India: a case of disappearing liberal arts?

India’s growing labour force is already a much talked-about asset, not just within the country but also around the globe. There have been numerous discussions on how the country needs to bring about changes in its education system to properly harness the human capital and reap the demographic dividend. Now, HRD minister Kapil Sibal has stated at the India Economic Summit that India will have 200 million graduates and 500 million skilled staffers by 2020, accounting for 20 per cent of the entire world’s workforce. To ensure employability of these huge numbers, Sibal also said that the government is trying to set up vocational institutes near industry clusters so that industry can give inputs on its requirements. Interestingly, the talk around employment in India mostly focuses on the IT sector and providing skilled labour for it. There has, of course, been some concern over manufacturing too. But IT, with its status of being a key driver of the country’s growth, gets greater importance. While the presence of a skilled workforce is definitely a must for a growing nation, the development of human capital in our country has shown an increasing tendency of being lopsided. There is much emphasis on vocational or technical education, and with good reason. But in the process, the liberal arts are increasingly being pushed into the background. The liberal arts have a tradition of being an integral part of human educational history, since the time of the Roman Empire. At the time Romans used the term liberal arts to refer to the proper education that a “free individual” should receive. It was supposed to be essential for creating a well-rounded individual and was based on the premise that a free man (as opposed to a slave) should have a broader education, encompassing a vast field of subjects. In the developed nations of the western world, there is an essential balance between the study of liberal arts and the imparting of technical education. The youth are equally encouraged to aspire to be researchers, writers, economists or historians, as they are to be engineers or managers. Which is, in turn, reflected in the quality of writers or social scientists that they produce. In India, the lack of names that can claim global recognition in these fields is very apparent. The above-mentioned professions don’t really attract a huge pool of talent, and parental or peer pressure doesn’t help the situation in any way. Professional education, in particular the churning out of engineers and IT professionals, has hogged all the limelight. However, it must be kept in mind that emphasis on the liberal arts is important for the growth of knowledge in a country’s citizens. Rather than mere employability, a country’s education system also needs to deliver broader, in-depth knowledge to its youth, honing their intellectual capabilities. A liberal arts education is designed to help an individual develop rational thinking and intellectual capacity. More than that, it can also be a major growth engine for the economy, for it encourages innovation and forward thinking. Holistic growth in the economy cannot come from just employable labour being provided to one or two sectors. For an economy that is knowledge driven and innovation focused, it is very important that the youth be encouraged to delve deep into the various pools of knowledge and help create a nation that is balanced in its growth.