[HN Gopher] India has spent a decade wasting the potential of it...
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India has spent a decade wasting the potential of its young
population
Author : amrrs
Score : 11 points
Date : 2021-12-25 20:43 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (qz.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (qz.com)
| mercy_dude wrote:
| The real problem of India is bureaucratic corruption. Basically
| bureaucrats hold so much power and control in Indian government
| and the sheer size of it (central, provincial and local)
| corruption is deeply embedded in it.
|
| And their answer to basic inefficiency and ineptness is -
| imperialism. A lot of Indians still see imperialism as the reason
| why millions of people in their country still living without
| electricity or basic sanitation. It's funny I was talking to my
| uncle the other day and he was pointing out how many railway
| lines in rural India had basically zero upgrades since the
| British left. Politicians across the board are all corrupt and
| inept.
|
| Well here is a new kind of imperialism. Thousands of smart and
| wealthy Indians emigrate every year. What would take the west
| millions of dollars to produce and retain such talents, they get
| it for free. Why rule India when you can just get the wealth
| transfer indirectly. Look at all the F50 CEOs.
| rektide wrote:
| This feels like it happens again and again and again across the
| world. The middle east has been well underway in this crisis for
| a while now. Spain has had similar issues. It feels like a top
| issue- the most basic part of the social contract: a society that
| has to want & involve new generations. Without having on ramps
| for the upcoming generations, society, socialization, the ways of
| life cannot be sustained.
|
| My general disposition is that very few nations have done a good
| job of giving youth access to use their potential. The
| future/present feels perenially squandered on those already here.
| srvmshr wrote:
| To understand this, we have to know how India failed in properly
| training/educating & instilling core democratic values for a
| whole generation. Here are some connected observations:
|
| About two decades ago, rapid globalisation opened up the Indian
| market. The kids coming out of the education system were fluent
| in reading & written English (We can thank the Macaulay plan in
| late 1800s for that). The world was moving towards
| interconnectivity. The government gave its blessing by allowing
| setting up of thousands of IT training colleges to feed the
| global markets. It was seizing on the strengths of language &
| communication abilities vis-a-vis other Asian countries. By
| 2007-08, close to 200 engineering colleges were operating in each
| Indian state in addition to the state universities. This created
| a great boom for forex, rapid social mobility & better living
| standards as compared to the 80s.
|
| In parallel, other educational disciplines however suffered
| greatly. If 10 million kids were seeking admission to IT &
| engineering as first preference, the not-so-fortunate ones were
| mostly left to seek out arts & commerce streams. Government-
| sponsored research remained laggard without any new scientific
| agency. IITs, the flagship of Indian tech education were diluted
| to accommodate more students, yet funding remained at best
| constant for IISc & TIFR, the flagship institutions of basic
| sciences. This was a shortsighted move. The IT wave should have
| created wealth that could be channeled to improve the education
| standards across the board & fund more research. Indian education
| system completely missed this memo - as a result of which
| Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand will eat their lunch in coming
| years. The IT education/training today itself has significant
| variance, which has lowered industry trust in their capabilities.
| The vagaries of oversupply [1]
|
| India has created an army of IT professionals but not invested in
| making quality scientists or researchers. The ones who do,
| eventually seek greener pastures in developed countries. They
| will have to depend on R&D done in US/EU to serve their long term
| goals in the years to come. This is the exact model China
| observed and learned to avoid. They invested in research, lured
| back a lot of their talented researchers & computer scientists.
| They built up a industry with strong foundations. The current AI
| boom in Chinese economy is completely home-grown & self-
| sustained. As an expat it pains me to see this glaring miss.
|
| In tandem, people have become increasingly frustrated with the
| rapid unsustainable urbanization (in cities such as Hyderabad &
| Bangalore). I disagree somewhat with other comments regarding
| governance: People are joining civil services out of a mission to
| change the status-quo. The young turks now are better than the
| generation before them. They are computer savvy, from educated
| households, less corrupt and more tolerant to class & caste
| divides. But the lumbering bureaucratic machinery is too slow to
| cater to rapidly changing socioeconomic definitions. A
| significant chunk of India's demographics is young working
| population. Opportunities to work in offshore IT position or
| meteoric salary growth reminiscent of dotcom-era are dwindling
| steadily. Discontents have given rise to social tensions &
| intolerance.
|
| Added to that mix is the local politics which has polarized
| people on the basis of religion & indoctrinated them to some
| degree to be either be pro-Hindu or anti-Ruling party. Secularism
| is a dangerous and disbelieved term. Our society has missed
| teaching valuable traits of tolerance, fact-finding and
| fraternity to the people running the show.
|
| It is a decade of missed opportunities
|
| 1. https://www.hackerearth.com/blog/talent-
| assessment/90-indian...
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(page generated 2021-12-25 23:01 UTC)