Mood:  spacey

Is formal education really important to succeed in today’s world? You can be ambivalent on this issue trying to be different saying education is nothing more than getting through exams by any means without learning the art of survival. That is only partly true. It goes without saying that you need to learn the art of living irrespective of who you are -- a slumdog at Dharavi or Sushmita Sen’s neighbour at Colaba. Several of us might have this irresistible temptation to describe living as an art which is all about what god won’t ask you in Jannat when He is ready to serve you with 72 virgins. Being contended, many would say is about living life king size. Some would even say it’s just about being happy, probably through pranayam. Fiddle sticks!

The recent spate of news reports on how A.R. Rahman did not complete his school education just as Bill Gates was a school drop-out emphasize on the redundancy of formal education and insistence on street-smartness. There are tens of thousands of entrepreneurs in this country whose only talent has been to manage the government inspectors, while they raked in the moolah. For most of them Sita’s Kitchen would mean culinary delights. That does not mean that every illiterate entrepreneur can, as some top engineers from IIT Mumbai who have set up successful enterprises on brand design to making eco-friendly buckets to draw water from a stream say, make it in this wild, wild, wild, wild marketplace caught in middle of a biting recession.

There are tens of thousands from Gen X who are caught between their ambition looking at the way software engineers (at least till recently) earn their first salary in six figures and their own qualifications which leave much to be desired. Young boys hailing from Orissa, Haryana, Rajasthan, Bihar, Bengal and Kerala have swarmed Bangalore cityscape. But in the recent six months almost all of them have left for their hometown never to come back to Bangalore again. Their stay in Bangalore has made them adept at IT-related fringe jobs like data entry, Tally operations and chatting with girls abroad. Their language skills have developed to the extent of making Americans doubtful if their bank has outsourced the call centre jobs at all.

Every weekend trains from Bangalore City Junction take home a bunch of young boys and girls who have everything in them except for the educational qualifications that can catapult them to the next orbit. The inability to do so hugely takes a toll on their disposition as well as their morale. When young school drop-outs go on to take up odd jobs like guarding IT tech-parks later in life, and when they see their peers from metro cities driving their swanky cars with girl-friends in tow every morning, it snaps.

They blame everyone from parents, the lack of educational infrastructure and even their own regional language medium which by some strange logic is taught at the cost of English language proficiency. It is so heart-rending to see young boys talk ill of their parents for not having brought them up to the mark, of the loss of opportunities for leading a yuppie, pub-going lifestyle, the grind back home where nothing seems to have changed since they were born, and most of all, a system which smacks of parochialism when it comes to teaching English. Most youth in Bangalore who found themselves at the wrong end of the cleft stick were the first to leave the city when the depression set in. Even as they consumed cheap liquor which is so abundantly available in the city, they cannot help but point out the disparity to anyone who is willing to listen. To make matters worse, the age for making amends has far surpassed them which allows them to only wallow in self-pity.  

Once when then chief minister of Maharashtra Vasantdada Patil was asked to provide more budgetary allocation for education in the state, he told a thickly packed press conference at Mantralaya, “I have come up to this stage in public life without having any formal education. You get a status in life that is in your fate. Why is this insistence to spending so much on education when our farmers are in dire need of funds?!” For almost a minute the mediamen stood with jaws fallen, collecting their wits after the bureaucrats went on a damage-control immediately saying, education comes second only to agriculture.

Many would remember how concerned was Mukesh Ambani about his daughter taking the IAS exams. He actually kept away from his office for a few days to be with his daughter during the exams, and at the end of it he said he had become enough knowledgeable to pass the exams and choose his posting too. No one can question Mukesh's will power. That is the right kind of parent for the 21st Century.

A few Rahmans or Bill Gates might make a great Sunday newsfeature for the reading pleasure of the city-bred middle class which loves feel-good films like Slumdog Millionaire. But they are also the ones to jettison any attempts to reserve seats in IIT or IIM, as that would reduce the chances of their own children making it to the top rung in corporate hierarchy. But the problem is with the semi-urban and rural settings where people are still caught in the warp of time, who still refuse to see light of day and deprive their children of the prospects of a good life.

Even if our villages have started to become better in terms of per capita income and returns from investments in assets, the youth have no qualms in telling the truth. Gandhi’s philosophy of a self-contended village was given a decent burial by his own followers in Indian polity. To believe that children should be given only the bare minimum of education for their basic survival kills the spirit of modernity and undermines a country’s potential to overcome poverty and deprivation. No politician can be blamed for that, the common people amongst you and me should take it as a mission to establish the undeniable fact that the survival for our children does not have to do with learning to cook, identifying trees and how to clean up during periods, but with the ability to talk in American accent or punch two keys zero and one, or even better still as they do these days get to learn Java to attract enough jobs to withstand the worst recession of all time. In all probability, you belong to either one of them. So three cheers to formal education, though it is a wee bit late for us in India to praise the lord and await the Jannat.

Posted by Anil Nair at 9:16 PM

Updated: Saturday, 7 March 2009 8:15 PM

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Mood:  incredulous

Slumdog Millionaire winning eight Academy awards has to be seen in a different light than just plain and simple quality of movie-making. The US has always had a way of winning markets through other means than the obvious. Beyond the glitter and the glamour of winning the Oscar there seems to be a concerted effort on the part of the US to reach out to India. And it is not just India that is suddenly on US radar, and also it is not just because of the on-going conflict in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The changing equations in the newest world order were reflected in Hillary Clinton’s first trip abroad as Secretary of State which created history of sorts. Her comments on choosing to travel to Asia was telling: "I have come to Asia on my first trip as secretary of state to convey that America's relationships across the Pacific are indispensable to addressing the challenges and seizing the opportunities of the 21st century”.

If North Korea was up to its usual bellicose self threatening the world with even more nuclear tests, the situation in Afghan-Pakistan border is precarious with a bought-out peace deal with the Taliban. To add to all these woes is the looming economic crisis in the US which only gets worse with ever passing day. The Indian economy, by far has shown resilience with a 5%+ growth, even as industrial production showed signs of recovery last week. “The deficit in infrastructure in India makes any fear of depression look unwarranted. For example, in the first 50 years after Independence we have built only 11 kilometers of highway every year. The NDA government emphatically rode the infrastructure story and now it is unstoppable. The GDP growth can be perked up to comfortable levels just by developing infrastructure and allied activities”, said a participant at the recently-held Essar Steel infrastructure conclave in Mumbai.

Interestingly, speaker after speaker at the conclave spoke of the success mantra of Narendra Modi government in Gujarat. It was not just about politics of business which has made Modi popular; the quality power situation, tendering processes, single window clearances, friendly bureaucrats and department officials, co-ordination between various ministries, all-inclusive growth pattern and the overall conducive nature of governance in the state came for industry appreciation. The best examples of good governance were reflected in the facilitation of mega projects like ports and SEZs. It wasn't that the industry representatives were trying to curry favour with the Gujarat government by such effusive accolades. The appreciation for Modi was genuine as there was no government representative other than Kirit Parekh, member of Planning Commission on the dais.

But for the US, more than conflicts and flash points around the world the government is consumed by the economic slowdown and its effects on domestic jobs. If Japan has a zero per cent interest rate regime and still witness growth sluggishness, India with 8 per cent PLR has yet to show any major slump in economic activity. It is not that the situation is comfortable in India, it is simply that Indian growth story is quarantined from the world’s financial market mess. Software industry and sectors dependent on it like real estate have taken a body blow in the global meltdown. The decision of the government this week to build one million homes for the poor is yet another of those measures aimed at stalling fall in growth rate, but how much will finally see the light of day is anybody's guess. Unlike China, whose dependence on the world markets has made most of its export units languish in ruins even while tens of thousands of factory workers have been laid off, the recent spate of stimulus packages announced by the Indian government in response to the demands made by industry bear testimony to the fact that if growth story is intact, the next government at the Centre will have some leeway in introducing measures to help the small and medium enterprises sector. The small and medium sector is the one which is hardest hit by the recessionary trend. The government is yet to come up with a bail-out package that can assuage the fears of the sector, especially when liquidity has been sucked out. The small industry is still looking expectedly at a interest rate correction by the central bank. One factory manager in Thane-Belapur belt told this reporter that in the US “the stimulus package was delayed by four days and that somehow was considered a blemish in President Obama’s management skills. Here in India the government takes months for crucial decisions and Indian industry bears it all with a grin”.

The attraction of Indian markets is not lost on US investors and industry. Young, prospective property buyers recently swarmed an affordable housing exhibition in Mumbai that took the organizers by surprise, which only brings out the pent up demand to the fore. If the Academy Award goes to Slumdog Millionaire, the US is just sending the right message to India about its keenness to engage this billion plus market. To take it as a front for Hollywood-Bollywood alliances alone will be a mistake. More than film makers, it is the large number of film watchers in this country that the US is trying to befriend. Also, as it happened with Russia, Iran and Venezuela the US knows that India is a perfectly decent country to engage with. The economic might does not raise the hubris of this country.

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Posted by Anil Nair at 11:20 PM

Updated: Monday, 2 March 2009 4:44 PM

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Mood:  flirty

I am forced to reproduce this piece from the London Economist because, according to one friend, this is perhaps the most-read and most-circulated article in the journalist circles these days. That may not be credible but the writing, as London Economist is wont to, is incredibly insightful. Mark every word of it, it's gospel truth.

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PEOPLE love to mock the middle class. Its narrow-mindedness, complacency and conformism are the mother lode of material for sitcom writers and novelists. But Marx thought “the bourgeoisie…has played a most revolutionary part” in history. And although The Economist rarely sees eye to eye with the father of communism, on this Marx was right.

During the past 15 years a new middle class has sprung up in emerging markets, producing a silent revolution in human affairs—a revolution of wealth-creation and new aspirations. The change has been silent because its beneficiaries have gone about transforming countries unobtrusively while enjoying the fruits of success. But that success has been a product of growth. As growth collapses, the way the new middle class reacts to the thwarting of its expectations could change history in a direction that is still impossible to foresee.

The new middle consists of people with about a third of their income left for discretionary spending after providing basic food and shelter. They are neither rich, inheriting enough to escape the struggle for existence, nor poor, living from hand to mouth, or season to season. One of their most important characteristics is variety: middle-class people vary hugely by background, profession and income. As our special report in this week’s issue argues, their numbers do not grow gently, shadowing economic growth and rising 2%, or 5%, or 10% a year. At some point, they surge. That happened in China about ten years ago. It is happening in India now. In emerging markets as a whole, it has propelled the middle class from a third of the developing world’s population in 1990 to over half today. The developing world is no longer simply poor.

As people emerge into the middle class, they do not merely create a new market. They think and behave differently. They are more open-minded, more concerned about their children’s future, more influenced by abstract values than traditional mores. In the words of David Riesman, an American sociologist, their minds work like radar, taking in signals from near and far, not like a gyroscope, pivoting on a point. Ideologically they lean towards free markets and democracy, which tend to be better than other systems at balancing out varied and conflicting interests. A poll we commissioned for our special report on the middle class in the developing world finds that such people are happier, more optimistic and more supportive of democracy than are the poor.

These attitudes transform countries and economies. The middle class is more likely to invest in new products and new technologies than the rich, who tend to defend their existing assets. It is better able than the poor to leap barriers to entry into business and can therefore set up companies big enough to generate jobs. With its aspirations and capacity for delayed gratification, the middle class is more likely to invest in education and other sources of human capital, which are vital to prosperity. For years, policymakers have tied economic success to the rich (“trickle-down economics”) and to the poor (“inclusive growth”). But it is the middle class that is the real motor of economic growth.

Now the middle class everywhere is under a great threat. Its members have flourished in places and countries that have opened up to the world economy—the eastern seaboard of China, southern India, metropolitan Brazil. They are products of globalisation, and as globalisation goes into reverse they may well be hit harder than the rich or poor. They work in export industries, so their jobs are unsafe. They have started to borrow, so are hurt by the credit crunch. They have houses and shares, so their wealth is diminished by falling asset prices.

What will they do when the music stops?

Those at the bottom of the ladder do not have far to fall. But what happens if you have clambered up a few rungs, joined the new middle class and now face the prospect of slipping back into poverty? History suggests middle-class people can behave in radically different ways. The rising middle class of 19th-century Britain agitated peacefully for the vote; in Latin America in the 1990s the same sorts of people backed democracy. Yet the middle class also supported fascist governments in Europe in the 1930s and initially backed military juntas in Latin America in the 1980s.

Nobody can be sure what direction today’s new bourgeoisie of some 2.5 billion people will take if its aspirations are dashed. If the downturn lasts only a year or two the attitudes of such people may survive the pain of retrenchment. But a prolonged crash might well undo much of the progress the developing world has lately made towards democracy and political stability. It is hard to imagine the stakes being higher.

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Posted by Anil Nair at 10:37 AM

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