Arvind Singhal: The Threat Of 'Boards'

MARKETMIND

Urban India is experiencing a very disturbing social phenomenon for the last few years. It is the obsession of an increasingly larger number of parents, mostly urban and belonging to the SEC A, B, and C socio-economic classes, with the performance of their wards in school. In the previous generation, there was of course some pressure of the various Board examinations "" typically in the 10th grade and then in the 12th. However, this pressure was largely limited to smaller numbers and usually experienced by the exam-appearing children themselves rather than the entire family. In the present generation of parents having children aged between 3 and 17, this pressure is assuming threatening proportions. If the obsession of parents with their children's academic performance continues to grow like it has been in recent years, the impact on the psyche of the next generation of Indians will be unpredictable and may well be damaging.

Back of the envelope calculations reveal that there may be over 30 million urban households (out of the about 200 million total households in India) having children in the school going age and representing the upper three tiers of the socio-economic strata. Within the next five years, this number could increase to almost 40 million households, representing over 180 million individuals. This number represents almost 40% of all urban households. The impact is already visible in urban India especially during the January-March period with thinner attendance in cinema halls, shopping centres, and even private social events. A growing number of parents are even taking career decisions or managing dual-city working lifestyles so as not to disturb the schooling of their children till their 12th examinations are over. The menace has grown well beyond the "board" years and in many cases, children even in grade 1 are now being pressured to perform well even when many schools are contemplating or have already scrapped an annual marks-based examination system till grade 5. On top of the fever of annual examinations, there is the fever of terminal examinations and now even that of weekly or monthly tests, which many "branded" schools have introduced in recent years. Getting leave for a child to attend family events such as marriages or other contingencies is now next to impossible in most urban schools leading to a potential distortion in the social fabric in the near future. Finally, to make matters worse, many obsessive parents are also trying their best to covert their progeny into superboys and supergirls by imposing coaching of all types "" for academic as well as for extracurricular activities "" even when the child may not need coaching or in activities that the child has no interest or talent in.

The irony of the whole situation is that there are many tectonic, fundamental shifts taking place in the overall economic structure of the country. In the coming decades, India will see an unprecedented diversity of job opportunities, reflecting the expanded basket of consumption in India and a more multi-faceted economy as a whole. Further, the needs and the priorities of society will undergo a fundamental change in the years to come, thereby making many new categories of jobs more attractive than the current more traditional ones. Not all the high-paying new-age jobs for the future will require the children to be geniuses in basic sciences or commerce. For instance, the coming years will see a great demand for architects, interior designers, lawyers (specialising not only in civil or criminal law but also in trade, intellectual property rights, corporate law, etc.), clinical psychologists, chefs, fitness trainers, beauticians, sportsmen and athletes, product designers, radio and video jockeys, different genres of journalists for the print and electronic media, hoteliers and restaurateurs, travel, event planners and organisers etc. etc. Almost none of these professions requires the child to be an Einstein. The child certainly has to be conscientious, ambitious, confident and diligent if she wishes to excel in her chosen vocation. An effort can certainly be made by the parents to assist the child in appreciating and assimilating these personality attributes. Once this has been achieved, it is very likely that the child will succeed in her future professional life and the parents therefore should have no fear on this count.

It is, of course, true that the total number of available seats for university education in India is already far short of the total demand. With human resource development having been given the worst possible treatment by successive governments in last many years, the imbalance is only going to get worse in the next few years. Hence, there will be some relevance of the quantum of marks obtained by a child when it comes to getting admission ahead of the many other applicants. However, the point being made here is that all the parents need not prepare their children only for engineering or medicine or "commerce" based disciplines. There is much less competition in other disciplines and probably an equal probability for those children to do well in future who are allowed to pursue alternative careers.

arvind.singhal@technopak.com