In December, while inaugurating the 125th birth anniversary celebration of mathematics wizard Srinivasa Ramanujan in Chennai, Union minister Kapil Sibal made a very interesting comment. He said, “Thus far, we have had an education system that is socially stratified …. Graduates of a few elite universities, such as the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and Indian Institute of Management (IIM), become the managerial class that runs the state and industries.” Sibal has a point. Despite economic and industrial growth, a large section of society continues to remain marginalised and disempowered. This certainly is true because many of our youths are still not part of the mainstream of professional and higher education. Even among those who go for a professional education, a very few of them get the opportunity to study in what the minister defines as “elite institutions”. However, there is also another side to the situation. Those who graduate from elite institutions get absorbed in prime knowledge industries, mainly in information technology-related industries and they become a part of the top layer of society who earn prestige and money.

In the past two decades, the job scenario has undergone a change. Jobs in the public sector are declining; mainly because, apart from salary, these jobs are not offering challenges to the graduates. In the corporate world and information as well as computer sectors, the growth has been exponential and they offer global opportunities. Participation in the global economy brings prestige and handsome financial returns and they outstrip what the Indian economy can offer. Even Indian industries offer better financial packages. And, it is not only for those coming out of elite institutions who have an advantage, but, graduates produced by many other state level and other educational institutions are getting good jobs. It is also interesting to note that many students in this spectrum are from financially poor and socially weak families. So what is happening is we now have a “financially stratified” class of graduates, irrespective of their social background. If it happens uniformly, financial stratification in every section of society would bring about social equity.

This precisely is a challenge for our education system. Today, a large number of educational institutions are in the general education domain – in pure sciences, arts and humanities and commerce and accountancy – and they cater to almost 80 per cent of our students – today, there are 12 million youths in the entire professional and higher education spectrum. Sibal refers to the graduates of these elite institutions who account for hardly 20 per cent of the entire student population. They do get economically stratified, but, the challenge is to uniformly and seamlessly spread this economic stratification across society. The question is how we are going to do it?

We need to fortify our core education in different subjects and also disciplines with several support layers. The foundation of core education must be in-depth with conceptual and theoretical models forming the base. There can be no compromise on this part of education. Indeed, this is the sector in which the major role of the educational institution would be to consolidate and expand core knowledge. These become critically important. In addition, education institutions must create layers that have inter-linkages with the core but covers and concentrates on domain specific application skills. These days, there is a necessity to have basic knowledge at an empirical level in support skills that are at the periphery. For example, engineering graduates need to understand the economics of production, sociology and human behaviour (because, finally, it is the human being who buys a product) in different cultures and managerial skills to handle both unskilled and skilled labour. This forms the third layer of educational needs, and, at the fourth level, one accommodates what is termed as soft skills, which deal with personality, communications and inter-personal linkages. There is one more layer that has come into prominence in the 21st century business environment — a value system. The word “values” in Indian society is “taboo”, mainly because “values” are unwarrantedly linked with “religion”, which is wrong. Religion has nothing to do with values. The “values” are the inbuilt capabilities that gives a person self-confidence to meet the challenges of global competition and build a work culture that creates comfort in the minds of the employer and the customer. The value system of the 21st century needs to have a flavour of globalisation, but, also, it should have roots in the culture in which an individual grows. Thus, if a graduate wants to become useful for any job or useful to industry, he/she needs to have a five-tier educational exposure; the fundamental base that encompasses conventional method of learning and creates a foundation for new delivery methods, which adds on to the additional four layers that helps to create a learned and skilled graduate at a holistic level. The educational institutions need to adopt this holistic approach, and, then alone, we shall be creating a system that abolishes both social and financial stratifications. These are the indicators of developed economies and India has to achieve it.

(The writer is a former chairman of UGC and former VC of University of Pune)