New York Times (May 28, 2012)
May 28, 2012, 7:48 AM
Responses to ‘An Open Letter to India’s Graduating Classes’
By HEATHER TIMMONS
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Students look on as United States President Barack Obama addresses them
during a town hall meeting at the St. Xavier College in Mumbai,
Maharashtra in this Nov. 7, 2010 file photo.
“Today, we regret to inform you that you are spoiled,” an Indian
partner for a multinational corporation wrote in our “Open Letter to
India’s Graduating Classes,” a bracing wake-up call for India’s new job
market entrants. India’s graduates are neither as smart as they think
they are, the author, Mohit Chandra, wrote, nor as ambitious or
self-motivated as they should be. Their English skills are poor and
they are unprofessional, he said.
The essay sparked a fiery debate about the quality of higher education
in India last week, as mainstream media outlets, bloggers and readers
offered responses and critiques. A somewhat unscientific survey of
comments on the post, responses on Twitter and e-mails sent directly to
[email protected] shows that about 60 to 70 percent of our readers
agree broadly with Mr. Chandra about the quality of India’s recent
graduates.
“I grew up in India, and the next generation is very disappointing,”
wrote Sruthi from New Delhi in the comments on the original post. “The
middle-class workforce is mediocre at best,” she said.
Indian graduates “lack the basic survival skills for workplace clearly
and walk into a ‘professional’ world completely unequipped and unarmed.
All they have at that point is a piece of paper certificate. I feel
pity for these kids,” Sumita Sinha, who said she was an “Indian
Institute graduate” now living in New Jersey, wrote in an e-mail to
India Ink.
Many readers also added, though, that Mr. Chandra’s letter blamed only
the students for their shortcomings, when a host of influences were at
work, including a rote-learning, certificate-driven higher education
system; Indian companies that stress blind obedience and pay salaries
that are a fraction of what United States or European employees earn,
and the prevalence of short-cut taking, and worse, in Indian
corporations.
Namas Bhojani/Bloomberg News
Students gather on the campus of the Indian Institute of Management in
Bangalore, Karnataka in this Aug. 7, 2003 file photo.
“I graduated 10 years ago from one of India’s reputed B-schools, and oh
boy, I was so disappointed,” wrote an India Ink reader, Sach Bolo, from
New York. Indian students may be ambitious, but the regimented Indian
education model doesn’t create people who can think for themselves, he
wrote. “Having worked in U.S. with American co-workers for last six
years, I have seen people with average or below-average intelligence
performing their job very smartly,” he said, offering up a
spectacularly backhanded compliment to the American education system.
“Our education standards are going down day by day, starting from
school up to university level, because every educational institution is
just after money,” Nitin Sharma wrote on the Web site of NDTV, which
carried the open letter.
Sidin Vadukut, a regular India Ink contributor, penned a response for
Mint newspaper that also laid the blame on the Indian education system,
not graduates: “a system that crushes [students] repeatedly, year after
year, for exhibiting precisely the skills Chandra wants to see more of.”
“While I agree that our graduates are hardly manna from heaven, I also
believe that they don’t choose to be that way,” he wrote. “They don’t
transform into shallow, hierarchical, unethical, non-professionals 15
minutes before they graduate.”
Not surprisingly, some education professionals in India defended the
Indian education system. The Mumbai Mirror, which carried a piece on
the letter, quoted an Indian Institute of Management professor who
said, “If the Indian management style is unique or different, why are
we trying to embody somebody else’s benchmark and then claim it to be
right?”
Sam Hollenshead for the IHT
A student during class at the Hinduja College of Commerce in Mumbai,
Maharashtra.
Mr. Chandra’s appeal to new graduates to ask questions on the job was
held up by many as impractical or impossible. “If I had to count, on my
fingers, the number of times a new graduate asked a question and a
snide remark was passed as a consequence, I would not have enough
fingers,” wrote the blogger The Older Graduate.
India’s “work culture has not sufficiently evolved despite two decades
of liberalization,” Firstpost wrote in response to the letter.
“Corporate environments – with exceptions that prove the rule – tend to
resemble somewhat improved versions of their socialist era
predecessors.”
Blogger Great Bong called the letter “hectoring” and not “nice,” among
other things, in his critique “An Open Letter to Prospective Indian
Employer.”
India’s employers have been spoiled, he added, “by an illusion that you
can continue to make money by relying on cheap Indian skilled labor
forever.”
And employers are not setting a good example for workers, he said. “If
you expect your new employees to be honest and professional, set the
standard yourself, dear Indian employer. That means no Satyam Shivam
Sunderam, no immigrant visa hera-pheri, no cooking of books, no housing
five developers in one single room in New Jersey, and other assorted
kindly-adjusts that we know happen.”
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