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India has spent a decade wasting the potential of its young population

37 points by amrrs 5y ago

rektide 5y ago
This feels like it happens again and again and again across the world. The middle east has been well underway in this crisis for a while now. Spain has had similar issues. It feels like a top issue- the most basic part of the social contract: a society that has to want & involve new generations. Without having on ramps for the upcoming generations, society, socialization, the ways of life cannot be sustained. My general disposition is that very few nations have done a good job of giving youth access to use their potential. The future/present feels perenially squandered on those already here.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I suspect that is because those “ramps” were a combination of high population growth rates and the coincidental technological advances to sustain them. We were in the middle part of the S curve, and have reached the top due to reduction in population growth rates and other natural constraints, hence the reduction in “ramps”.
  - netizen-936824 5y ago
    S curve of what? What does this plot model and what are the axes?
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      X axis is time and y axis is population of working age people, which can also translate to economic demand and/or output.
mercy_dude 5y ago
The real problem of India is bureaucratic corruption. Basically bureaucrats hold so much power and control in Indian government and the sheer size of it (central, provincial and local) corruption is deeply embedded in it. And their answer to basic inefficiency and ineptness is - imperialism. A lot of Indians still see imperialism as the reason why millions of people in their country still living without electricity or basic sanitation. It’s funny I was talking to my uncle the other day and he was pointing out how many railway lines in rural India had basically zero upgrades since the British left. Politicians across the board are all corrupt and inept. Well here is a new kind of imperialism. Thousands of smart and wealthy Indians emigrate every year. What would take the west millions of dollars to produce and retain such talents, they get it for free. Why rule India when you can just get the wealth transfer indirectly. Look at all the F50 CEOs.
- nirav72 5y ago
  Along with bureaucracy and corruption , India also has a week central government. One of the reasons I find it amusing when some compare China's rise with India. It's completely apples to oranges comparison. Because of this, India will forever be about 20 years behind China in terms of growth.
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  I see a similar thing happening in America. It's just a blame game while refusing to change any aspect of culture that might indicate internal conditions of said culture that prevents similar outcomes to other, more "successful" cultures. But it's not nice to say this.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
- naruvimama 5y ago
  The British did not just one day decide to pack up and abandon their biggest milch cow. All bureaucrats, police, military, even the first Prime minister Nehru was an imposition on the country. You are right about the bureaucracy, its culture is a continuation of a colonial legacy. We need to rapidly decolonise, simplify our laws and constitution. Brain drain is not about people leaving the country, it is about people staying back do not get utilised properly, what can they aspire for? At best an IAS, we need more industries, engineering, design, higher standards of education, fundamental research.
srvmshr 5y ago
To understand this, we have to know how India failed in properly training/educating & instilling core democratic values for a whole generation. Here are some connected observations: About two decades ago, rapid globalisation opened up the Indian market. The kids coming out of the education system were fluent in reading & written English (We can thank the Macaulay plan in late 1800s for that). The world was moving towards interconnectivity. The government gave its blessing by allowing setting up of thousands of IT training colleges to feed the global markets. It was seizing on the strengths of language & communication abilities vis-a-vis other Asian countries. By 2007-08, close to 200 engineering colleges were operating in each Indian state in addition to the state universities. This created a great boom for forex, rapid social mobility & better living standards as compared to the 80s. In parallel, other educational disciplines however suffered greatly. If 10 million kids were seeking admission to IT & engineering as first preference, the not-so-fortunate ones were mostly left to seek out arts & commerce streams. Government-sponsored research remained laggard without any new scientific agency. IITs, the flagship of Indian tech education were diluted to accommodate more students, yet funding remained at best constant for IISc & TIFR, the flagship institutions of basic sciences. This was a shortsighted move. The IT wave should have created wealth that could be channeled to improve the education standards across the board & fund more research. Indian education system completely missed this memo - as a result of which Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand will eat their lunch in coming years. The IT education/training today itself has significant variance, which has lowered industry trust in their capabilities. The vagaries of oversupply [1] India has created an army of IT professionals but not invested in making quality scientists or researchers. The ones who do, eventually seek greener pastures in developed countries. They will have to depend on R&D done in US/EU to serve their long term goals in the years to come. This is the exact model China observed and learned to avoid. They invested in research, lured back a lot of their talented researchers & computer scientists. They built up a industry with strong foundations. The current AI boom in Chinese economy is completely home-grown & self-sustained. As an expat it pains me to see this glaring miss. In tandem, people have become increasingly frustrated with the rapid unsustainable urbanization (in cities such as Hyderabad & Bangalore). I disagree somewhat with other comments regarding governance: People are joining civil services out of a mission to change the status-quo. The young turks now are better than the generation before them. They are computer savvy, from educated households, less corrupt and more tolerant to class & caste divides. But the lumbering bureaucratic machinery is too slow to cater to rapidly changing socioeconomic definitions. A significant chunk of India's demographics is young working population. Opportunities to work in offshore IT position or meteoric salary growth reminiscent of dotcom-era are dwindling steadily. Discontents have given rise to social tensions & intolerance. Added to that mix is the local politics which has polarized people on the basis of religion & indoctrinated them to some degree to be either be pro-Hindu or anti-Ruling party. Secularism is a dangerous and disbelieved term. Our society has missed teaching valuable traits of tolerance, fact-finding and fraternity to the people running the show. It is a decade of missed opportunities 1. https://www.hackerearth.com/blog/talent-assessment/90-indian-engineering-candidates-employable-why/ https://www.hackerearth.com/blog/talent-assessment/90-indian...
chunkyguy 5y ago
India desperately needs a social reform if they really want to upgrade. There's a lot of social discrimination in several domains going on that is fueled by the core old traditional culture values. Which is then exploited heavily by politicians for short term gains. One needs to realize why do Indians succeed only after they leave the country for some foreign land?
known 5y ago

37 points by amrrs 5y ago

This feels like it happens again and again and again across the world. The middle east has been well underway in this crisis for a while now. Spain has had similar issues. It feels like a top issue- the most basic part of the social contract: a society that has to want & involve new generations. Without having on ramps for the upcoming generations, society, socialization, the ways of life cannot be sustained. My general disposition is that very few nations have done a good job of giving youth access to use their potential. The future/present feels perenially squandered on those already here.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
I suspect that is because those “ramps” were a combination of high population growth rates and the coincidental technological advances to sustain them. We were in the middle part of the S curve, and have reached the top due to reduction in population growth rates and other natural constraints, hence the reduction in “ramps”.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  S curve of what? What does this plot model and what are the axes?
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    X axis is time and y axis is population of working age people, which can also translate to economic demand and/or output.

mercy_dude 5y ago

The real problem of India is bureaucratic corruption. Basically bureaucrats hold so much power and control in Indian government and the sheer size of it (central, provincial and local) corruption is deeply embedded in it. And their answer to basic inefficiency and ineptness is - imperialism. A lot of Indians still see imperialism as the reason why millions of people in their country still living without electricity or basic sanitation. It’s funny I was talking to my uncle the other day and he was pointing out how many railway lines in rural India had basically zero upgrades since the British left. Politicians across the board are all corrupt and inept. Well here is a new kind of imperialism. Thousands of smart and wealthy Indians emigrate every year. What would take the west millions of dollars to produce and retain such talents, they get it for free. Why rule India when you can just get the wealth transfer indirectly. Look at all the F50 CEOs.

nirav72 5y ago
Along with bureaucracy and corruption , India also has a week central government. One of the reasons I find it amusing when some compare China's rise with India. It's completely apples to oranges comparison. Because of this, India will forever be about 20 years behind China in terms of growth.
jimmygrapes 5y ago
I see a similar thing happening in America. It's just a blame game while refusing to change any aspect of culture that might indicate internal conditions of said culture that prevents similar outcomes to other, more "successful" cultures. But it's not nice to say this.
redis_mlc 5y ago
naruvimama 5y ago
The British did not just one day decide to pack up and abandon their biggest milch cow. All bureaucrats, police, military, even the first Prime minister Nehru was an imposition on the country. You are right about the bureaucracy, its culture is a continuation of a colonial legacy. We need to rapidly decolonise, simplify our laws and constitution. Brain drain is not about people leaving the country, it is about people staying back do not get utilised properly, what can they aspire for? At best an IAS, we need more industries, engineering, design, higher standards of education, fundamental research.

srvmshr 5y ago

To understand this, we have to know how India failed in properly training/educating & instilling core democratic values for a whole generation. Here are some connected observations: About two decades ago, rapid globalisation opened up the Indian market. The kids coming out of the education system were fluent in reading & written English (We can thank the Macaulay plan in late 1800s for that). The world was moving towards interconnectivity. The government gave its blessing by allowing setting up of thousands of IT training colleges to feed the global markets. It was seizing on the strengths of language & communication abilities vis-a-vis other Asian countries. By 2007-08, close to 200 engineering colleges were operating in each Indian state in addition to the state universities. This created a great boom for forex, rapid social mobility & better living standards as compared to the 80s. In parallel, other educational disciplines however suffered greatly. If 10 million kids were seeking admission to IT & engineering as first preference, the not-so-fortunate ones were mostly left to seek out arts & commerce streams. Government-sponsored research remained laggard without any new scientific agency. IITs, the flagship of Indian tech education were diluted to accommodate more students, yet funding remained at best constant for IISc & TIFR, the flagship institutions of basic sciences. This was a shortsighted move. The IT wave should have created wealth that could be channeled to improve the education standards across the board & fund more research. Indian education system completely missed this memo - as a result of which Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand will eat their lunch in coming years. The IT education/training today itself has significant variance, which has lowered industry trust in their capabilities. The vagaries of oversupply [1] India has created an army of IT professionals but not invested in making quality scientists or researchers. The ones who do, eventually seek greener pastures in developed countries. They will have to depend on R&D done in US/EU to serve their long term goals in the years to come. This is the exact model China observed and learned to avoid. They invested in research, lured back a lot of their talented researchers & computer scientists. They built up a industry with strong foundations. The current AI boom in Chinese economy is completely home-grown & self-sustained. As an expat it pains me to see this glaring miss. In tandem, people have become increasingly frustrated with the rapid unsustainable urbanization (in cities such as Hyderabad & Bangalore). I disagree somewhat with other comments regarding governance: People are joining civil services out of a mission to change the status-quo. The young turks now are better than the generation before them. They are computer savvy, from educated households, less corrupt and more tolerant to class & caste divides. But the lumbering bureaucratic machinery is too slow to cater to rapidly changing socioeconomic definitions. A significant chunk of India's demographics is young working population. Opportunities to work in offshore IT position or meteoric salary growth reminiscent of dotcom-era are dwindling steadily. Discontents have given rise to social tensions & intolerance. Added to that mix is the local politics which has polarized people on the basis of religion & indoctrinated them to some degree to be either be pro-Hindu or anti-Ruling party. Secularism is a dangerous and disbelieved term. Our society has missed teaching valuable traits of tolerance, fact-finding and fraternity to the people running the show. It is a decade of missed opportunities 1. https://www.hackerearth.com/blog/talent-assessment/90-indian-engineering-candidates-employable-why/ https://www.hackerearth.com/blog/talent-assessment/90-indian...

chunkyguy 5y ago

India desperately needs a social reform if they really want to upgrade. There's a lot of social discrimination in several domains going on that is fueled by the core old traditional culture values. Which is then exploited heavily by politicians for short term gains. One needs to realize why do Indians succeed only after they leave the country for some foreign land?

known 5y ago