With reference to the report, "New technology making employees obsolete: Naik" (July 5) by Shivani Shinde Nadhe and Sheetal Agarwal, the poor quality of education in India neither satisfies the belly nor the soul.
Two recent surveys revealed that 80 per cent of engineering graduates and 93 per cent of B-school graduates are unemployable. It seems the government and the educational institutes are yet to realise that by not imparting practical skills required by employers they are making the situation worse.
All hopes of innovation, entrepreneurship and the much-vaunted demographic dividend will come to naught if the education gained after spending so much money is useless and does not give students the confidence to face the world and achieve something.
On the other hand, there is the threat of redundancy of workers due to automation and loss or lack of skill development. While the first problem is supposedly being addressed by retraining, at least by software companies, what about the second, which no industry is willing to tackle?
Denmark has got Flexicurity (flexibility and security), a system that enables workers hampered by lost competitiveness to receive retraining and a salary that begins at what they had been earning and gradually declines over time. This not only provides security during the retraining period but also serves as motivation to find a new job.
Because of such measures, Denmark has got a low unemployment rate. India must emulate that system. Now that labour unions have been allowed in the information technology industry in some states such as Tamil Nadu, they should play a constructive and proactive role in redressing the above mentioned issues and shedding the baggage of agitations, which hurts productivity and competitiveness.
C V Krishna Manoj Hyderabad
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