The Hindu Business Line : The knowledge gaps

The NASSCOM-sponsored study on the $40-billion outsourcing opportunity in engineering services is a timely reminder of the potential waiting to be tapped. There is no reason why India should not repeat the success that software industry initially and the Business Process Outsourcing industry later have achieved. For one, their success had already helped showcase India's vast and talented human resource pool. This was attested by the number of multinational corporations notably in the software and telecommunications industries that have established their research and development activities in India.

Of course, it is one thing to have the initial favourable conditions and quite another to be able to exploit it fully. For all the vast numbers that the country's education system throws up each year, industry has often complained of poor quality of the output. The students, however, are not to be blamed. Nor can one find fault with the educators though education has been reduced to a caricature of its true meaning with its emphasis at all levels on knowing rather than on genuine understanding. It is to do with the phenomenon of scarcity that confronts a student at every step. If a hundred students are competing for the 10 seats available in the kindergarten class, then the child, and, worse, parents too, get quizzed on such things as the identity of the Capital of Burkina Faso or the latest winner of the Olympic gold in free-style swimming, if only to make the selection process seem objective. Is it any wonder then that over the years, the entire education system has converted itself to imparting to the students, not true knowledge, but an ability to answer a whole range of academic trivia not dissimilar to the ones that get thrown at participants in a popular quiz programme on television? And, then, it is time for a reality check when these students enter the job market on completing their higher education.

A comprehensive revamp of the education system, welcome though it is, is not going to address the industry's requirements at this point of time. The knowledge gap in a graduating student's academic profile has to be filled here and now. The industry can, perhaps, play a role either as part of a pre-placement exercise while the student is pursuing higher education or even at a later date, upon graduation. But the enterprise runs the risk of losing the investment made on training the individual should he seek employment elsewhere. The tardy legal process and the difficulty of establishing such financial claims is a dampener. Creating a legal mechanism whereby such claims are recognised and adjudicated expeditiously is something that the Government can consider putting in place, in the interim.

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