There are a lot many more out there and it is cause enough to worry.
Anybody born in the 70s would have grown up hearing that India’s biggest problem is her population. There has been no dearth of so called experts who predicted that India would devour herself in an attempt to feed her hungry millions. Well they were wrong, weren’t they? We proved them wrong, didn’t we? We are still here, aren’t we? Today our population is our biggest asset, isn’t it?
Well, just about.
Someone once rightly said that if you want to see proof of the existence of a God, you should go to India. While we can sit back and gloat about how we proved those silly theorists wrong, the fact is we got lucky.
We were lucky that we continued with the British education system.
We were lucky that the Nehru clan mistrusted industry.
We were lucky that our medical system continued to be so bad that people never took the chance of having smaller families.
We were lucky that apart from a government job the only other avenues open to the youth were medicine and engineering.
Question: Just how lucky can one nation get?
More important question: When is that luck going to run out?
The mad rush to get on the IT bandwagon has meant that one of our most prized exports – civil engineers and architects are dwindling in number. Already the effects of this can be seen in the fact that our road projects are going to South East Asian countries.
We need to give more impetus to our vocational training courses and make sure that the lowest strata of society is able to partake of the lucky breaks this country has had over the years.
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