June 1, 2020
India: Quo Vadis?
By Syed Rifaquat Ali
A country is judged by the civility of its denizens and the knowledge and quality of students. India, a country of over 1.3 billion people, is lagging behind the First World and developed countries.
The discipline and manners of Indian people can be gauged from the fact that the Parliament sessions, in both Upper and Lower Houses, are akin to fish markets where you come across noisy scenes and loud voices.
The members of Parliament speak over each other in most uncivilized manner, having scant respect for the Speaker. If the leaders are rustic, what one can expect from the common people.
India has nine hundred universities, forty thousand colleges and 1.3 million schools. But the quality of education is very, very poor.
Mostly, Indian educational system is subjective unlike in developed countries. Indian students find it pretty difficult to cope with the education imparted in developed countries.
For instance, a large number of Indian students studying in Australia find it pretty difficult to cope with strine English in the first instance, and then can't adjust to the objective teaching methodology.
The result: many students stay back in Australia after completing their studies and seek jobs which is hard to grab.
Consequently, many of them either work as daily wagers at petrol stations, car wash shops, commercial houses or drive taxis.
A graduate student, who came from Bangalore to Sydney to pursue medical studies, was asked: what is the capital of Spain.
He replied: Holland. Eventually, he could not cope up with his studies , gave up the course and returned home.
A slew of subjects thrust on millions of students in India have no value overseas.
Thousands and thousands of schools and colleges, even many universities, have sub-standard teaching since the teachers themselves are not good enough to teach as they are lowly paid.
The Indian government does not bother about the malaise in the educational system nor it allocates sufficient funds to improve the quality of teaching.
In the current budget, the finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, allocated Rs.99.300 crore for the education sector which is not sufficient for a vast country like India.
On the contrary, the central government wastes money on meaningless projects. For instance, Rs.3000 crore was spent on Sardar Patel's statue.
And crores of rupees will be spent on the controversial Ram Temple in Ayodhya which is under construction.
What benefit these statues and temples will bring to the poor man who lives in a slum and finds hard to earn money?
Such projects have invited sharp criticism from leaders of all political parties in the country, besides elite people from different walks of life.
But better sense does not prevail upon the bigoted BJP ministers --diehard followers of Hindutva.
About fifty per cent people in India live in slums; thousands of farmers commit suicide every year due to lack of government support and false promises, not to speak of fragile agrarian reforms policy.
The middle class too is peeved by the government apathy towards employment. Millions of students who have completed their studies are jobless and do not know where to go and what to do. But the central government is blind and deaf and craves only to stay in power.
Apparently, the situation is getting from bad to worse. It is for this reason that the Indian
students, who go abroad for higher studies spending a fortune do not return to India after completing their studies.
India's GDP (Gross Domestic Product) stood at 2.719 trillion US$ in 2018, while China's GDP stood at 13.61 trillion US$.
Even Japan is much ahead of India with 4.971 trillion US$.
In the Asian continent only Qatar, China and Singapore are in the list of top twenty five richest countries in the world.
The Coronavirus pandemic has totally shattered the Indian economy and the future does not seem to augur well for It.
The GDP may slide down further and unemployment will ascend beyond comprehension. India is facing a plethora of national problems.
Prime Minister Narender Modi knows how to wriggle out of such a tight and murky situation since he has the vision and foresight and India is likely to bounce back to its earlier status of fast growing economy.
Syed Rifaquat Ali is Sydney-based journalist.
The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
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