Hot degrees fetch Young India lukewarm jobs
NEW DELHI: Amitesh Kumar is still
getting used to perplexed looks from colleagues every time he talks of his alma
mater IIT Guwahati at his workplace, a Gurgaon call centre.
It’s not exactly the job the
24-year-old son of a clerk from Darbhanga, Bihar, had dreamed of after an
engineering degree. But four months after losing the consultancy job he landed
immediately after graduating, Kumar is still looking for better work than managing
IT services for a call centre.
“This isn’t what I was supposed to
be doing,” Kumar says. “But I don’t have a choice.”
This is the reality confronting an
increasing number of young Indians. A growing gap between the demands of the
market and the education and skills that many universities offer is spawning a
generation of overqualified but underemployed – and dissatisfied – youth. Among
urban, salaried Indians, 3% men and 3.8% women were seeking either more work or
different work in 2004-05. The numbers of the “invisible underemployed” – as
this set is called – have risen sharply to 4.4% of men and 5.2% of women
according to the National Sample Survey Organisation statistics released in
2011. In rural India, the increase is sharper: from 3.1% for both men and women
to 8% for men and 5% for women. While some, like Kumar, are waiting for better
jobs, others, like Mumbai-based MBA graduate Ravinder Singh, are slowly giving
up on their dreams.
Singh graduated from Vellore
Institute of Technology (VIT), and has spent the last six months applying for
consulting jobs at Indian and global companies. “I’ve only heard ‘no’,” Singh,
who works at his father’s export business, says. “I’ve accepted that my MBA
doesn’t guarantee a job.”
It’s a crisis that industry chambers
have been warning the government about for a few years now. Repeated studies
have shown that a majority of the country’s graduates aren’t equipped for jobs
befitting their qualifications.
“MBAs may have an understanding of
management practices learned in classes, but they can’t get work done in the
real world,” says Pooja Gianchandani, director and head of skill development at
FICCI.
The UPA government has recognised
the skill deficit that threatens a country where over 60% of the population is
under 30. The National Skill Development Mission, headed by PM Manmohan Singh,
aims to train 500 million people in skills ranging from plumbing to industrial
technologies by 2022.
But many programmes under the
mission are yet to take off, and the industrial training institutes, started in
the 1960s, are stuck with outdated curriculae.
Part of the problem, according to
experts, is cultural. Unlike the West, hands-on service sector jobs are looked
down upon in India. “There’s no social appreciation for skilled labour like,
say, a plumber,” says Gianchandani.
An explosion of professional schools
– mainly engineering and MBA institutions – trying to cash in on India’s growth
story is equally responsible for the underemployment crisis, says Bakul
Dholakia, former IIM Ahmedabad director.
Engineering schools in India offered
a total of 8,25,791 seats at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in 2007-08.
Today, that number has more than doubled to 19,05,802. From about 2,000
B-schools – public and private – offering MBAs or post-graduate diplomas in
management at the turn of the century, the country today has 3,844 such
schools. Bschool seats have risen from 1,14,803 in 2007-08 to 3,13,920 seats in
2011-12.
Many of these B-schools run
predominantly with visiting faculties. “These visiting lecturers relate their
experiences to students,” Dholakia says. “That can’t substitute for actual
B-school case studies.”
Professional schools "are all
about getting students jobs" and those that don't should be shut down by
the government, says Dholakia. “Right now, shoddy Bschools are giving a bad
name to the whole of management education in India. As a country, we need to
get our act together quickly,” he adds.
- Charu Sudan Kasturi HT121014
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