'How Do Students Get 100% In Exams?'

'Because the same stupid questions are repeated year after year when an exam should provoke the students to think and not ask repetitive questions.'
'So, what do coaching institutes do? They teach students to memorise these questions and answers without understanding the subject.'

'I think India has a huge employment and employability crisis that the mainstream media is afraid to talk about.

'The problem with education in India is millions of graduates who are fit only for call center, back office and clerical jobs, all of which will be easily replaced by AI.

'So India is not looking at a demographic dividend but a disaster.'

Wrote Srinath Mallikarjunan, CEO and Chief Scientist at Unmanned Dynamics, in a viral Linkedin post.

The Unmanned Dynamics Web site describes it as 'a multi-disciplinary team of scientists and engineers who convert innovative ideas to world class products.'

"The college system here is designed to make mindless slaves who can be exploited for 70-80-90 hours of work a week. This is the goal of the college system," Srinath Mallikarjunan tells Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier in the first of a two-part interview.

"When you don't get any skills from your college education, what can you do but work in a call centre or some back office or do some clerical work where you will be exploited by some boss who wants you to work 90 hours."

In your Linkedin post you wrote about getting 1,200 applicants for the opening of 2 interns in your Indian office. Were you shocked?

I was shocked!

We were not equipped to process so many applicants too. I hoped that I was able to do justice to those who had applied.

We wanted reasonably good people who had the initiative to learn, and who are strong in their fundamentals whom we can train further for our needs.

Where does the problem lie? Is it that India is not creating enough jobs? Or is there a problem with our education system?

Both. It is a vicious cycle.

One, the education system is completely broken.

As far as the businesses go, if they don't get the right people, they can't really expand their businesses.

But the main problem lies with the education system, both at the school level and at the college level.

I can only talk about Maths and Science as that's my field. First, you don't need different syllabus for the state board and the central board because Maths and Science are universal.

Our syllabus is completely rotten and over-ambitious as they cover lots of topics, but students don't get any knowledge out of it.

Instead of focusing on few important topics -- for example, in the 11th and the 12th standards and covering them in-depth and teaching students to think and understand the subject -- the syllabus has far too many subjects.

Then, how do some students get 100% in the examination? Because the same stupid questions are repeated year after year when an exam should provoke the students to think and not ask repetitive questions.

So, what do these coaching institutes do? They teach students to memorise these questions and answers without understanding the subject.

When you say the syllabus is over-ambitious, do you mean it covers a wide spectrum without going deep into any aspect?

Yes. Because it covers a wide spectrum, the students end up getting a very shallow knowledge of all the subjects.

Because the exam system also is faulty, they get good marks and get into some engineering college.

Those who set the syllabus for the first year in college say, as you have covered everything in school, we will go further from there.

But the reality is the students do not even know the basics.

The college system is based on the assumption that a student has learnt so many things in-depth in school. But it is not. Most of the students did not even know how to solve a quadratic equation, for example.

Then to make them pass, they reduce the level of college education.

The college system here is designed to make mindless slaves who can be exploited for 70-80-90 hours of work a week. This is the goal of the college system.

When you don't get any skills from your college education, what can you do but work in a call centre or some back office or do some clerical work where you will be exploited by some boss who wants you to work 90 hours. And the students have not learnt anything to do otherwise.

The students keep placing their trust in a broken system, but they have been betrayed for life.

Many students also believe that having a degree entitles them to a job.

IMAGE: Srinath Mallikarjunan

Do you feel unemployability due to the flaws in the education system on one side and lack of job creation on the other side are creating problems for an entire generation?

Yes. Again, it is a vicious cycle.

Students don't learn the fundamentals in either school or college.

A degree is useless if you don't understand the basics. Then the degree will just be a painting on the wall.

No one will hire them just because they have a painting on the wall. I certainly won't.

When I interviewed students for the intern's position, I found that some of them have been looking for a job for 2 years, 4 years and even 8 years in some cases.

From a student's perspective, his future looks really bleak.

The whole economy is one internalised organism.

From the business perspective, if you are creating only low-value products, you will only hire people for low-paying jobs.

Was it because of the quality of graduates that we concentrated only on services like BPO, etc?
Or was it because we concentrated only on services that the quality also deteriorated?

I would say the BPO industry and the service industry did a big disservice to the students because the colleges believed that if they gave the students placements in a BPO, their job was done. They thought, why train the students to be any better?

This is the case of vast majority of students.

In the case of the students from the IITs, they have this huge alumni network ready to fund to create some start up, no matter what crazy ideas they come up with.

I am not saying all students stop studying after getting into IITs but a large majority of them do. Because they get access to easy money through their alumni network, and through the government, they start these gigwork type jobs. And they pass these as tech companies.

Tell me in which world delivering food from a restaurant to a home can be called a tech company?

What they are doing is nothing but what dabbawallahs used to do profitably. But all these companies are unprofitable.

You look at these delivery start-ups, all are losing money while the dabbawallahs are making money.

Most of the gigworkers who are employed to deliver food are college graduates. They have taken up this job as they are not able to get some other job connected to the education they had.

They or their parents must have spent their life's saving on a degree which is unfortunately adorning their wall like a painting.

They are not coming out of poverty and becoming middle class.

On the contrary, whatever savings they had also was depleting and they are becoming poorer.

So, when the middle class is shrinking, it leads to companies not investing in either production or R&D.

It means they need not hire even people who are good.

This shrinks the market even further.

It is a vicious cycle.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com