Equip to Educate, Excel and Exceed!

World Development Reports, in the past, have often indicated that the biggest problem of poverty is the inability to take well-considered decisions due to lack of knowledge. Lack of effective primary and secondary school education leaves the citizenry ill-equipped to know their reality and take appropriate decisions that affect themselves and others. This makes a world of difference in the way people do their business, conduct their personal and professional lives. Correction of this scenario can open up new possibilities for growth and development of the country.

Bill Gates, in his recent annual letter to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, writes about Warren Buffett calling every American – those who have been born in the United States – lucky winners of the "ovarian lottery". Lucky, because of the education that American children receive and the system that rewards innovation and risk-taking. Even while Gates admits that within the United States too, “there is a big gap between people who get the chance to make the most of their talents and those who don't", he emphatically makes it clear that good schooling is the critical factor. On a personal note, he has gone on to write about the difference schooling has made in Melinda's and his lives.

Recently, a study conducted by PurpleLeap, an organisation specialising in entry level talent management, found that only about seven per cent of the students passing out of engineering colleges across India were employable; the rest were found wanting in either technical skills or soft-skills or both, and clearly lacked problem solving skills. A number of commentators were quick to place the blame for this situation at the doorsteps of our private engineering colleges. While our engineering colleges certainly have their share of blame, we need to look at the quality of the students going into these institutions. Years before, a test conducted in Nicaragua had showed that seven out of ten engineers from that country then could not calculate the volume of a cube with sides of one metre if the formula was not given at hand. Obviously, it was the state of schooling in that country that was more at fault than the state of their technical education.

Look at the other side of the story: Bill Gates went to Harvard, but dropped out. So did Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, who had gone to Washington State University. Michael Dell had joined the University of Texas at Austin to be a physician before dropping out. Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College after just a semester. Colleges did not make any of them, but schooling ensured the right foundations. Ask any one of them and they will talk about their early education.

 What all these tell us is essentially that if we don't get the schooling of our children right, it is more likely that our children won't get the chance to make most of their talents. Of course, for those who have already gone through these stages, and are striving to be employed, organisations like PurpleLeap can be of tremendous help. They help you acquire employable skills and help nation-building by transforming un-utilisable social investment in human resources to utilisable human capital. But, can they fully compensate for lack of good schooling? Unfortunately not!

One of the key lessons that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has learned is about the importance of good teachers. Among the Schools which have received funding from the foundation, the ones that have shown remarkable progress are the ones which helped their teachers be more effective in the classroom. To quote Gates, again: "It is amazing how big a difference a great teacher makes versus an ineffective one. Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school." As a matter of fact, he adds that whenever he talk to teachers, "it is clear that they want to be great, but they need better tools so they can measure their progress and keep improving".

That is true not just in the United States, but world over. Our teachers, who themselves have gone through the old system, if they have to improve, have to be equipped with better tools.

James Tooley, an expert of international repute on private low-cost education, has often said that in developing countries, it is not the state that has the greatest potential to help the poor, but the private sector. Living up to that prediction are several innovations in the education sector initiated by private entrepreneurs in India. The NIIT story is Tooley’s favourite example.

Of course, as Tooley would point out, no programme or tool can compensate for lack of accountability in the system. Often, our schools fail our children because our teachers are answerable only to the government servants. In one set of schools, often state funded and run, even when parents vote with their feet, exit them and move their children to private schools, no one really bothers. Whereas in schools where teachers are accountable to the Manager – who can discontinue their services -- and through the manager to the parents – who can shift their children to competing schools – the system fails our children much less. Guess, which set of schools are signing up to implement innovative teacher training and curriculum development programmes?

Many schools where Gates Foundation invested money in did not improve students' achievement in any significant way. And incidentally, these tended to be schools which stayed inflexible in their approach, did not take such steps as allowing the principal (manager) to pick the team of teachers or change the curriculum. And the schools which showed outstanding achievements? Almost all of these schools were schools with limited public funding and hence, greater flexibility. According to Bill Gates, one of the key things these schools have done is help their teachers be more effective in the classroom. Surprising? Perhaps not! Choice and accountability are always interrelated.

The public policy lessons from these experiences are pretty clear. And quality education for all classes of people would transform this country and take it to the next level. Would the next generation of Indians consider themselves as winners of the 'ovarian lottery'? That depends on this generation of Indians, our political and business class, our parents and teachers, and our civil society. That depends on how far we are willing to go to equip our schools and empower our parents to educate our youth to exceed and excel beyond what the world has set as targets for them!

Ah, the revolution! It is coming!

Peter Drucker once said: “In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from”. Some Economists in our country assume that, by this, Drucker was suggesting doing Economics as a good career option for youngsters.

Not surprising, considering the fact that we indeed have economists, perched in their state funded academic ivory towers, preaching the virtues of subsidies and telling us how labour reforms are a bad idea to begin with.

It seems, once labour reforms happen, it would be difficult to earn wages without working. Now, who would know it better than these scholarly men that there cannot be a worse concept than having your wages linked to your contribution to work! I mean, can you imagine, the right to wages being conditional? The right to life is a fundamental right, and income, which is so basic to life; can it be conditional upon, say, work?

Isn’t it so obvious that the right to strike too is a fundamental right? Apparently, the honourable Supreme Court is not taking into consideration the rights and the aspirations of the common man. I didn't say this. The Professors, they said it!

Of course, the right to employment is a fundamental right as well. Doesn’t it follow that you need to be employed to have the right to strike? In which case, if someone is unemployed, it means that the state has failed to protect the rights, and hence the government should resign. Now, don’t ask me why only the government should ensure results, when the labour force of the country wouldn’t have to! Or may be I should attempt to answer that. Let me think... Is it that while the labour force forms the proletariat, the comprador capitalists, who cannot be left unaccountable, run the government?

Aha! I can see some sense now. Too good! I am glad that despite American imperialism strangling even our cultural ethos, and the liberalization, privatization and globalization, forced on us by the MNCs, the World Bank and the IMF, we have not lost the ability to think clearly. I am glad we haven’t been influenced by the steady growth in the economy or the expansion of the middle-class or even the gradual reduction in poverty. Ask the Professors and they can disprove all the changes that you think you have seen in the last two decades. In case, some things can’t be disproved, they can very well tell you how terrible those would be for the country in the long run.

Alright! Let us put two and two together: The Left in this country is allowed to have it way and the right to wages, the right to strike, and the right to be employed become fundamental rights. This, clearly, precludes the possibility of any rights to the capitalist-employer. Since the employers, given their limited rights, would then decide to minimize the use of labour, it becomes imperative upon the state to generate employment. The state, since it needs capital to employ these millions, and since it is expressly anti-national to depend on imperial agencies like the World Bank and the IMF, taxes the capitalists to the extent possible. The capitalists, who would thus see their capital sponged off, could then either go and settle abroad with whatever they have or continue producing till s/he is broke and join the labour force. You thought of cost cutting through technological change as a possibility? Sorry, the money that could have been invested in R&D would have been wiped off as taxes, and foreign-collaboration is a strict no-no! Thus, as more and more businesses close, the state steps in to provide jobs for more and more people. How long? Since there are no additional sources of capital left, the state starts pump priming and galloping inflation sets in. Or did you think of the possibility of state-run firms employing everyone who were around and still making profits and thus, generating enough capital to continue running the show? Goodness, you are so right! I mean, if we can make sure that there is no competition from anywhere for the goods and services produced by the state-run firms, why can't they make profit? May be the prices might rise a bit, but the Government can subsidize… oh, sorry, forgot that there is no money… well, prices might rise and then the salaries can be increased and then the prices may rise a little more and the salaries can rise a little further…

Hours and days pass by and finally the system comes to a stand-still! The reserve army of the unemployed swells up instantaneously and the revolution- ah! the revolution, the Professors have taught and foretold a whole generation of students - would finally happen. Of course, this revolution may not have guns and bullets. Stones and sticks should still be affordable, and in any case, Marx hasn’t said anything about that. The state, the ultimate oppressor, would finally collapse, and assuming that other countries are all too busy with their own affairs, peace, a just peace, an academically ideal condition, would prevail, even if it would be of the graveyard variety. What is important is that by then all private property would have been eliminated, and inequality would have already become history. And, well, the poor! You see, there can’t be such categories as the rich or the poor then.

The better-off and the worse-off? Yeah! The dead and the living!

My bets are on the Professors joining places ranging from Amherst to the Hague, offering new courses on neo-imperialism and underdevelopment, as soon as the Left parties come to power!

May Day wishes for the unemployed!

Collecting thoughts and colouring them with ink may not be treated as labour and so I wonder if I can rightfully celebrate May Day! That brings me to an interesting question about the place the unemployed have in India's proletarian parties.

The immediate provocation for this is the sustained opposition of the Left parties and the trade unions to labour reforms in this country. It is not very difficult to comprehend the position of the trade unions: Self-interest necessitates defending their existing rights and benefits. So it makes perfect sense for them to fight to keep wages higher than what they should be, even if it means that the demand for labour remains lower than what it should be. As long as they remain employed, the effect of high cost of labour on the overall industrial employment and the nature of production do not matter to them. Rational behaviour? You bet!

The Left parties cannot oppose the Trade unions. It is a problem, part of a historic image trap. Organised workers are the most visible component of the working class and historically, Left movements have identified with their cause. But where does that leave the Left parties vis-a-vis the unemployed, the underemployed and the employees of the unorganised sectors?

Contrary to the expectations of basic economic logic, Indian industrialisation has been predominantly capital-intensive, even as the country has remained as an obvious case of a capital scarce, labour abundant economy. A couple of distortions explain this. One is the presence of the so-called 'depreciation allowance' on tax, which allows companies to write off amounts against capital depreciation, promoting an obvious bias in favour of capital over labour. What a brilliant state policy for an over-populated country, right?

What is, but of much more consequence is the inflexibility in the labour market and the presence of laws obviously biased against the employers. Once the real cost of employing labour is artificially high, it should hardly be surprising that industrialists prefer capital-intensive techniques of production, even in a labour abundant country like ours. So the liberalised private sector now grows at exciting rates, but without any reforms in the labour market, there is hardly any growth in employment in the manufacturing sector. Well, the critics of economic reforms talk about jobless growth, but what they would not want to admit is the fact that it is due to less reforms and not more!

In a country, where nearly 9 out of 10 workers in the manufacturing sector are in the unorganised sector, where a good number of agricultural workers are underemployed, and where unemployment levels are high even by developing country standards, should a small percentage of unionised workers hold back employment growth? Should the better off among the working class be allowed to protect their interests by effectively blocking the entry of others?

Labour reforms would reduce the cost of employing labour and would thus result in an increased demand for labour. Any benefit this process accrues to the industries would again translate into more jobs. In a country, where the average level of education is nothing worth writing home about, service sector jobs can provide employment only to a small, often English educated, minority. So there is no way one can truly undermine the importance of employment generation in the manufacturing sector. This, but, demands the immediate removal of anti-employer biases from labour laws. In the long-run interests of the working class movement, in the interests of the 'reserve army of the unemployed', would the Left parties oblige? Let this May Day mark a new beginning for the poor and the unemployed of this country.