My vision of India in 2025 and my contribution to it

This was written as part of an application for a scholarship
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By 2025, India would decisively be in the forefront of the race to become a global superpower riding on employing its human capital to varied productive uses.

Human capital is one of the most important resources for any country. India has a relatively young population and it is critical for the country to leverage its human capital to join the ranks of the developed nations.

Education sector in India has traditionally operated in a highly regulated environment resulting in a huge demand-supply mismatch. 142 million children (of the 361 million children who should be in school) still remain out of school. High proportions of dropouts are seen at each grade. Adult literacy rate in India is 61% vs. 76.7% among developing countries and 98.5% among developed countries.

The government has realized the need to focus on education and multiple initiatives are being taken in this direction. At the same time, people’s propensity to pay for education has increased tremendously. Emergence of a strong middle class coupled with the perception of educational spend as investment for the future (rather than a expense) will help revive the education system of the nation.

In the coming years, more efficient educational system would lead to better deployment and use of funds. This would also help in reducing the skill shortage being faced by various industries by enhancing the employability of the workforce.

I believe that in a society, the more intellectual minds should service the educational system. As such, more and more people from institutes like IIMA should starting contributing to academia after they graduate.

My long-term career goal is to set-up a school for K-12 education and give a large part of my time towards its development and functioning. I plan to work for a few years to gather the necessary resources for this school. My aim is to research and gather information about various schools from across the globe. This would allow me to have a blue print of the school in terms of the various structural aspects that I want to incorporate and adapt.

Once I have managed to put in place a necessary framework for the school and the resources are at disposal, I plan to devote most of my time to it. By 2025, I see this school 2-3 years into its operations.

I am not sure how much I would have been able to contribute to the vision that has been detailed above. However, I have a strong belief that though the contribution might be small, it is with many such contributions that the vision for the country would come true.