Is Education A Curse In India?

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No and it can never be, says Mohandas Pai, chairman, Manipal Global Education. Education that does not empower you is no education, according to former minister and academician Jay Narayan Vyas.

Pai and Vyas were participating in the discussion on "Is Education A Curse In India" on BoomNews's show #IndiaHangout.

Here are some statistics from the labour bureau: 18% of 15-24 year olds are unemployed in the country. Moreover, over 32% of graduates and above are still looking for jobs.

"High levels of growth is necessary for more employment. Jobs have grown at over 7% every year in the last decade. There are 85 million formal jobs in the country and possibly 10 million jobs are added every year. Last three years were washouts because there was no growth," Pai said.

Vyas feels we need to do something on delivery of knowledge. "If education is limited to getting a job, there is going to be a problem. Education must provide for self-employment."

Pai strongly feels that communication is a major problem with educated people. "And we need a problem-solving mindset. Students should come to education, not the other way round."

While Vyas feels diluting the quality of education due to popular demands must stop, Pai had a counter-point: "We need more IITs. We can do it but we have the wrong model. China has 1,500 residential universities while we have 46,000 affiliated colleges."

Pai said there has to be large-scale internships to ensure that the youth are ready for employment, and Vyas feels stake holders will have to be taken into confidence while designing the curriculum.