India needs 'returning Indian teachers' most urgently!

Atanu Deys note on Liberalize Indian Education questions the feel good factor of the “India shining’ myth.

"If there is any flow which can be termed as “brain-drain,” it is the one-way migration of those who form the cornerstone of a modern economy, namely, top-class highly educated researchers and teachers, and who not just make the university but are the university. Ultimately they are the ones who train the thousands of bright young men and women who go on to build society in all its aspects—social, commercial, political, and educational. "

I think he has hit the nail-Teachers have to be respected in India-and must be among the best paid professionals!!

Ironically today -compared to all other professionals-where the government salaries are a fraction of what the private sector offers, the teaching profession that finds itself in an unenviable situation where the private sector pays much lesser than the ‘UGC scale’!!

So its a situation where one exhausts all other options -before taking up a teaching profession-which at best again, is a stopgap arrangement -as one is constantly looking for greener pastures elsewhere. Most often -it is those unemployed alumni who come back as lecturers..

Even in the premier institutes, those graduating from campus placements probably earn more than their illustrious mentors/guides/professors whose qualifications, research and teaching experience- are hardly as commercially rewarding!

One is shocked to see the facilities (eg lab) of the innumerable capitation fee colleges that have been allowed to mushroom under the garb of liberalisation- most only have imposing buildings to boast of-nothing else graces the portals!It is not a surprise that with so many lakhs of engineers graduating, hardly 15% are employable-another bunch similar trainable!!

Very little interaction between the corporate world and the academia- again increasing the gulf between the desired level of exposure and those skills available!

Yes, there is a greater demand for a robust education system to help build the nation more than any of the MBAs and software engineers coming back to India!!