The Hindu Business Line : It’s a changing ball game

Like in cricket, this nation has a huge talent advantage — it needs persistence, good management and innovation to synergise its true potential to make the ‘Big Leap’ into the modern era. The last 60 years was just the prelude — the new innings starts now, says T. V. MOHANDAS PAI

In a country of a billion different views, cricket is a topic that connects — every aspect is debated and critiqued. Be it Mankad & Roy’s record 413 runs for the first wicket in 1956 or Kapil’s Devils lifting the Prudential World Cup in 1983 — Indian cricket has surely evolved over the last 60 years. Interestingly, I see a lot of parallels between the cricket saga and the changing face of the Indian talent pool. While Ranjitsinghji and Duleepsin ghji enthralled the crowds with their magical artistry on the cricket field, Indians started dreaming of being equal players on the world scene. Post Independence, India began dreaming big and became a beacon of hope for the suppressed and subjugated people of the world.

India realised that its salvation was in educating the people and building industrial infrastructure. Around that time, in 1951, the literacy rate in India was around 18 per cent. After taking over as the country’s first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru invested heavily in institutions of higher learning, creating the IITs, IIMs, CSIRs and the large public sector steel and engineering behemoths to lay a strong foundation for growth.

The focus on literacy, however, was still low. Even though the goal of free and compulsory education through the age of 14 was enshrined as a directive principle of India’s Constitution, it got less importance than higher education. In 1964, when Nehru passed away, India saw the emergence of a small but vocal educated class who form the bulwark of the middle-class today.

India recorded its first test win against England in 1952; in 1962 the team triumphed against England and New Zealand; and in 1971 it beat the West Indies and England.

The 1980s proved to be a decade where Indian cricket managed to make its presence felt, with the first test win against Australia in 1981. India won the World Cup in 1983 and suddenly the country was on the threshold of a brave new world, full of hope, youth and optimism. Confidence levels rose to a new high. On the education front, by 1981 the number of literates rose to 240 million from a low of 105 million 20 years before.

New vision

In 1984-85, Rajiv Gandhi announced a National Education Policy to modernise and expand higher education programmes. He gave new vision to India, of modern technology and a globalised future. Despite the hope, literacy climbed slowly to 52 per cent in 1991, with a more established higher educational infrastructure.

Rajiv Gandhi died young, but his dreams lived on giving rise to the foundation of the IT industry. From 1991 to 2007, IT exports grew from $50 million to $32 billion, riding on the educational infrastructure created earlier. Suddenly, the world noticed the IITs and IIMs and the capability of those who graduated from Indian educational institutions.

The IT revolution was a godsend to the educated middle-class, creating over 1.6 million high-paying jobs. Parents saw their children earn in the first year of work what they earned at the time of their retirement and the world saw a great change. Sachin, Rahul and Saurav made a formidable combination on the global cricketing arena. Policies of liberalisation and globalisation, starting from 1991, gave economic freedom to corporate India and led to a massive rise in opportunities.

Like one-day cricket stormed the bastion of the test format, globalisation of industry opened out oceans of opportunity for Indian talent. Professionalism and global best practices became part of the corporate culture in India.

Careers began to take on a new meaning — employment became employability. Human resources became Human Resources Development. Organisations moved out of socialistic practices and brought in differentiations aligned to career growth, rewards and potential of individuals. By this time India had over 1,000 recognised engineering colleges and around 2 million graduates joining the workforce every year.

Privileged employer

India’s talent pool, gifted with a good analytical mind, strong grasp of the English language and primarily from a middle-class background, was hungry to prove itself. Global brands started pumping money into their Indian operations — providing world-class job opportunities to Indians too in all major cities. The IT industry in India took the lead, being the most privileged employer on the engineering campuses.

With exponential growth, organisations began to scale up fast, bringing immense opportunities to the talented to build not only their technical abilities also their managerial capabilities. A typical IT company like Infosys entrusted its managers at the young age of 28-30 to lead large teams and handle complex deals with the best of Fortune listed companies. Like Kapil’s Devils that thrived on all-rounders, competency development became more rounded with a lot of focus on lea dership abilities and soft skills.

The ITES boom in India has opened out another opportunity for the non-engineering graduates. The IT/ITES industry in India boasts of a talent pool of over 16,00,000 employees with about 700,000 added in the last three years. We have access to over 3.5 million graduates churned out from 18,000 colleges and 350 universities every year. About 400,000 engineers from 1,800 engineering colleges, 125,000 MBAs from over 1,500 institutions, 35,000 doctors and 12,000 CAs form the cream of the talent. India had arrived and Sachin became a global celebrity with the largest endorsements of any cricketer in history.

But, like the Indian cricket team, India has been a strange mixture of talent and mediocrity, of hope and despair, of glitter and misery, of fat incomes and sheer poverty, of engineers and impoverished uneducated children. A mosaic woven by history, living in four centuries at the same time, incomprehensible to the outsider. Winston Churchill‘s famous quote that “Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” could well hold good for India too.

Let us pause a while here and take stock.

Strange contradictions

We churn out the second largest pool of graduates in the world, but have the largest number of illiterates, 360 million of them with a literacy rate of only 67 per cent after 60 years of freedom. Only one higher education institution is in the top 100 in the world, and there is a 30 per cent vacancy for the faculty in our colleges. Only 11 per cent of our youngsters in the age group of 18-24 are in college compared with 25 per cent in China, 35 per cent in the US and 50 per cent in Germany; 400,000 youngsters struggle to get into the IIMs and IITs for 7,500 seats, creating despair among the greater majority. About 160,000 youngsters leave India every year for education in western universities paying $3 billion as fees and costs every year because of our lacklustre attitude to private initiatives. Aspirations are high among the people but our leaders don’t seem to care, resulting in a decline in the quality of our educational experience.

The country’s total number of PhDs in engineering and technology subjects is only about 800 annually and this is generated by fewer than 15 institutions. While India produced 3.5 million graduates, the number of masters degree holders is about 0.1 million and the number of doctorate degree holders is about 0.016 million. India has not placed research at the top of its agenda or given it the deserved priority. R&D manpower in India is only about 0.15 per 1,000 compared to 4 per 1,000 in the US and more than 7 per 1,000 in Japan.

To make matters worse, a confused and antiquated education policy, not suited to the India of today, drags us down at a time when we have the youngest population in the world and are expected to become the second largest economy in the world by 2050. What can we make of this contradiction and what do we need to do?

Empower the young

The answer is simple: more reforms, more transparency, more openness and more democracy. We need to fully empower our universities and give them full academic and financial autonomy. We need to allow and invite private initiatives in our higher education and allow creation of new institutions free of the shackles of the state, built on quality and accreditation charging fees. A National Scholarship programme needs to be established so that lack of means is not a bar anymore. A National Research Fund is required to ensure research in our universities and to fire the imagination of our youngsters. Allow the best universities around the world to come in and educate our children, for they deserve the best the world has to offer.

Why do we continue to hurt ourselves, why do we live in the past, why do we shackle our children and why do we limit our aspirations? Why do we refuse to build on Tagore’s prayer, “where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; where knowledge is free…” and empower our children completely?

I dream of an India where every young person has access to higher education, where there is ceaseless striving towards excellence, where the frontiers of knowledge are expanded every day, where intellectual vigour permeates our very being, where illiteracy is banished and no child is hungry and where the mind is without fear and the head is held high. When will India realise her own potential? Like in cricket, this nation has a huge talent advantage — it needs persistence, good management, innovation and a fresh lease of life to synergise the true potential of its talent to make the ‘Big Leap’ into the modern era. To me, the last 60 years was just the prelude — the new innings starts now.

(The author is HR chief and Member of the Board, Infosys.)