(Sorry if I sound too
negative. I couldn't help it!)
I work in an office
sandwiched between two manufacturing units. One on the left, the other on the
right. Both are multi-storey buildings in the heart of the city. The
manufacturing process starts at 8.30 in the morning, and ends at 4 in the
evening. Raw materials reach the unit from around 8 am. The one on the left has
an evening shift as well. They go on till 11 in the night, sometimes later. The
process looks- from my building, laborious and uniform on both sides. Are the
products, of good quality?
But what do they
produce? Now, that’s a good question. They don’t produce any material. Nothing
that can be seen. But they manufacture youngsters with a degree after their
names. Yes these are BTec Factories. IIT student factories. Coaching centres
cum Intermediate Colleges. Buildings with huge posters of IIT entrance rank
holders’ photos and their ‘marks’ obtained, hanging in front. BTec
manufacturing units!
In this locality, there
must be at least 10 of these institutions- Junior Colleges as they are called.
I am proud of the fact that so many of our youngsters are interested in higher
education and are actually into it. But I am sad that their interest is mostly in
one particular field of study. I wonder what is so much alluring in being an
engineer. And why and how does our country need so many engineers? Don’t we
need English scholars, fashion designers, primary teachers, merchants? Or should
they all be engineering failed candidates?
5 years ago when I was
in Chennai, I had learned that there are around 130 engineering colleges in the
city of Chennai itself. Each college will have at least 200 students in a
batch. Which means, Chennai alone ‘manufactured’ 26,000 engineers 5 years ago! Look
at Andhra’s condition. It has 847 (year 2012) engineering colleges with 3.39
lakh seats! Interestingly, no one talks about the pass percentage of these engineering
colleges. It is unofficially heard that not more than 40% pass each year! Now,
that is an interesting figure. Out of 100 engineering students, 90 buy their
engineering seats paying lakhs. And after 3 or 4 years, they gloriously fail in
their course. What a national waste!
Therefore, these
manufacturing units do not manufacture engineers alone, but loafers and thieves
and failures and dropouts and criminals and drug addicts and psychos as well.
That’s a great social service they are doing. I appreciate the pain they take.
Coming back to the
coaching centres, they do another wonderful service to the nation. That is,
they inspire a sort of ‘spirit of competition’ in students, that pulls them
down to the abyss of despair if they get one or two marks less than the
expected 95+ in the top rated subjects.
Why does this happen?
Because it is big business. Having a network of of such coaching centres in the
heart of cities is no joke. Assets in terms of land and building are huge in
magnitude. If 3 lakh students get into Engineering colleges, at least 10 lakhs
do try writing exams. The fee is enormous! And name and fame in terms of IIT
ranks they buy, is great. People say, there is a nexus between these
‘factories’ and those who set question papers for top competitive examinations.
I don’t know how much of it is true. If it is, our society has a rotten sense
of morality.
I am an ordinary man. I
don’t understand the rules of this game. But I can say this much. If the cream
of our youth goes away into these manufacturing units to become BTec bearers,
and majority comes out as BTec failures, we will only have a lopsided society.
One that is full of one kind of people. Uniform and boring. With crime levels
going up. A society that doesn’t think creatively. One that doesn’t
produce/create. A complete consumerist society (we shall fulfill the dream of
capitalists). It might take some time,
but surely something of this sort is going to happen. Let us wait to see if
parents wake up, to wake their children up from this illusion.
