoughts and actions because it does not serve ‘our purpose’. If the common man is included in these dialogic processes s/he may start questioning the schools trying to introduce courses on BPO trainings or universities having courses on ’stock’ or ‘tourism’ or why fundamental research is relegated to second plane. One needs to build upon these contexts if one wants to truly grasp the recent development in higher education.
The recent decision of UGC (See “To bring in Uniformity, UPA orders university curriculum upgrade”, The Indian Express, December 6, 2007) to bring ‘uniformity’ in education not only raises serious pedagogical issues but also has ramifications for the liberal ethos of higher education. These ramifications will be primarily in form of curtailing the creative potential of teachers and students, mechanising the process of teaching-learning as well as, ultimately, making the system subservient to the needs of the market.
Traditionally universities have represented a kind of dichotomy. While they have worked within the framework of state, they have also been centres of dissent and rebellion. Whether it was the students’ movement of 1968, the students’ upheaval of 1970s in India, or later on many issues, universities have time and again demonstrated their vibrant democratic ethos. The recent decision of the Government demolishes this foundational ethos of higher education. It is already playing pranks with the Indian population by putting forth rhetorics of social justice along with large scale privatisation of higher education, thereby taking education out of reach of most of Indians.
By not consulting the higher education institutions on such an issue the Government has persisted with its practice of top-down mechanism in policy making and implementation. Such a practice diminishes possibilities of dialogue, which can be one of the true instruments against undemocratic socio-political tendencies. Rather such instances become precedences to institutionalise sectarianism in education system.
The initial reports indicate towards the danger of making courses subservient to market in name of linking the life inside and outside the college. However, the danger, as indicated by recent trends in school education, is that in the name of making courses ‘relevant’ and ‘professional’ they are modified or deleted to suit the needs of market. The element of critical inquiry, identifying, for instance, the relationship between such courses and the interests of capital also constitute an aim of higher education. Are we going to emphasise on such as aspects as well in our revision of courses? Secondly, are we not deliberately fostering a hierarchisation of courses in this process on basis of certain criteria such as its job prospects etc.? The creative potential of the student as well as the teacher takes a backseat in these exercises.
Every region has a distinct socio-economic and cultural ethos which demands specific curriculum and pedagogy. Will a student coming out of a private schooling system or from the metropolis require similar curriculum and pedagogic methods as a student of a village government school from a backward region to get integrated with the global economy? Perhaps, no. Such initiatives and the people attached with them need to rethink and reflect on the aims of higher education. And, lastly, how they reconcile the requirements of the private capital with the aims of higher education to infuse a sense of criticality and creativity will remain a major challenge.
**Teaches sociology at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi
*This is an expanded version of a response published in The Economic Times, 12th December 2007
