Problem of Educated Unemployment in India
India is facing the challenge of Educated Employment where educated youth on mass-scale are finding it hard to get a job or work.
Today, unfortunately, our country is faced with one of the grimmest problems – that of mass-unemployment among the educated young men and women. In Kerala, Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and other States, where the percentage of educated people is high, the educated people are tried hard to cope up with the problem.
After the Independence it was believed that the problem of unemployment would become a ‘myth of the past’ and that not a single educated son or daughter of Free India would suffer from the plight of unemployment. But the situation took a different turn. The number of unemployment, especially among educated persons began to increase with alarming rapidity. In 1957, ten years after the attainment of independence, India exhibited a grim spectacle of mass- unemployment and a committee, appointed by the Government of India, in its report gave the starling and gravely alarming facts and figures, proving the truth that a large percentage of the University graduates, especially in Arts, had not been provided with employment.
The defection education system that produces graduates and post-graduates like pins is one of the main cause for the problem of Educated Unemployment. After taking their degrees they have one and only one aim – to knock at the doors of Government or commercial offices for posts of petty clerks. Mind of a village boy or the son of an agriculturist is so badly affected by four years of academic life in the city that he would consider it below his dignity to fall back to his paternal profession as a University graduate. He would prefer to live in the city as a clerk drawing a salary which may be ten times less than the amount which he can earn by improving his father’s agricultural profession.
There is a miserable dearth of technical and vocational institutions in the country. There are very few Engineering and Technological colleges, and the expenses for undergoing these courses are so high that an average person, belonging to middle class, cannot afford to have his son admitted in these institutions.
University education should be put under certain restrictions. Only those students may be allowed to join a post-graduate college, who has secured at least a high second division in their basic examinations. This would put an end to the process of producing mass graduates, which has intensified the problem of unemployment. More technical, medical and agricultural colleges should be established all over the country and Government aid and scholarships should be granted to the deserving student. Village boys, in particular, should be imparted training in cottage industries so that they might earn their livelihood by starting such industries in their villages.
The unemployment problem, especially among the educated youth of India, should be given a serious consideration to by the government, as the youth of today is to be the pillar of the nation in future. If the rising generation is demoralized and degenerated; if its spirit and fervor are chilled under the impact of unemployment, our country will not be able to make any substantial advance in future.
