India is dreaming as a budding superpower, powerful enough of combating expansionist China. Today, China is already a global power, challenging the techno-military strength of the US and Russia. India is India is miles behind in this race of development.
The main reason is India’s gloomy educational and learning system, passing and producing unemployable and worthless college graduates and schoolchildren, without any knowledge and skills. A recent report on the status of education in schools reveals that hardly 55% of students in class 5 and 75% in class 8 students cannot 2 texts. 60% of students of Class 8 cannot do simple division. How can such a nation be a superpower? Indian reformers and educationists have been finding ways to pass the students without knowledge and skills.
Around a decade ago, China used to export mostly labour-made goods made in factories employing lakhs of workers, like slaves, at very low wages. India during that period became a powerful exporter of computer software, much advanced to China in this high-tech field. It had also progressed rapidly as a world-class exporter of small cars, generic drugs, textile and refined petroleum products.
Today, China has surged ahead of India in almost all the areas. China is the world’s biggest manufacturer of solar cells, aluminium and steel. China has developed the world-class technology, such as BYD in batteries and Huawei in 5G telecom. China has the world’s biggest dams and river linking projects. So there is no water shortage.
India so far has not created a single global champion or become a known global power in any field. Its prominence in generic drugs has been diminished by mounting dependence on Chinese active drug ingredients. In the field of the software industry, India stands nowhere.
As eminent columnist Gurcharan Das has pointed out that China’s achievement is due to its importance on merit and quality education system has motivated persistently to match the Western countries and succeeded in producing world-class scholarly output. China left behind the US in the number of published academic papers in 2016, though the quality of the published work was not so high. But Indian universities introduced the ‘Point System’ under which academicians fraudulently published papers and articles.
China’s R&D expenditure is 2.1% of GDP, higher than Europe’s average but less than the US’s. India’s R&D budget has languished at around 0.65% of GDP for two decades. It is short of not just money but quality for research. India and Indians also pine for free and mandatory education bu zero quality.
Even in India Madarsas, Church and Gurudwaras controlled educational institutions are recognized. Madarsas’ maulvis and church’s nuns and pastors are recognized as teachers. If this is the way in which vote bank politics pushes education, India has no future. In China, authorities employ teachers on three-year contracts and dismiss them if their work is poor.
But in India, we have an army of permanent teachers who hardly teach but run NGOs and work for political parties. Even, in Indian universities caste and communal outfits have been flourishing. There are SC, ST, OBC, minorities, Ambedkar, Periyar etc groups indulging in caste and communal politics.
Millions of teaching posts lay vacant but central and state governments preferring to spend money on caste and communal vote banks, freebies and projects offering bribes. Even if some government tries to fill the posts, courts stay them, on one pretext or the other.
No Detention System, Mid-Day-Meal, Transfer-Posting corruption, reservation, liberal pass policy and reduced syllabus RTE etc have ruined the Indian education. Private schools are only money minting shops with unqualified staff.
Cheating on exams is widespread. When the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh passed a tough anti-copying law in 1993, all the opposition leaders came in favour of cheaters. Mulayam Yadav openly led a pro-cheating agitation. He won the election with a clear majority. He argued that without copying the backward castes cannot compete with Brahmins! He scrapped the anti-copying law on coming to power in 1994. Now, cheating and paper leakage are an inseparable part of Indian educational system, just like caste quotas.
Narendra Modi government promised six new Indian IITs and seven IIMs but no attention is giving for the standard. Fail students go to courts and caste commissions which always try to pass the unsuccessful students. China has well-mannered colleges and universities in almost all provinces.
China and.President Xi is strong-minded to become world No 1 in education, technology and economic clout. Raising the standard of education, teaching and research is the top priority of China for this. Late Deng Xiaoping ordered decades ago that China must motivate students to study abroad, ignoring senseless fear about a brain drain. It was an investment for him. After the return, they will develop and enrich the nation. China has a Thousand Talents scheme based solely on merit to attract back top-quality out of the country academics with world class amenities and salaries. China is not guided by the No Detention System, Mid-Day-Meal, Transfer-Posting corruption, reservation, liberal pass policy and reduced syllabus RTE etc. This has significantly advanced human capital and bolstered China’s hi-tech competence.
Compare the higher educational deliberations in India is stained by the proviso of quotas for sundry castes. All the parties and states are trying to defeat each other in this quota race. No political party gives any importance to merit or excellence. We have a powerful lobby behind SCs, STs, OBCs and minorities, but none for merit and excellence. In such an environment, excellence will shrivel while quotas and poor standard multiply.
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