Challenges in Rural Empowerment !!!

When we all started to work from home, I decided to move to my village after 15 years of professional life across the Globe (Thanks to Optical Fiber Connection – India is very well connected now!) and working from here for more than a year now. I usually visit the nearby fishing harbor every week to buy fish. Observed a young chap working at the harbor. Learned that he was an Engineering Graduate.

 Since then, I started to observe many such instances and learned that too many young talented/educated graduates working as daily labors at civil construction sites, farming fields, fishing harbor etc. in the villages and even surrounding small towns. I am sure this is same across the country too. Never written any general article anywhere, thought through, decided to write this small article about the painful and heart-breaking situation of Engineering students after graduating from Rural Engineering Colleges(At least in TN).

 These kids are getting paid about INR 15K to 20K per month in the local labor market, they are doing this because most of their parents are not rich to hold them for longtime without a job after spending their lifesavings on educating their kids. Yes, Indian parents takes care of their kid’s educational expenses. These engineering grads wanted to work to support their family (some exceptions).

 Of Course, there are challenges like moving away from their villages to find a job. There is no bright future for them because of very competitive job market in most of the industry.

  Most of the organizations do not hire them because of their communications issues, these engineers can’t even introduce themselves in English. Which is no way their fault, because the educational institutions prepare them for mark but not to develop their skill. Because 12 years they studied in local language and next 3 to 4 years in engineering they must study everything in English. Our educational system misses to empower them despite the fact that most recently passed graduates completed their schooling in English medium.

 Organizations are not ready to take risk of training them on their communication skills. Of course, this is none of their business when they have huge manpower available at the market with good communication and skill.

 The painful part is, most of them scored very good in school but the negative side is their language, lack of communication, lack of guidance and less exposure into the outside world/job market.

 So, the question is are they incapable to fit into engineering industry? The immediate answer is NO, because I am also from this group of graduates.

 No Blame game here, Corporates have their own challenge to achieve the revenue target which they agreed to their investors. They are also spending lots of money on technology development skills but not the language skill.

 Of Course, state and central governments are trying to help them, but those schemes may not be sufficient or not reaching the needy. Not an easy task to reach the 130cr populations. It is so expensive and not that easy as well.

  The best part from government is the English medium schools and granted lots of private English medium schools.  This helped, in last 5 years to 10 years we are able to see English speaking engineering graduates.

 Even international institutions such as @worldbank @adb @IMF have very good vision to empower the rural part of the world but unfortunately most of their initiatives are not directly managed by themselves, these institutions are going through some NGOs, local governments or through some corporate companies but the effectiveness is almost zero at the ground level.

 Despite the intention to develop rural population from various institutions, we have a big gap here. Corporates and international communities should rethink about their fund allocation or hiring process considering rural skilled manpower as well.

 @zoho founder Mr. @Sridhar Vembu did a wonderful job by establishing a program to empower rural kids through their ZOHO Schools. But this is just not enough to empower a massive engineering candidate availability in the rural part of the country. Now he did his part amazingly and he is continuing this as a vision but there is so much to do.

 We are all fighting for equal rights for women and men but I believe the major issue is equal rights to village and city’s skilled manpower’s,

 There are so many engineering colleges in this country where Tamilnadu contribute 30% of them.

In a year Tamilnadu delivering several 1000 engineering students into technology industry. there are opportunity in the industry but students are not at the mark to meet the market requirement.

i can see many of my friends and colleges wanted to start something, but not much able to take the risk without much help from industry,, someone should take the challenge and start the rural development in a big way along with domestic, international and local government. Few are already started something but still it required multiple organizations unified support.

It is my personal opinion, not to target anyone individual or organization.