On 'Facing the technological prowess of china'

Santanu Guha

The above article was published in Frontier on 29/06/2020, I would like to mention two things wherein you have said, "Our Govt. revenues are being used to pay hefty
 salaries to the Government servants” … "Govt. servants are eating away the sovereignty of the country by capturing govt. revenues and preventing research and defense." 

1) HRD minister of state, Mr. Mahendra Nath Pandey in Rajya Sabha in 2016 (or in parliament) informed the house when a question was raised regarding fund allocation by the Govt. in educational institutions.  He said that the funds of 26.96% of the total has gone to the IITs (4135.85crore for 22 IITs) which have 1.18% of the students,  17.99% to NITs (2577.65 crore for 31 NITs) which have 1.37% of the students and 3.35% to IIMs (463 crore for 19 IIMs) which have 0.12 of the students and so on and on.

The remaining 97% of the students attend 865 higher educational institutes in the country get less than half the Government funds.

I am not pointing out severe unfairness of allocation of funds. I have been assured by a statement of a minister in a legislature that crores and crores of rupees are being spent by the government to make NIT, IIM and IITians etc. But where these best minds go after completion of studies at those excellent institutes? NASA, GOOGLE, MICROSOFT------- representing India on a global level? Or, doing govt. jobs and earning hefty salaries! I don't know much about these two routes of their employments. I can tell my personal experience as a very ordinary employee while working in a renowned organization (a mfg. unit) in India for last 35 years.

2) During my 35years of service l have seen several dozens of IIMs, NITs and IITians, not just only one. All of them worked for the company for 8 to 12 hours daily and used to get promotion timely or some leaving jobs and joining companies of same stature or went abroad for further studies. When I joined the unit, the company had the unionised work strength of 880 and when I left in 2018 the strength was reduced to 330 and production raised to 100 times higher p/month than 35 years ago. This reduction of strength was immediately reflected in unorganised labour strength, though not in equal proportion. So, while our govt. is fast privatising, the private sector is fast contractorising, outsourcing.  And these IITians, IIMians are instrumental in implementing the policy of their masters through advanced western technology and verbal violence (mostly used in negotiation tables).

These groups get govt. funding for their studies, join private companies after completion of studies, remain instrumental in reducing manpower and stop increasing workmen's salaries in industries and earns fabulous amounts for doing their jobs. I believe and as far as my experience goes, this is the general picture of the IITians, IIMians in India.

Onus for nation-building cannot rests on a particular group of people (be it govt. servants or private servants) whether China or India, or America or Vietnam. It is the duty of the citizens of the country to attack or defend though no country has attack minister, only DEFENSE MINISTERS. So, no country attacks, countries only defend their sovereignties with a nobler term 'defense and research’!

Jul 5, 2020