After all the cribbing about state of affairs in the country and blah blah, I have decided to propose some reforms (specifics) in the education sector that could help our economy.
Introduce the draft – Sounds crazy. Think about it. There is no greater honour than to serve with the armed forces of our country.
We could have a system where everyone in the age group 16 to 25 has to serve a mandatory year of service at a time of his choice before the age of 25. It is a pretty novel way of paying our debt to the country. We could even expand it to include other non armed forces voluntary groups like the coast guard etc.
The compulsory draft is widely accepted around the world and helps to improve the overall ethos of the country.
Flaws - But this idea could bomb in a time of war when everyone will be more interested in saving their own skin. But the likelihood of war in the near future has greatly diminished. Pakistan seems to be moving to a more stable democracy and China would not attack for economic reasons.
Bond – This could be more acceptable to the people.
The government spends on an average 2- 3 lakhs on every engineering student passing out of a government funded institute. While the student pays a very nominal amount of around 30k for the course. In most cases the brightest students either go abroad for their masters (and never return and if they do well past their prime ) or take up jobs at foreign mncs which indirectly help their home country.
We could force the students to compulsorily work for Indian firms for a period of 2 years. We could even make it part of the curriculum by making it mandatory to work for six months in the rural sector after the third year.
Flaws - The health minister tried/is trying (not quite sure) to bring about some sort of similar reform but was panned by students as it extended the mbbs course from 5 years to 6 years. Their contention was that that no one would marry them as the course was too long (lol). I still have to research this.
Pay as you go – This is based on the principle that a person pays half his salary to the institution that helped him get the job. This principle is applied by recruitment agencies.
The universities/ colleges could ask the students to pay half their salary of their first year at work to the college if they utilize the college placement services. Since off campus placements pay less and are harder to get, students might stick to campus placements itself. If this is complicated make students pay half their salary of their first job for a year to the last attended college irrespective of how they get placed. This could help colleges build endowments and subsequently improve infrastructure and increase scholarships.
Flaws - Students could crib that the money they earn is their right and all that crap.
The above reforms are just a few ideas I could think of - some radical but the others tenable.
The above post is dedicated to my surrogate Raghavan for his passionate defense of my blog and demand for more specifics. For the record, markets are still down and I am totally jobless.
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17 comments:
Slightly radical. Think if you only will comply to these rules first? Pretty hard right. So it might be difficult to expect all others to right?
Tell you what you are... a Marxist Pathogen, that's what....
with the compliments (yeah) of
Admiral Salt
Did you just say surrogate? That will be the last time I am defending you..btw I haven't read your post yet..busy now..just saw the surrogate comment.I promise I'll get back when I find the time(with menacing laughter in the background :P)
Draft,Bond, pay as you go.
All respectfully accepted.
But are you serious?
This you think are reforms to help the education scenario in the country.
No you know what?
Before I go on,I just want to know if these are the things that willit to your top-3 list if ever u had the power.
Then probably I can comment.
*that will make it i meant
The draft has been unpopular in many parts of the world before but not once has someone tried to defend it claiming that it is "educative". Full credit to you, ponky(rotfl). You support Obama but have opinions that remind me of Bush. Imba mon.
The other reforms you suggested, like this one, are completely unncessary and uncalled for. Its true that I asked for a more specofoc plan from you. But dont give suggestions just for the heck of it. And the next time you go about suggesting all these radical measures, just take a look at your blog title.
the draft WAS unpopular because of WARS(vietnam ww2 etc)
check out the countries thats have a draft now . Countries like Thailand , Singapore, some Eastern Europe countries to name a few.
The basic definiton of an army has considerably changed from the 70's . Most of the activities now include peace keeping etc. I said it dosent have to be only the army, it can even be other unarmed groups.
The draft in this day and time could be more useful than ever. Dont think about it in the 70s mind set
Since there are no more wars, I fail to realise what your peacekeeping forces would do :P
Moreover the point I raised was merely that introducing the draft doesn't seem to qualify as an educative reform.
By no more wars, I refer to your brilliantly succinct assessment (lol) of threats to India by its neighbours in the current day scenario.
ponky u havent answered mt doubt
Bond??? The only country to have that is Singapore. It works as there are WORLD-CLASS firms available. Not so in India. I've seen the working environment at an MNC and an Indian based company. Give me the MNC any day. They pay as much/less taxes as the Indian firms. There is no real benefit if ten thousand odd engineers descend on Indian firms for work. Any move to introduce the bond is going to backfire big time. MNCs will start pulling out. Then where will the economy be?
Please do something about the colors on the page. Tiny white letters on a black background really hurts the eyes :(
@gulati the statement u make about MNCs leaving india is ridiculous. India is far too lucrative to just run off. The reforms i mentioned are a broader outline . I dont have a thorough understanding of the economics that goes into it.
The pay as you go a reform is a practical one and has been adopted successfully by job placement agencies and could work in college level
@ raghavan ... read my next post
the title of the post wasnt apt ... wanted to address brain drain in particular
btw
Who is Admiral Salt? Just curious...
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