Editorial: India’s got no talent?

CHENNAI: The fact that more than 1.3 million youngsters prefer to go abroad to study every year, most of them never to return, is quite an accurate reflection of the poor state of higher education in India. Against that context, it is no surprise, therefore, to learn that India ranks 103 out of 134 countries on the latest Global Talent Competitiveness Index published by INSEAD, a chain of top business schools. What is even more depressing is that India’s ranking has slid from 83 ten years ago.

The index is a barometer of how countries grow, attract and retain talent. Its two sub-indices, which measure the regulatory and business environment in a country and the steps taken to foster talent and retain it, serve as a resource to investment decision-makers worldwide.

It shouldn’t be an insult that India keeps the company of Algeria (ranked 102) and Guatemala (104) and is bettered by Rwanda, Namibia, Ghana, Gambia and Kenya. Rather, the significance lies in the fact that India, despite gaining independence much earlier than those countries, ought to have done much better on developing a deep talent pool.

India’s talent competitiveness falls below the median score of INSEAD rankings and is the worst among the BRICS countries, a global grouping we are proud to belong to. It means that although we are an important emerging market, our human resources are under optimum.

The fine print of the INSEAD report illustrates this further: India obviously is not great at attracting talent from overseas, but we are also at the bottom of the heap, 129th, on being open to talent within the country. The report also points to “an increased skills mismatch, and a greater difficulty in finding skilled employees” and ranks India 121st on both the ‘Employability’ and ‘Vocational and Technical Skills’ sub-themes.

On the employability count, the INSEAD report confirms the longstanding trend of our higher educational institutions disgorging graduates not fit for employment. In the latest India Skills Report brought out by the consultancy Wheebox, which conducts a test of employability globally, only 50.3% of Indian youth made the grade in 2023. Grads from technical courses like MCA (30.6%), ITI (34.2%), and polytechnic (27.6%) fared particularly poorly, indicating that our technical veneer is thin, limited only to the IITs. This further underlines our elitist approach to higher education, a prejudice-tainted trait that dates back to the Vedic age.

The erosion in talent competitiveness reported by INSEAD is consistent with the ground we have lost on several other parameters in the past 10 years. On the Human Capital Index, we have slipped from 78 in 2013 to 116 in 2023; on Human Freedom we have gone from 90 to 112; on electoral democracy we have slid from 55 to 108; on the hunger index we have plummeted from 55 to 111.

To all such slippages, the BJP-led Union government’s response has been to question the methodology. When the Family Health Survey reported the continued wide spread of anaemia, its response was to suspend the officials responsible for the survey. To the Global Hunger Index Report, it said the finding was based on 3,000 phone calls to citizens, asking the question ‘Are you hungry’.

Such flippancy in the face of an erosion of livelihood parameters begs the question whether the BJP-led government is serious about governance at all.