Religious studies or no studies

We should give up the pretence of being modern, as the sooner we accept that, the faster we can train tomorrow’s graduates for jobs that really matter. Representation pic

The unemployment rate in India averaged 8.57 per cent from 2018 until 2021, reaching an all-time high of 23.50 per cent in April of 2020. This is what Google told me when I did a search. I do not vouch for the veracity of these statistics, obviously, because I do not represent the government of India and can't speak for the government of India. Who is to say the numbers weren't fudged by people paid by foreign governments jealous of our many achievements like the world's tallest statue or world's biggest thali?

I am simply quoting people who claim to be experts, and who spend their time documenting information like this, much of which may be wildly inaccurate. After all, even though I personally know a significant number of people who have lost their jobs and are desperately looking for work, it is always possible that my friends and their colleagues are pretending to do so only to malign the government of India. All the advertisements in our newspapers show smiling young men and women in offices around the country, and we all know government-sponsored ads don't lie. So, I always take these statistics with a huge pinch of salt. If I have a job, everyone else is probably lying.

Numerous research reports show that highly-educated Indians are also opting for low-paying jobs because they have no choice. They are applying for anything and everything that gives them the ability to pay for rent and food; and this has supposedly become a lot worse in the aftermath of COVID-19 and our first lockdown.
Again, who is to say these research reports haven't been funded by India's numerous enemies? We have all been told, repeatedly, that we are surrounded by countries desperate to make us look bad. We have enemies within our borders too - students, women, and minorities, for example - who would be only too happy to make our honourable, highly educated ministers from Yale and Gujarat University look like failures. Keeping this in mind makes it impossible for me to accept any information about unemployment.

Let's say, for the sake of argument though, that these reports have some element of truth to them; let's say we really have a shockingly large number of unemployed young people desperate to do more than follow suggestions from politicians and run fast-food stalls. It begs the question: Why are we churning out more educated graduates and failing to give them options when it comes to making a living? There are only so many unemployed Indians who can join major political parties after all, and so many of them require the filing of criminal cases against individuals before they are deemed worthy of inclusion. Where are the options for innocent graduates who don't commit crimes and want to do real work rather than become ministers? What is to become of them?

I blame the lack of spiritual guidance in our universities for this hypothetical state of affairs. Unemployed Indians exist not because they aren't studying enough, but because they are wasting time studying things that only people living in the West have the luxury of studying. We tend to focus more on subjects that mean very little in our larger scheme of things - mathematics, science, history, technology, and computer - and too little on the spiritual aspect of life. We want our graduates to be engineers, lawyers, and doctors, which leaves almost no one to focus on important jobs such as how to clean a cowshed or what our ancient epics have to say about hygiene. Critics will scoff, pointing out that urban India needs more people who can meet the country's prospective needs than experts on medieval India. They are wrong though, because what a country moving backwards needs to prepare for is the past, not a future that only promises to be more dismal with every passing month.

We should give up the pretence of being a modern country because the sooner we accept that, the faster we can adapt and train tomorrow's graduates for jobs that really matter. What do we do with more doctors and engineers? We managed a pandemic by simply pretending rural India didn't need medical assistance, and look at how well we managed. Yes, a few million people may or may not have passed away depending upon where you go looking for facts, but we did a pretty good job.

I want an India where every student is studying religious texts alone. We don't obsess over religion enough, which bothers me.

When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira

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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper