Is the problem too big to solve?

"Not only do vast numbers of young Indians face a dearth of decent jobs, it now turns out that many of them are unemployable too," wrote M Chakravarty. Why? A recent report by the Annual Status of Education Report, or Aser, found that "after eight years of schooling, only 43% of 14- to 18-year-olds could do a simple division; slightly less than half couldn't add weights in kilograms; over 40% couldn't tell hours and minutes from a clock; 46% didn't know which city was the capital of India". Dire indeed. Aser stated that our "examination systems were worse than those of Nigeria and Uganda". In the US 10.1% of the labor force is self-employed, whereas in India nearly half the labor force is self-employed, wrote Prof G Singh. Not because they are all entrepreneurs but because they have no choice. Those who have no savings and little education have to take menial jobs to survive, while those with some savings but poor education "use their funds in owner-manager enterprises". This class divide is because the bottom 5% of rural population spends Rs 7.54 per month on education while the top 5% of urban Indians spends Rs 908.12. Prof S Mundle believes that the "growth cycle had bottomed out and moved on to a recovery phase". The economy has moved on from demonetization, the problems with the GST are being ironed out, labor and land laws will have to be changed, banks are being recapitalized and the global economy is growing. The price of oil is a worry but the biggest long-term constraint is education. 95% of children are now enrolled in schools but only 13% of population have tertiary education. "Thus, the elitist bias of India's education policy has resulted in a missing middle in its education profile," wrote Prof Mundle. He has missed the point totally. The bias in not elitist, the bias is to enroll all children of the poor in schools, to provide them with cooked mid-day meals, and to tax the middle class by reserving 25% of seats in private schools for disadvantaged children. The other 75% end up in government schools where teachers are used for census, election duties and other work, required to run the school. Our economy faces storms ahead as "robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), 3D printing and Internet of Things (IoT) are reducing the importance of low wage labor, wrote Hallward-Driemeier and Nayyar. These will need new type of skills "but there is no reason why the top echelons of the Indian population won't be able to master those skills". Trouble is, while discussing AI and IoT the government is trying to get the rural population to use toilets and not defecate in the open. Cannot improve the economy without education and hard to fund education without the economy growing fast. Huge problem.