Greater knowledge leads to tunnel vision.

Since it is impossible to know everything the higher up the education ladder you go the more specialised you get. Thus, a general practitioner will treat men, women and children for everything from migraine to piles but an orthopedic surgeon will only look at bones and miss an obvious heart murmur. This is most evident in government policies. Politicians assemble a bunch of experts to advise on a problem and each one gives a different solution depending on his/her specialist knowledge. Politicians then pick the bits that suit them and enact a law which benefits them and penalises us. An article by Dipankar Gupta, Director, Centre for Public Affairs and Critical Theory at Shiv Nadar University says that the reason for a severe lack of trained professionals in India is because there is a complete lack of respect for vocational training. " We have assumed all along that skill development is only for the academically challenged; better still they should also be dirt poor, with nowhere to go," he writes. According to National Sample Survey only 18% of those with vocational training have regular jobs and 60% of this 18% are working in informal sectors. 30% of the unemployed are graduates who refuse vocational training because it lacks social status. In Germany and South Korea vocational training is linked to industrial requirements and in England Reading University was developed for those who cannot afford Oxford or Cambridge. This is clearly an article written by an academic. Illiteracy is not unique to India. In the US, where education is compulsory, 32 million adults, that is 14% of the population cannot read, 21% read below 5th grade and 19% of high school graduates cannot read. If a child refuses to learn there is not much anyone can do. The vast majority of people have average intelligence, around 100 on IQ tests. Some amount of intelligence is inherited but a larger amount is acquired. A lot of learning, especially in languages, reading and general knowledge, is acquired at home so children of educated parents have the double advantage of being able to afford good schools as well as highly intellectual interaction at home. The Congress passed the Right to Education Act which forces private schools to reserve 25% of seats of poor students. To protect these children from failure they banned all exams, including Class X boards. The number of Class V students who can read Class II text dropped from 52.8% in 2009 to 47% in 2013. Surely it is better to give them vocational training to increase their earning capacity. Finally, with so many unemployed the only answer is to increase manufacturing. To do that labor laws need to be changed, unions need to be freed from political gangs and resources better utilised. The present Prime Minister is trying. We wish him all the best.