Why Some Indians Are Abused For Their Skills Outside India

I feel desperate to make my voice loud so others can hear it. I feel angered when I read through many articles that keep popping-up on Business-week and other such magazines. I just feel like banging the abuser with an 11,000 volts reply. But then, I feel helpless. Somewhere deep down in my heart I know that the abuser is not entirely incorrect. There are always good students and bad students. Some who learn a lot in schools and some lag behind. But the basic question is "does the Indian education imparted in any school/college/university really prepare the outgoing class to face the difficulties and challenges that the world will have to offer to the new school pass-outs and university graduates ?" The answer that invariably comes to my mind is "NO". Our universities and schools at any level do not prepare us to face the challenges. That is primarily the reason we face a huge deficiency of skilled professionals everywhere in Indian industry. Answer yourself to this question:

• Do you exactly know how does every part of computer work if you are a computer hardware engineer?
• Do you know how should you design a software to interact efficiently with the OS and platforms without consuming much of memory/CPU? Do you know what implications every single line of the code that you write has?
• If you are a graduate in mechanical engineering, do you know how to build a boiler? or how to effectively draw design diagrams?
• If you are a physics graduate, do you know what impact the Einstein's theory of relativity has on space programs?
• Similarly, if you are an arts graduate say sociology, do you perfectly understand how a society works? and what it changes and affects lives?

On practical terms, if you are an engineer. you are probably not yet ready to actually apply your engineering knowledge until the next 5-10 years (or more?) in the industry.If you came out of a medical college, you just remember the medicine names, and still won't be able to correctly diagnose a patient suffering from cold and cough. If you are a major in history, you won't be able to highlight the most important and significant changes that changed the world map and cultures.

So where is the flaw? The more I think, I tend to believe that the system as well as the students and social thinking is flawed. The family is biased towards preparing their kids for an old fashioned clerk's job. There are not many innovative minds coming out from universities anymore. Emphasis is more on fetching more marks/grades rather than on proper and effective/practical understanding of a concept and their implementation. This applies to all grades/schools/universities. Try and remember how many days did you really spend some time researching a subject when you were graduating or how many good books did you really refer to when you were preparing for your 10th/12th grade and understood everything perfectly. For example, could you do a demonstration of Newton's all of the three laws in a practical way which the industry might already be using?

Someone out there may say "Oh C'mon, these have got nothing to do with industrial/workplace challenges!". But I'm sure everything that we studied, has got something to do with the challenges that we face in our daily life at the workplace. The most apparent one is this : "ATTITUDE" Why is there so much abuse about third grade work by Indian BPO/IT companies and workers abroad? Why are they not able to write efficient bug-free programs?

It has got something to do with our education system too. The present education system in India is in flux and full of contradictions. While there are world-class institutions of higher education like JNU, DU, IITs, IIITs,BIT(S), some regional universities and IIMs, most others are nothing but degree awarding institutions. They neither prepare the youth for advanced research in social science, physical and biological sciences, engineering, technology and management nor for employment in various productive sectors of the economy.

One can ascribe two reasons for it. Universities in India have not changed their colonial mode of functioning. First, they still aim at producing administrators and clerks. They tend to feed the students information more than knowledge and skill. And second, the weak secondary education base forces the universities to lower their standards. Added to the problem are mushrooming private universities/institutions, most of which are no better than teaching shops and coaching centers. A newly created state, I am told, permitted the opening of scores of one-room universities just by one stroke of pen.

Secondary and primary education systems are in real bad shape. In northern states like UP copying in examinations is not only tolerated but also encouraged by the state government. Despite several high sounding projects like ‘operation black board’, most of the primary schools are understaffed, and ill-equipped to educate children and prepare them for secondary and higher education. The primary education sets the mood of the kids going forward in higher grades. that's where we bite our future wrong.

We also fail to develop the personality of our youth to take responsibility as a good citizen, apart from being a good scholar, scientist, engineer, manager etc. We have now reached a stage where violence, cheating, forgery, dereliction of duty, and unconcern about fellow human beings and the natural environment in general and flora and fauna in particular has crossed the threshold limits.

We are living in a Knowledge Society. We should do all that is possible to prepare as many young men and women as possible for the new world in making. But if we are not able to upgrade the existing universities what would be the use of having more third rate universities? Our strategy has to be double faced: up-gradation of the existing universities and launching of several new universities/institutions of learning and professional development.
Anyways ...the point is our education system does not allow us to think independently and question or contradict the western scientific or mathematical concepts.We are not encouraged to explore nature and present our concept or theory rather we are expected to understand the way it was understood by Newton or Einstein. This is not to propose chaos in class room but there should be an option for creative thinkers and the education system should encourage and recognize them. This is the fundamental flaw in our system and several brilliant mathematicians,scientists and designers are forced to follow the blind,inflexible model which is designed to create followers and not leaders.

On top of that, for all those who are in an Internet based work-environment, Google is a big time abuse. We tend to search for quick fixes on Google and then forget about them by the evening. There is nothing wrong in searching for information on Google but then why not get to the depth of the information that we found on Google search results. That doesn't happen.

All this leads to a very bad situation (at least in IT workplace), where an Indian is considered producing sub-standard product. Though, one must keep in mind that most Indians produce very good quality output barring a few exceptions. It's those exceptions that cause the problem and invite abuse to all Indians. I know I have mixed quite a few things (some of which might appear irrelevant to you). But think about them and you will see the cause and the effects are all intertwined. Work towards a better you after you've read this so no other non-Indian can raise a question on your abilities.

I have been reading various articles about sub-standard work produced by Indians on business week. The latest one was this. Follow the comments and you will realize.
I also remember a statement by one of my seniors who once said that we are "SAD" engineers. SAD stood, as per him, for "Setting and dealing". And that's truly is the case. We believe in Kaam - chalaau things. And that's the problem.