What should be done about India?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > What should be done about India?

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

OwlBot 2000 posted:

It's interesting that the right-wing explanation (not anyone's here) for why a given third-world country isn't doing well is "corruption." Yes, it's there and prevalent, but that seems more like an effect than a cause -- and surely there isn't quite enough of it to explain the massive shortfalls between a country's results and its potential.

I would disagree with it being an effect rather than a cause for much of their problems. I would also challenge the assumption that there isn't quite enough of it to cause the problems we see in India. There was an idealism present in the early days of the Indian government that really died off with Nehru, if not before given the extent to which his efforts were constantly dragged down with the Kashmir issue, border struggles with China, and the intensified regionalism due to his push for pan-Hindi-language state.

That he left such a large power vacuum in his wake, and that it was filled with his daughter who was not only incredibly corrupt and authoritarian, but also largely not qualified for the leadership role she was born into, is responsible for creating an environment which has allowed corruption to flourish to the extent it has, even up to today. One could make the argument that the corruption was a consequence of strong tendency towards dynastic leadership, which in turn is a consequence of a culture where endogamous jatis and the integrity of the family line are so paramount. But, at the end of the day the extent of the corruption is so great that it almost doesn't matter.

As to the extent of it explaining the shortfalls between results and potential, you're underestimating how bad it is I think. The incestuous ties between government and industry created an awful legacy of inequality but also left the bureaucracy, civil service and police force so depleted and anemic that just to survive themselves you see officials wielding that power to squeeze the populace. While I was there Durga puja was coming up soon, and my host was explicit about being careful not to draw attention around police on the streets, as since they weren't getting any sort of Durga Puja Bonus (kind of like a christmas bonus) than they squeeze it out of anyone they harass. And in India its not necessarily always the case where they're greedy and wanting more (though certainly there is some of that) but also that income and support is low enough that alot of that happens merely for survival.

This also leads to a culture where people don't seek out these jobs and positions out of any sort of civil pride or patriotism, but rather just because these jobs give people enough power to take what they need to get by. Dowry culture is still endemic to Indian society, and Indian Civil Servants are starting to auction off their marriage to the highest bidder, which only further emboldens these awful trends. Some states like U.P. make their civil servants take an oath that they won't engage in the practice, but given the joke that is the rule of law in that nation you can imagine how effective that is, especially in an area where Hindutva cultural and politics are the norm.

You also don't see a lot of support for positive change among high level officials. In Kolkata, there was a rash of gangrapings and murders in the outlying villages, to the point where there was street protests in Kolkata and the villages. This was during an election year, so rather than kicking up an uproar by trying to address the problems the Chief Minister of West Bengal said anyone complaining about the rapings were communists and pornographers, with the newspaper publishing reports of party thugs sent to harass some of the protest organizers in the village. One of them was a teacher of one of the girls who had been raped and murdered, and for his involvement he had his job threatened. You also have incidents like with Narendra Modi and the Gujarat riots in '02 and Rajiv Ghandi and the mass Sikh killings back in '84, when communities have their leaders in power, there is a tendency to ignore mass violence and rioting among other communities, which only emboldens the perpetrators because they know there will be no consequences. In my first night in India I was sitting in an airport and the first newspaper article I saw was about a dalit community having to evacuate all of their female relatives to distant family members out of (justified) fears that police forces would continue to not intervene with the riots and home raids after a brahman girl eloped with a dalit boy. Rule of law really is a farce there.

And the lack of rule of law removes any power for the populace to enact change at the ballot box. There was an anti-corruption movement roughly 1-2 years ago, but it was arguably as effective as the Occupy movement here was. In many districts the voting problems are similar to what we saw in early American politics, where gangs will outright steal ballot boxes. Late last summer I remember my tabla teacher asking to reschedule one of our lessons seeing as that day was an election day in his village, and his wife didn't want him leaving the house because of roving gangs. There system is riddled with the worst aspects of machine politics.

I used to be very idealistic and hopeful about India's future, but after spending half a year there and following its news rather than its history, I've become increasingly despondent. What should we do is certainly a question, but I think more importantly we also have to ask what can we do? Laws have been put on the books to try and abolish outmoded cultural practices, but the effect is slow when it is at all perceptible. Marriage laws have been liberalized, caste has been "legally" abolished, there are affirmative action protocols in place to try and breath strength into the dalit community. But like I mentioned earlier, you still see communal riots and violence when brahmans and dalits dare to intermarry. And in truth the ascendancy of democracy has even aggravated some caste issues, as they have essentially turned into voting blocks, giving a new incentive to enforce endogamy among the jatis as they try to consolidate wealth in such an unstable country with such rampant inequality.

Like I said, I don't know what can be done. In my humble opinion though, these things need to be addressed, some of them more aggressively than others.
*The gender population disparity
*The persistent dowry culture
*The panchayat system of village council governance
*The lack of support for police officers and civil servants at the bottom level of bureaucracy
*Land reform
*Public health and birth control
*Childhood marriage, which even though its illegal is still an issue. And even when its not sub-18y.o children, women are encouraged to marry at a very early age.

and honestly the biggest one which impacts all of the others

*Standard of living

Miltank posted:

Typo posted:
The Caste system was largely obsolete in many parts of India (like the Punjab) by the 19th century, then the British came in and essentially reinstalled it.

Considering the fact that it largely ingrained into the public consciousness by colonialism there is nothing impossible about removing it.

You are going to need to give a source for this.

Seconding this request

Yiggy fucked around with this message at 11:19 on Mar 12, 2014

# ¿ Mar 11, 2014 05:42

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 21:18

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

OwlBot 2000 posted:

What part of Indian economic history do you wish to discuss? The landlord class, empowered by the British to collect taxes, were historically very important and many families remain in power post-independence.

The British didn't create the zamindar system, the Mughals did. Largely based on the already pre-existing jatis who were in control of their respective areas. The British were more following a path of least resistance by carrying over the Mughal system of tax collection. That these families remain in power post-independence is rooted in the self-same problems endemic to every aspect of the jajmani system and how endogamous jatis work, combined with the realities of a democratic system.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2014 07:00

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

OwlBot 2000 posted:

Duly noted, thanks for the correction. In any case, the British used them and had some sway over land taxes and so forth and could therefore force people into manufacturing by making farming too expensive.

Forgive me but I'm not sure which direction you're going with this. To clarify my thinking I'm responding to the notion that power should be wrested from these families because the British gave it to them (please correct me at any point, I'm not going for gotchas or anything). By drawing attention to the fact that its not really the British that did this, and ultimately not even the Mughals, I'm trying to bring attention to the fact that this is also something spilling out of millenia of jati politics and power struggle.

So that from here...

OwlBot 2000 posted:

If one group possesses disproportionate control over resources, political power and wealth, and it is not to everyone's benefit, then that issue should be addressed regardless of who wronged whom in the past -- especially if that group will likely be intransigent in the face of reform. Morality doesn't enter into it.

When we look at it from this standpoint, of addressing the situation, you can't get around the issue that as things are today the possession and disproportionate control over resources is actually further entrenched by the democratic process and voting. The old landowner jatis have actually lost power to the landworking jatis (as an example, the Yadav's in the U.P/Bihar region) out of sheer force of numbers and voting.

Its not a simple issue. We see some land reform, but only in as much as it has changed control from certain jatis to others. This hands us a mixed bag, while lower caste jatis like the Yadav's have enjoyed political ascendancy, its not out of some desire for the greater good. They become just as politically entrenched and go on to resist any sort of land reform that doesn't benefit their families.

So to go back to this...

quote:

that issue should be addressed regardless of who wronged whom in the past

There are not really many good ways to address that issue, because while it is in many ways unhappy, it is a valid result of a democratic process.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2014 07:15

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

OwlBot 2000 posted:

If that is the outcome of a valid democratic process then there's something wrong with the process or its starting conditions; in my opinion the democratic process is in India (as it is elsewhere) very easy to manipulate through control of capital, and these same groups are able to rig democratic processes in their favor. How valid is that?

While you certainly see manipulation through control of capital, a lot of these consequences are not the result of that but rather through the manipulation of jati voting blocks as well as the history & dynamics of the jajmani system. While we may not like the results of it, as long as life in India is so heavily influenced by the success and purity of endogamous extended families, and as long as the individuals of these families are allowed to vote democratically, you are not going to find an easy solution. And when you want to start imposing solutions from outside whenever you don't like the result of their democratic process, you're on dangerous ground.

Edit: And I'm not arguing that we can't find problems with India and the validity of its democracy, but if your solution is just redistribution you are naive to certain realities of Indian history and cultural life. Because there will be another consolidation as long as the caste system is the way it is.

Yiggy fucked around with this message at 07:36 on Mar 11, 2014

# ¿ Mar 11, 2014 07:33

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

OwlBot 2000 posted:

I'd really like some honest but optimistic perspectives on India.

I'm less optimistic than I used to be, but my thinking is that it will slowly improve over the course of another 200 years or so. American democracy was pretty ugly in the 19th century too, its not unreasonable to imagine India going through some of the same problems as their democracy matures. Things like their longstanding enmity with Pakistan are definitely a distraction and slow down this progress though.

My reasoning for thinking this are as follows:
*In the cities, you are seeing a gradual weakening of ties among large, endogamous extended families and an increasing emphasis on the nuclear family. I think that as material condition improves, Indians will continue to balk at the lack of agency that endogamous jatis with strict control from by family elders allows.

*The proliferation of cell phones has inserted an element of privacy that has never existed in many areas of Indian life.

*Girls and women are hungry for education, even if avenues for it and cultural support are still lagging. While in Kolkata, one story I remember seeing in the newspapers showed both sides of this, though one side is quite ugly. A 17 or 18 year old girl's parents had arranged a marriage for her, but she did not want to marry so young and preferred to continue her studies, and so willfully skipped out on one of her prenuptial ceremonies. This is an increasing trend among her age group. The ugly side of it, however, was that out of anger her step-mother doused her in cooking oil and set her on fire, which is also an ugly trend and way that women have been kept in line for a long time. That said, in the cities there are more and more fathers who value their daughters future. Some of this is out of genuine interest, but some of it is also because it'll fetch them a better husband and a lower bride-price. Its a fair bit of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons for a lot of Indian families, but the result is a greater demand for female education into later ages.

*An increasing presence of women centric and girl centric media in bollywood and other regional film industries. Last year there was a Bengali film that came out called Girlfriends/Ami Aar Amar Girlfriends. It was essentially a girl buddy film. While this may seem like a tiny thing, it was one of the first movies of its kind in Bengali film. It created some uproar among conservatives and apparently risked running into problems with the standards board, but ultimately it was released and the director (a profession that has a weird level of respect that in some ways surpasses the respect we have for film makers in our own culture) was in the media around its release pushing for awareness of women's lives, women's issues and the importance of women's space. The counterpoint to this is that other areas of the Indian film industry perpetuate old fashioned, conservative ideals of women. Almost every film has a highly stereotyped love interest story where the female is expected to adhere closely to a conservative vision of female behavior, with maybe a foil role of vamp/vixen in the more risque films.

Those are a few things, if I sat some more I might be able to come up with another two or three. But, its a few small, gradual changes to park any sort of hope on. If we do see progress, I expect it to be slow. And they'll have to pass through their rough patch they've been in.

Vermain posted:

Barring some kind of weird hypothetical scenario, what is the best "obvious" way forwards for India? A stronger central government with a greater commitment to national prosperity? Increasing professionalism in the legislature? Economic reform?

A stronger central government is crucial. The Indian political system has an incredibly weak center. This was almost a necessity since its inception was out of culturally distinct nation-states and language zones coming together, but it has hindered progress certainly. Its origins were akin to what it would be like turning Europe into a single nation. Even as merely an economic zone, you see the EU having struggles with how to deal with the problems of its member states from the center. Imagine that spreading to every facet of life besides economic and you can understand some of India's difficulties.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2014 06:36

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

ronya posted:

Do you think it would centralize under a Hindi language bureaucracy, or English? My sense is that a lot of pan-Indian corporations use English internally. Is the BJP's pro-business alignment more important to them than linguistic chauvinism?

I think English has a slightly better chance just because there is such a visceral reaction against Hindi language in so many states. Some of this is no doubt a hold over of the rancor of the language politics of the 50's & 60's, so maybe that'll change once that generation dies off, but I see no guarantees. Especially since several states have been able to conduct business for so long with their regional languages. That said, the proliferation of Hindi film and media in Bollywood has exposed a lot more people to the language and lowered their resistance to it, even in areas that have their own well-established regional language film industries.

This last bit is more anecdotal, but I spent a good bit of time studying Hindi in anticipation of living a short stent in India, but ended up in West Bengal rather than Delhi. My Hindi did me very little favors while I was there, and I had a much easier time finding other English speakers, even if their English was as poor as my Hindi was. There were a few people in my life there whom I could only communicate with in Hindi, but it was definitely the minority. There was no interest or desire for many Bangla speakers to learn Hindi, but there were strong economic incentives for learning English.

As for the last part, I'm not always so sure about the BJP and Hindutva politics. Being pro-business is certainly important, but the BJP's base is in regions and areas where that is still much less relevant; the rural North, etc.

Yiggy fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Mar 12, 2014

# ¿ Mar 12, 2014 06:52

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

ronya posted:

Interesting! Well, state regional languages of government are one thing, but what are the economic incentives for English in the north like? The federal govt and professions still use English widely, but I don't know about office work etc.

I can't imagine they're too great right now since it is so heavily rural, village and agriculturally based. I can't speak well to office culture. Kolkata seemed to be kind of like the Detroit of India, and that was the only place I went. All of the middle class Indians I encountered and in the higher class retail outlets I interacted with there were English speakers, but almost none of the day-to-day storekeepers and street vendors spoke it. I lived near Jadavpur University though and the students in the neighborhood all seemed to speak a little English. One of the families I interacted with most regularly had zero English speakers, except for one of the sons who was enrolled at University.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2014 07:03

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Regardless of how you feel about the threads premise, the notion that the caste system is basically the same thing as our own class problems is so woefully ignorant that it seriously hurts your credibility and your strident, high-handed dismissal of OwlBot 2000, as much as I've disagreed with his insistence on outside intervention of Indian society and the proposal of Stalinism minus Stalin.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2014 08:14

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Seriously dude, there actually has been some attempts at good faith discussion on that but you're in such a hurry to poo poo on the thread with your snark you aren't really looking to seriously engage.

The gang rape problem goes hand and hand with the lack of rule of law and the drastic gender population disparity. If there was actually a supported police force, and an effective judiciary it could begin to be addressed from the rule of law side. As for the gender disparities, the dowry issue has to be addressed as well as, yes, education of women (as much as you sneer at the idea) to increase their value to families so they're not viewed solely as a cost rather than an assett, which is sadly the case in many Indian villages where the practice of dowry is even more pernicious.

There can be discussion on this if we're not in such a hurry to vomit on the thread and then feel self-satisfied about it. I'm only repeating things already said, but in your rush to display an aggrieved umbrage it's not a surprise that you're not reading things too closely.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2014 17:29

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Brannock posted:

I was under the impression that India's urban areas were just as severely suffering from rapes, corruption, and pollution as the rural areas were. Am I mistaken?

It's really bad in certain villages, but it's also an issue in the cities, yes. I got depressed reading the newspapers and stopped after awhile, but I'd see stories of students getting pulled into Autorickshaws walking home in the evening, another story of an American national in Delhi being kidnapped by the crew of a goods carriage truck.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2014 18:53

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Anarkii posted:

Holy poo poo, are you real? Our higher education system is so far better than anything in US/Europe that such comments are ridiculous.

Business Standard posted:

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After ranking, reputation of Indian institutes takes a beating
IITs & IISc do not figure in the latest Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings
3/6/14

The Times Higher Education's World Reputation Rankings 2014 saw Harvard University taking the first place, followed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, University of Cambridge and University of Oxford being ranked second, third, fourth and fifth, respectively. In the Asia-Pacific region, Australia loses ground with now five top 100 representatives in 2014, down from six in 2013.

...

While Times Higher Education Rankings does not rank institutions below 100, it has revealed that the Indian Institute of Science continues to be the most highly rated university in India, though it has seen its position drop from around 130th place to just below 200 in the world. IIT Bombay has also dropped to the 210-220 group, while IIT, Delhi and IIT, Kanpur both now feature just below 250th position in the world.

The Times of India posted:

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Poor quality of higher education a concern: Jamir
2/26/14

BHUBANESWAR: Governor and chancellor of state universities SC Jamir on Tuesday expressed concern over the poor quality of higher education in the country.

"Quality of education in our universities is obviously an area in which our higher education system lags behind. It is quite disheartening that none of the Indian universities finds a place in the top 200 universities in the world," the governor said, while addressing the 88th All-India Vice-chancellors' Conference at KIIT University. Over 500 VCs and university administrators are attending the three-day meet.

Jamir said if rankings and grading were any indictor of quality, Indian institutes of higher learning had a long way to go. "Expansion without quality improvement serves little purpose. We have to place more emphasis on quality," he said.

Saying shortage of quality teachers was a big problem, the chancellor asked the VCs to think about ways and means to address the issue. Jamir emphasized on moral education and said the VCs should strive to inculcate moral values among faculty members, students and staff. Jamir said the universities should focus more on research and promote an environment conducive to creativity and innovation.

The Daily Mail India posted:

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PM's woe over higher education as he admits 'it has hit a new low'

2/5/13

With Indian universities repeatedly failing to figure among the top 200 educational institutions of the world, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh acknowledged in a candid speech that the quality of higher education in India leaves much to be desired.

Calling for an "over-riding emphasis on quality" at the conference of vice chancellors of central universities organised by President Pranab Mukherjee at Rashtrapati Bhavan, Singh admitted that the unprecedented growth in higher education could be happening without any commensurate improvement in quality.

"We must recognise that too many of our higher educational institutions are simply not up to the mark.

"Too many of them have simply not kept abreast with the rapid changes that have taken place in the world around us in recent years, still producing graduates in subjects that the job market no longer requires," he said.

"It is a sobering thought for us that not one Indian university figures in the top 200 universities of the world today."

Human resource development minister M.M. Pallam Raju, minister of state for HRD Shashi Tharoor, and National Innovation Council head Sam Pitroda were present at the conference, as well as 40 vice-chancellors of central universities.

The PM was not the only critic of the higher education system at the meeting. Mukherjee, too, observed that the standard of higher education was declining in the country.

Last year, India was the only BRICS nation that did not have a single university among the top 200 on the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) list - the most reputed global rankings of institutes for higher education.
The performance was no different in the World University Rankings published by Times Higher Education.

Despite widespread criticism, the HRD ministry (then under Kapil Sibal), along with premier institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), had dismissed the rankings saying their assessment parameters were irrelevant in the Indian context.

For the PM, however, the rankings are a wake-up call. Pointing out flaws such as "unnecessary rigidity" in the higher education system, Singh said it is high time that central institutions took the lead in changing this.
The heads of central universities later brainstormed on improving the quality of faculty, effective use of the National Knowledge Network and improvement of the visitor-university interface.

"What the PM has said is absolutely correct. Most of us who have observed changes in the higher education sector over past five to seven years have also been saying the same thing. But my question is, what are we doing about this situation?" asked former Indian Institute of Science (IISc) director Goverdhan Mehta.

According to Sanjay Dhande, former director of IIT-Kanpur, introducing a system of accountability is the only way things could change for the better.

"There is a lot of inertia in academia at present and accountability of educational institutions to the government and society is very weak," he said, adding that change will come only with accountability.

The Economic Times Blogs posted:

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Transparency for a Change in Higher Education
8/31/12

Indian higher education system has expanded at a break-neck speed. Nearly 20,000 colleges were added between 2000-01 and 2010-11 and the number of students enrolled doubled from nearly 8.4 million to 17 million in this decade, according to the University Grants Commission (UGC).

However, this much needed expansion came at the expense of quality. The number of seats remaining vacant in some disciplines like engineering, underemployment and unemployment among educated youth and incessant desire to collect more degrees for advancing career are some of the indicators of the inadequate quality of education imparted. In addition, we continue to hear cases of malpractices and corruption among regulators and institutions in compromising standards.

Minister Kapil Sibal has attempted to bring a change by proposing a dozen legislative bills including The Higher Education and Research Bill, 2011 and The Prohibition of Unfair Practices in Educational Institutions, 2010. Unfortunately, most are still far from seeing the light of the day. Even if they get enacted, I do not see major qualitative changes in Indian higher education. The reason is that they are still not addressing the fundamental weakness of the system�lack of transparency.

The policy reform directions are seriously limited by its political approach of using control as the way of assuring quality rather than using transparency for empowering students and fostering competition.

One specific recommendation to achieve goals of transparency is to mandate high standards of data disclosures by institutions on institutional performance and feed this data to an easy-to-use national database for students to make informed choice.

...

In contrast, there is no availability of parallel information of institutional performance for higher education institutions. This results in all sorts of academic, financial, regulatory and marketing malpractices.

The Economist posted:

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A Billion Brains
A better education system calls for more than money
9/29/12

CLIP ON A harness, lift your legs and hurtle down a wire towards the sharp corners of a 15th-century Rajasthani fort. As you whizz, you might have a few niggling doubts. Was the zip-wire serviced by someone who knew what he was doing? Is the safety adviser any good? Who is trained in first aid?

Fortunately the staff in Neemrana, a tourist spot some 130km south-west of Delhi, are on the ball. Raj Kumar, the lead instructor of Flying Fox, has an impressive (if not entirely relevant) qualification as a Master of Philosophy in ancient Indian history. �I had planned to do my PhD, but this opportunity came along,� he says. The outfit�s British owner-manager, Jonathan Walter, explains that getting and keeping reliable workers is his greatest headache. The problem is not so much the onerous labour laws but finding skilled people. To deal with foreigners his staff need good English; for Indian customers they need social skills to cajole the reluctant into the walk up the hill.

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that skilled workers are becoming scarce. The man in charge of building a university, also in Neemrana, says he had extreme difficulty recruiting the ten types of masons he needed to work on his campus. A manager overseeing hotel construction near Delhi�s airport says good plumbers, carpenters and electricians are like gold-dust.

A survey by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors estimates that in 2010 India had just over 500,000 civil engineers when it needed nearly 4m, and 45,000 architects when it needed 366,000. It predicts that by 2020 the cumulative shortfall of core professionals involved in the building trade could be in the tens of millions.

The shortages extend far beyond the construction industry. The editor of a new magazine, the Caravan, says finding skilled staff is next to impossible because local education is �extremely bad�. A manufacturer moans that even if you find capable staff, they quickly flit off to the next job.

Even some low-skilled labour is in short supply. An agent in Chandigarh for an engineering company says that sales of tractors, rice transplanters and harvesters are booming in Punjab because fewer casual labourers are migrating from Bihar. Even poorer farmers now buy machines to share.

Generally, though, the shortage is of people who are literate, trained and ready to work. The basics are improving. The national literacy rate is up from 52% in 1991 to 74%, according to the census. But gains beyond that are coming far too slowly.

...

Found wanting

Education in engineering, for example, supposedly a great Indian strength, is not what it might be. The country produces over 500,000 engineering graduates a year. Aspiring Minds, a Gurgaon-based company that assesses students� employability, surveyed 55,000 of them last year and found that not even 3% were ready to be taken on by IT firms without extra training. And even identifying people for further training might not be easy. According to the survey only 17% of the graduates had basic skills. Some 92% of the graduates were deficient in programming or algorithms, 78% struggled in English and 56% lacked analytical skills. �There is a long way to go before engineering graduates in India become employable,� the survey concluded.

That sounds glum�until you realise that it also means India produces around 100,000 engineering graduates a year who could soon be working in its IT firms and beyond. Some pockets of higher education work well, notably the publicly run institutes of technology and of management, on the back of which the country�s IT sector flourishes.

...

Yiggy fucked around with this message at 13:28 on Mar 14, 2014

# ¿ Mar 14, 2014 13:15

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

ronya posted:

Indian universities are comparatively much worse at research or undergraduate education, but I am not really sure either of those are actually appropriate for a situation like India, which needs to process vast amounts of students with comparatively little resources.

If the goal is to rubber stamp their students, than sure, they've certainly built the capacity to do that. But when they've tried to tailor their economy and growth around high skilled workers, it matters that their university system is failing to effectively train their workers for this sort of niche and that employers are having difficult times finding competent staff.

This is another op-ed I found which speaks to this problem, most relevant parts bolded.

NYTimes Op-Ed posted:

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Why India�s Economy Is Stumbling
By ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN
8/31/13

WASHINGTON � FOR the past three decades, the Indian economy has grown impressively, at an average annual rate of 6.4 percent. From 2002 to 2011, when the average rate was 7.7 percent, India seemed to be closing in on China � unstoppable, and engaged in a second �tryst with destiny,� to borrow Jawaharlal Nehru�s phrase. The economic potential of its vast population, expected to be the world�s largest by the middle of the next decade, appeared to be unleashed as India jettisoned the stifling central planning and economic controls bequeathed it by Mr. Nehru and the nation�s other socialist founders.

But India�s self-confidence has been shaken. Growth has slowed to 4.4 percent a year; the rupee is in free fall, resulting in higher prices for imported goods; and the specter of a potential crisis, brought on by rising inflation and crippling budget deficits, looms.

To some extent, India has been just another victim of the ebb and flow of global finance, which it embraced too enthusiastically. The threat (or promise) of tighter monetary policies at the Federal Reserve and a resurgent American economy threaten to suck capital, and economic dynamism, out of many emerging-market economies.

But India�s problems have deep and stubborn origins of the country�s own making.

The current government, which took office in 2004, has made two fundamental errors. First, it assumed that growth was on autopilot and failed to address serious structural problems. Second, flush with revenues, it began major redistribution programs, neglecting their consequences: higher fiscal and trade deficits.

Structural problems were inherent in India�s unusual model of economic development, which relied on a limited pool of skilled labor rather than an abundant supply of cheap, unskilled, semiliterate labor. This meant that India specialized in call centers, writing software for European companies and providing back-office services for American health insurers and law firms and the like, rather than in a manufacturing model. Other economies that have developed successfully � Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea and China � relied in their early years on manufacturing, which provided more jobs for the poor.

Two decades of double-digit growth in pay for skilled labor have caused wages to rise and have chipped away at India�s competitive advantage. Countries like the Philippines have emerged as attractive alternatives for outsourcing. India�s higher-education system is not generating enough talent to meet the demand for higher skills. Worst of all, India is failing to make full use of the estimated one million low-skilled workers who enter the job market every month.

Manufacturing requires transparent rules and reliable infrastructure. India is deficient in both. High-profile scandals over the allocation of mobile broadband spectrum, coal and land have undermined confidence in the government. If land cannot be easily acquired and coal supplies easily guaranteed, the private sector will shy away from investing in the power grid. Irregular electricity holds back investments in factories.

India�s panoply of regulations, including inflexible labor laws, discourages companies from expanding. As they grow, large Indian businesses prefer to substitute machines for unskilled labor. During China�s three-decade boom (1978-2010), manufacturing accounted for about 34 percent of China�s economy. In India, this number peaked at 17 percent in 1995 and is now around 14 percent.

In fairness, poverty has sharply declined over the last three decades, to about 20 percent from around 50 percent. But since the greatest beneficiaries were the highly skilled and talented, the Indian public has demanded that growth be more inclusive. Democratic and competitive politics have compelled politicians to address this challenge, and revenues from buoyant growth provided the means to do so.

Thus, India provided guarantees of rural employment and kept up subsidies to the poor for food, power, fuel and fertilizer. The subsidies consume as much as 2.7 percent of gross domestic product, but corruption and inefficient administration have meant that the most needy often don�t reap the benefits.

Meanwhile, rural subsidies have pushed up wages, contributing to double-digit inflation. India�s fiscal deficit amounts to about 9 percent of gross domestic product (compared with structural deficits of around 2.5 percent in the United States and 1.9 percent in the European Union). To hedge against inflation and general uncertainty, consumers have furiously acquired gold, rendering the country reliant on foreign capital to finance its trade deficit.

Economic stability can be restored through major reforms to cut inefficient spending and raise taxes, thereby pruning the deficit and taming inflation. The economist Raghuram G. Rajan, who just left the University of Chicago to run India�s central bank, has his work cut out for him. So do Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, also an economist, and the governing party, the Indian National Congress. These steps need not come at the expense of the poor. For example, India is implementing an ambitious biometric identification scheme that will allow targeted cash transfers to replace inefficient welfare programs.

India can still become a manufacturing powerhouse, if it makes major upgrades to its roads, ports and power systems and reforms its labor laws and business regulations. But the country is in pre-election mode until early next year. Elections increase pressures to spend and delay reform. So India�s weakness and turbulence may persist for some time yet.

Arvind Subramanian, a senior fellow at both the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Center for Global Development, is the author of �Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China�s Economic Dominance.�

# ¿ Mar 14, 2014 13:43

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

ronya posted:

As a warning, let me point out that this forum of (largely) Americans is liable to interpret the "we can't find trained workers domestically" claim in the American frame, i.e., in the context of a society with 99% literacy and very high internal labour mobility, and considerable political agitation over skilled guest worker labour. So they do not find the claim persuasive, even in the context of other countries. Such is the luxury of being a superpower.

Myself, I would point to the prevalence of rote assessment and endemic cheating, particularly outside of the handful of top colleges, the highly obscurantist governance/funding practices of Indian higher ed institutions, the extremely dubious proliferation of quasi-private colleges in an education-industry environment with extremely weak and corrupt regulation, etc.

Churning out semi-skilled workers who can speak English and follow fixed instructions is not exactly ideal as outcomes go, for higher ed investment, but to be frank India is not investing very much in that higher ed anyway. And the answer to "but this would not work for a model that requires a pool of skilled labour" is "that model was wrong anyway; you need to mobilize your half of your labour force still stuck in agriculture, not coddle your small bourgeoisie".

I would tend to agree with all of that.

I'd also note that I don't want to completely condemn the approach so far they've taken to education, which is to greatly expand capacity and infrastructure with building more Universities. I just don't think thats enough, and I wouldn't assume that many Indians think so either, a lot of those quotes I found in one of my posts above were from Indian press and Indian politicians.

Furthermore, all of that building and construction is employing lower-skilled Indians, and so in that regard is definitely a good thing.

But, as that op-ed noted, a lot of the criticism to problems of Indian education (and really, India in general... the Khobrogade incident encapsulated this neatly...) prompts a reflexive stubbornness, and I think that is certainly reflected in this thread when part of a native Indian's first reaction is to tell us we're all high, and that their education system surpasses both the US and UK (though to be fair he credits the same problems with corruption that most of us have been harping on).

Now on one level I certainly empathize with his defense of India, I love it too, and some of the criticisms in this thread are a little shallow and off base. But certainly not all of them. I just think part of caring about India involves recognizing the faults with the beauty. We could absolutely argue all day about how hosed up the US is on different fronts, but there are like twenty other threads with that covered.

Yiggy fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Mar 14, 2014

# ¿ Mar 14, 2014 14:26

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

The way NPR reported it presented it as a referendum on the congress party as if they've just now fallen from power, but I don't know how much I agree with that. I feel like our press is trying to understand the Indian political situation through the only lens and narrative it knows; a two party system. But Congress has been weak and flagging for some time, and have only been able to participate in governance as part of a coalition government since the 90's. As far as I'm concerned the shellacking of the ICP has been going on since the death of Rajiv Gandhi and the parties attachment to (weak!) dynasty with the following of Sonia Gandhi, which obviously never inspired confidence or caused the public to rally its support in any meaningful way.

# ¿ May 17, 2014 02:18

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 21:18

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Torka posted:

So it's similar to a person here being offered a couple thousand dollars in cash to vote a certain way. Can't deny I'd have been tempted during my more broke periods.

More like a couple hundred perhaps, but yeah the money goes farther over there and they're all poor as hell. Edit: For a rough gauge, in Kolkata 3000 rupees a month was enough to have a family cook and deliver two meals a day. You could probably walk down to the corner and pick up all your meals from a street vendor for ~700 for the month, less balanced meals though. I think I remember reading a news story at one point about a chai wallah and his family living off of ~8000 rupees a month. Thats what Narendra Modi and his family's business was before he got into politics, to sort of frame the rags to riches story that inspired voters and put some wind into Modi's sails.

Yiggy fucked around with this message at 17:27 on May 17, 2014

# ¿ May 17, 2014 17:10

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > What should be done about India?