Altogether 56,036 students from Nagaland will be appearing for the Class X, Class XI Promotion and Class XII commencing from February 12 and 13 respectively, an increase by over 1300 candidates from last year.
The annual exam conducted by the Nagaland Board of School Education (NBSE) can be taken as a realistic yardstick on how the future generation of students are shaping up in the state. It also provides a good preview for the policymakers to make perspective and prospective policies for any future eventualities.
The increase in the number of students entering secondary and higher education itself is a big achievement, with the potential for highly productive and knowledgeable students. However, it also confronts any government with an equally challenging task – ensuring proper opportunity for the maximum number of those cohorts.
The concern is not the increasing number of students attaining higher education, but to make sure that such attainment is not wasted either due to failure to create avenues or mismatch of skills and quality of education.
Two questions, thus, are pertinent here: Is the government geared up by way of governance and creating avenues to absorb the growing number of educated job seekers? And, is the current system of education preparing the students to meet challenges in the future?
This is an insurmountable task and requires urgent attention from those at the helms of affairs.
In 2016, the ‘Nagaland Vision 2030’ document estimated that an annual entry of 13,000 educated young people into the job market apart from the existing 70,000. It called for creating at least 10,000 employment opportunities annually to absorb the growing demand in the job market. This does not include those ‘uneducated’ or unregistered.
Given 2.5-3% attrition rates of employees by way of retirement, deaths, resignations etc, the document optimistically estimated the possibility of intake of about 3000 to 3500 people in the government sector annually.
In reality, most of the jobs are allegedly filled through a process which came to be referred infamously in Nagaland as ‘Backdoor Appointment.’
For instance, the last cycle of preliminary exams for NCS, NPS, NSS & Allied Services conducted by Nagaland Public Service Commission (NPSC) 12, 865 candidates vied for 62 posts - a far cry from the estimated 3000 to 3500 jobs opening in Government sector annually. Apart from this, the technical and education exam may observe it to a hundred. While departmental exams are becoming vogue these days rather than routing through the Commission, often allegations of unfair practices are levelled. Thus, the avenues for open and fair competition, instead of increasing, are becoming narrower.
This was the primary concern of the Naga students joining 'Young India March' on February 7 in New Delhi where they called for cleansing the higher education system as well as ending ‘corrupt mode’ of backdoor recruitment.
Away from governance and state polity, the issues of quality of education matter. For future jobs, what students learn and what government enables through the facilitation of required infrastructure and environment will be pivotal in solving the clear ‘present and future’ unemployment crisis.
Ensuring quality of education is vital to plug the educated unemployment, while transparency and accountability are governance is imperative to ensure an equal and fair opportunity to all. It also involves anticipating the future and developing policies based on such an assessment. In short, the students, as well as the government, should be ‘future-proof.’
