Producing Professionals

The army of members in the land’s Legislative field, who are contriving to get elected mostly by questionable means portray themselves as politicians, a misnomer indeed in the backdrop of the classical definition of the profession. Considering their conduct both in their various Houses such as Parliament, Legislative Assembly and Gram Panchayat as well as outside in the open, one is prompted to raise the question: Are they professional in the correct meaning of the term? The answer to the question suggests itself when the environment they are creating nowadays all over the country is reckoned with. Not being accountable for the trust people of the country have vested in them, the less one talks or writes about their conduct, read misconduct, the better. A more worthwhile pastime is to ponder over the gigantic task of producing professionals needed in various fields such as engineering, healthcare, education, administration, sports, management, media and so on for keeping a vibrant economy in progress mode.

The effort and cost of creating infrastructure and services for training personnel in adequate numbers to function efficiently in the aforementioned fields rise without any let up as the country’s population increases year on year is saying the obvious. The backlog of trained manpower, read human power, needed for sustaining the country’s economic health is already humongous. In this context, the ongoing public debate on the draft of National Education Policy is likely to yield worthwhile leads.

Articles written by those with work experience in many diverse fields, both academic and practical, have been published in periodicals creating awareness about the importance of professional excellence in all pursuits. While admissions to hundreds of engineering colleges established with enormous investments during the past few years have dramatically shrunk, creation of jobs in the wake of rising unemployment even for professionally educated youth, skilling the existing workforce in both organised and unorganised sectors of industry, ensuring guaranteed income from agriculture, affordable healthcare to all and reforms in the education sector to move away from its present berated status are in the crucible of successive Governments aimed at transforming the society from chaos to order.

The nuances of reforming education sector to produce the land’s workforce without compromising on professional norms in different fields of economy being complex, the numerous ideas and proposals made by the authors of articles need to be distilled to determine the road map towards a vibrant economy. The role of committed pedagogy in achieving professional excellence cannot be over-exaggerated.