Indian education system is messed up

Hyderabad: The School of Management Studies, University of Hyderabad (UoH), celebrated its foundation day and invited Manish Sabharwal, Chairman & Co- founder of Teamlease Services, to deliver the Foundation Day lecture on the topic titled ‘ Putting India to Work- Opportunities and Challenges in Employment and Education’ on Tuesday.

After obtaining a management degree from Wharton which gave him the basis for his entrepreneurial journey, Sabharwal founded the View Group and managed to get $2 billion funding for his new company in the USA. He returned to India and positioned himself as a crusader for labour reforms in India. Since its inception in 2002, the HR Consulting Company he co-founded - TeamLease - has placed more than half a million people in jobs.

During his address Sabharwal said: ‘Our education system is messed up. People in the metro cities can speak good English and therefore, hired at a higher salary compared to the migrants from different states from UP and Bihar” he said. These are the implications of policy decisions, which allowed English to be taught in one state, but not in another, he added.

Continuing his lecture, he revealed that ‘out of one lakh kids who call us every month, we manage to hire only three percent. There’s no defect with the rest 97,000 of them. They are willing, but unfortunately not employable. If most of them had been born in a metro, they would have had a job. Ultimately, the 3 E’s – Education, Employment, and Employability stand at the heart of the education policy in India, he opined.

Sabharwal had been made a member of the prestigious Central Advisory Board of Education and the various committees of the state and the central government. He was also instrumental setting up the first vocational university in Gujarat under the PPP model, which gives him an opportunity to delve into the issue in detail and offer his formula for a successful policy on education in India.