JOIN USSchools must take care to groom human personality imbibed with love, compassion, and courage.
Human Resources crisis in India is looming large. Honesty, integrity, sincerity, discipline and a sense of belongingness to the nation are fast disappearing. Similarly, the finer human emotions like love, fellow feelings, pity and courage which creates a peaceful environment is at the decline. This results into poor governance and productivity loss.
Volumes of spurious reports are generated to substantiate the false claims to development and progress. The courage to introspect and internalise the hard facts in the planning process is missing. For example, the Indian Railway incurs loss year after year despite huge potential to make profit. Allocation of trains without scientific viability study, rampant theft, mismanagement, corruption, lack of professionalism and poor services attribute to the heavy loss. Train travel is no longer comfortable and safe. Stinking toilets, waterless taps, broken switch boards and missing window railings, stale food, rude attendants and ticket collectors collecting extra buck from passengers add to the woe. Majority of rail accidents occur mainly due to inefficiency only.
Similar is the case with the infrastructure sector which has become a black hole to suck public money. Government officials, contractors and politicians are hand in glove to eat up the public investment. This is the reason why new roads are repaired every year. The July 26, 2005 heavy rain in Mumbai took 400 lives due to polythene-choked drains. The cost of maintenance of our infrastructure is much higher than the cost of construction.
As per an NSSO survey, 40 per cent farmers want to give up farming provided they get an option. Growing input cost, poor extension services, political interference in various farmers’ bodies, erosion of farmers’ profit due to middlemen in APMCs, lack of dedicated monitoring of village development projects, phenomenal growth of corrupt NGOs, poor quality basic amenities in villages and societal behaviour change for an urban life style has an impact on farming profession.
Poor HR skills
Poor performance is showing up in academic institutions also. According to a study conducted by Thomson Reuters, India’s contribution to global research output is a miniscule 3.5 per cent. T T Narendran, professor of IIT, Madras in his article “Anyone worried about what’s wrong in our education” said in the first 35 years of independence, Indians brought copied (with or without permission) and turned out the same products decade after decade. After liberalisation in the 90s, new products were rarely developed. An all India Survey of school children in the rural areas conducted by Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) found only 58 per cent children enrolled in class III to V could read a class I text book and only 47 per cent of children were able to do simple two digit subtraction.
Poor human resources spill over to defence sector also. India imports 63 per cent of its defence need and coughs up huge foreign currency. The reported incidents of kick back in defence deals are pouring in and the culprits often go scot-free at the end. Between 2005 and 2011, 46 Indian fighter planes had crashed. The DRDO took 30 years to make a light combat aircraft, Teja, with an estimated cost of Rs 17,000 crore. Poor human resources have also infested the banking sector which is piling up non-performing assets.
People in the system failed to overcome conflict of interest situation and lend to unviable projects. Our health sector has lost its objective to serve people. It has worsened as corporates pay doctors to serve their business interest. Reports about rampant corruption in appointment of judges and in delivering mock justice are pouring in. The angry outburst of former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju against corruption in judiciary is the tip of the iceberg.
Transparency International ranked India 94th among the highly corrupt nations in 2013. In fact, the most effective online fraudulent practices are imported from the developed nations in the last 25 years of globalisation.
The mother of all these problems is the defect in grooming quality human resources from home, from school and from colleges. While imparting quality education, schools must take care to groom human personality imbibed with love, compassion, fellow feelings, physical and moral courage. Recently, Supreme Court judge, Mr A R Dave advocated for the introduction of the Bhagvad Gita and the Mahabharata in schools.
Instead of allowing children to see unguarded websites and play violent games in computer, the moral stories from different religions and regions can be told to children.Prime Minister Modi's slogan of made in India and inclusive growth will be possible if the Union government focuses on human resources development.