The New HRD Minister of India and Her Declarations about Educational Qualifications: Should it be a Big Issue?

As a very ordinary citizen of India, but with some wishful thoughts on the governance and administration of the country biased with some vested interests of seeing my nation progress in all fields for the benefits of  its people like me, I had come to the conclusion that Mr Narendra Modi would be a better choice for India as its new Prime Minister . I considered this after due comparison of all other options carefully. And like any other commoner, I too became happy when my wish became fulfilled eventually a few days ago.

But Indian media keep picking up sensational news pieces to be brought in to the notice of the opinion makers among the Indian society about the new Indian PM , his ministerial colleagues and their portfolios.

The PM himself has been in the news limelight prominently for what he is or is doing or would be doing. Some news researchers have brought the educational backgrounds of the new ministers in to public attention. 

The Modi government, they informed the people, has a 5th class pass minister and a few other ministers whose educational achievements have not gone beyond the school level.

More importantly, the new HRD minister and the youngest of the cabinet, is an attractive lady with good command in the essential languages but doesn't have any formal university degrees. The Human Resources Development minister of India herself is not much educationally developed! What can you possibly expect from such a government? The media brought out the feelings of the people!

Soon this news spread and has become a hot topic of debate in India. An online news portal brought out the ' strange case' about the ministers false declarations to the Election Commission of India. The issue was raked up apparently by a leader from the outgoing UPA government resulting in a fury of hot debate both against and in favor of the new HRD minister.  

I feel the current controversy is unnecessary. So long as the Indian electoral laws do not specify any minimum educational qualification for the candidates seeking to file their nominations for getting elected as the member of the parliament (MP) or becoming a minister of the Indian Union, it is not appropriate to question the wisdom of the new PM to nominate his ministers, even if they may not be eligible for getting any employment with any governmental organizations. 

Moreover, it should be remembered that we had many such ministers even in the past and no previous governments felt it necessary to change the Representation of the Peoples' Act 1951  amending the relevant clauses accordingly.

Of course, knowledge, leadership qualities and such other skills may be of great advantage for any minister who is supposed to hold immense responsibilities on behalf of the people and for doing good to the people. But it is an erroneous idea to think that such desired skills and knowledge are possessed only by those people who have formal degree certificates. If that were so, the best political leaders would have emerged only from the bureaucrats or the technocrats. But we know that is not true at least in the present time. 

So let us not pre-judge any ministers of the government based on their formal educational qualifications. They are leaders any way and all of them have some qualities different from the common people like me.

The new government and its actions would reflect on the nation positively or negatively after some time. The new government is only a couple of days old. It has already fixed its 100-day priorities agenda.

Let us watch and hope for the best instead of making a big issue out of some minister's educational qualifications or declarations!

School Education: An Open Suggestion to the Government !

How much money do the private schools in India make as profits in an year ?

Do they actually make any profits ?

What happens to the profits they amass if at all they make such profits ?

First, education in India has been a no-profit social service from the very beginning. In the beginning, it remained as a no-loss- no-profit social service undertaken by religious or charitable trusts or societies.

Even now it remains more or less in the same manner as far as the ownership and management are concerned.

Only difference is that the government has allowed them to have some free hand in determining the fees collected ,  the salaries paid to the staff  and the appointment of teachers and staff members. The governments (central, state or local) also play a role in giving the necessary permits for any one to start and carry on with the education service anywhere, just as they control the business of production and sale of alcoholic beverages.

The education service business (?) can be done by any individual or association of individuals of different nature as trusts, societies or companies, but conventionally most education institutions in India are run by bodies registered as Societies.

In the statutory provisions of a Society, there is no question of the members sharing the profits.

So theoretically, educational institutions run by Societies do not give any special benefits or share of profits to the individual members, in contrast to companies where profit sharing by way of dividends is legally admissible.

But in India, theory and practice are 180 degrees apart.

That is why India is a special nation in the world !

Now let us see how much money a normal English medium public school which is privately managed by a society make in an year now.

First let us take the example of a well established school in a non-metro which has been in existence for the last about two decades or more. That essentially means that the school has some land of about 2 acres or even more and all the necessary buildings and other infrastructure.

It also has classes from Kindergarten to Class-12. Typically such a school is likely to have an average student strength of about 3000 and a staff strength of 100 ( a ratio of 1:30)

This public school typically impart education in English medium and the syllabus they follow may be something equivalent to that prescribed by the government controlled autonomous bodies. The average fee per student for this school is to the order of Rs.1000/- per student per month or more.

So, this school can have an annual income of 3000x1000x12 = Rs. 36000000 (Rs. 36 million)

Now this school gives an average salary of Rs.20000 per month to its staff. This is the major expense for the school. If the government salaries are any bench mark, the school should have given an average salary, double this figure.

So if the salaries are at an average of 20000/- then the school has to make an expenditure of Rs 24 million per annum. In such a situation they have surplus of about 12 Million. Enough for other expenses and a neat profit.

On the other hand if they have to increase the salary to say an average of 40000, then perhaps they cannot do it unless they enhance the fees.

Now in the present situation the issue has become very complex.

There are schools which make huge surpluses and there are schools which are financially sick.

But even for those schools which make huge surpluses, the costs for set up of new schools now have become exorbitant due to uncontrolled price rise in land costs. Thus even those who make surpluses are also prevented from attempting establishment of new schools. New schools cannot operate unless they get more children who can pay high fees or they exploit the staff with low salaries !

Thus a situation arises where children do not get equitable education facilities by paying similar fees. A rush to the well established schools for admissions thus becomes a reality.

This causes high demand for those schools .

A situation for corruption gets automatically created.

In my opinion, the governments have a high responsibility to prevent such things.

What can they do ?

The government should make it mandatory for all schools to publish their annual income-expenditure statements.

There should be a mandatory system of audits of the educational institutions' accounts.

A statutory body- say the  NATIONAL EDUCATION FUND OF INDIA (NEFI) - may be created where  at least 90 % of all surplus of a education society should be remittable and held in their own individual accounts. All organisations which run schools or educational institutions should be enrolled as the members of this body. This body should also provide grants and soft loans to registered members for set up of new institutions or for betterment of their education work. The management cost of this body should be borne by the Central government and the body should never become another organization for exploiting the schools.

Will the HR Ministry of India consider this ?

Of course, those religious and other societies that have been successful in making huge surpluses may not agree.

But if they are forced statutorily to part with the surplus amounts to the national fund some good things are immediately going to happen.

First they might stop exploiting the teachers and the non-teaching staff.

Second, they have to adopt good management and accounting practices.

Third, the citizens get the opportunity  know what way their fees are utilized by the schools ; they may no longer feel that the schools are exploiting them.

And last not the least, the government gets the opportunity to positively take part in a responsibility that they ought to do !

[View the linked list of all Blogs of the Author Here ! ]

EPC Services and Engineering Design Groups in India- Is there any HR crunch ?

I had earlier written a blog here highlighting the importance of engineering services departments for ensuring long term success of integrated steel plants of India. [You may read it Here !]

Engineering Services Departments (ESD) may be known in different names, but such a department is the key for ensuring success of capital project investments undertaken by the steel plants. Again success of the steel plants would invariably add to the economic progress of the country.

The same is applicable to other industries as well. For large process industries, existence of an ESD having a team of experienced and competent consulting engineers would be a great asset.

Some industries outsource the work of ESD to external engineering consultants. This is the only option for setting up a new industry. The following are some of the leading engineering consultancy service companies in India:

1. M. N. Dastur
2. MECON
3. Uhde
4. EIL
5. Tata Consulting Engineers
6. FP India
7. Fichtner India
8. DCPL
9. Libra Process
10. Linde Engineering
11. CECON Consultants Pvt Limited

But once the industry has come in to existence, its in house ESD should be in a position to look after its future needs with regard to all additions, modifications, replacements and even modernizations.

But ESD's alone cannot guarantee success of any project involving Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC). While ESDs are responsible for drawing the outline of the project formulation and the project estimation from the purchaser's side, reputed EPC contractors having the core competency in undertaking the detailed engineering, procurement and construction of the project upto  its successful testing and commissioning are also essential to ensure the completion of the project successfully.

In India companies or firms having full fledged infrastructure in executing EPC contracts are limited in number. As a result, whenever massive infrastructure investments are taken up by a number of investors both in the private and public sector almost simultaneously the essential capacities of the EPC contractors with regard to expert man power and related infrastructure gets overburdened creating a bottleneck for speedy implementation of projects.

The reason for this is because of the haphazard planning by the authorities. You just cannot spend billions of rupees in one or two year's time if you do not have that many experienced people to execute the projects even when you think of outsourcing the contracts to foreign EPC contractors. EPC involves group efforts by many teams of experienced engineers in various levels and disciplines capable of doing works like surveying, development of basic and detailed engineering drawings, construction at site, equipment sourcing, inspection , erection, testing and other such activities.

In India expertize in the field of surveying, design and drawing, which is essential for any EPC contract to be successful, has not seen much advancement in the last many years commensurate with the requirements.

It takes years of work experience for engineers to develop expertize in this field. When you do not have EPC projects not taking place for decades at a stretch, there is no chance that those engineers who are placed with EPC related work are getting experience that is required to be gained. Again, lack of adequate work in this field has caused many organizations, both in public and private sector, to curtail the strength of engineers in this field or altogether redeploy them to other areas of work.

Thus during the period from 1990 to 2005, there has been a big slump in EPC related work in India in many sectors. Many EPC contract companies who used to have a good name in the past have just got vanished from the scenes.

Later when decisions are taken for massive spending in EPC contracts, the purchasers are left with no option other than awarding contracts to any one without actually ascertaining their capacities to do the work in time. Even those who have managed to get contracts are running here and there in search of experienced engineers to do the job. Those who took voluntary retirements from the sinking organisations of yester years are in great demand now.

But those who think that such engineers would be of some help in doing the work might not be knowing fully well about the complexities of the work done by an experienced team of engineers.

An individual engineer, even when he is experienced would be a helpless person unless he has got the backup support system by way of his peers , subordinates and others who used to be his strength. Besides, in a new place he is without his back up knowledge !

There are a few EPC contractors who are surviving the slump of the last decade and are perhaps doing well now. Now the time is good for them as there are plenty of orders and opportunities. Their order books should be full.

Some of the leading Indian EPC firms are :
1. Larsen and Toubro
2. Punj Lloyd
3. Jaypee Associates
4. Lanco Infratech
5. Nagarjuna Constructions
6. IVRCL
7. Simplex Infrastructure
9. Gammon India
11.Tata Projects
12. Shapoorji Pallonji
13. GVK

14. Siemens 

15. MECON (Public Sector)

17. EIL (Public Sector)

18. Simon India

19. Usha Projects

20. Technip India
21. MBE 
22. Danieli Corus India

Whether it is an in-house ESD of a large industry or an engineering consultancy service company or an EPC service firm their efficacy and success depends on their ability to retain and develop engineering talent and expertise especially in the engineering design and consultancy field. This is indeed a difficult human resource development (HRD) task.

In engineering design and consultancy field every engineer from each of the specialized field of engineering discipline has to be with exemplary professional skills and knowledge. Without which the group cannot accomplish the challenges posed to it. Without having a steady inflow of assignments the group cannot gain experience. The group cannot expand to have more engineers to its fold, unless it has an assured income coming from engineering design and consultancy works.

EPC and engineering consultancy groups face this dilemma: to expand in manpower or not. Haphazard developments plans of the country is the biggest problem in this regard. EPC and consultancy groups are often compelled to play safe. They keep the man power at the minimum. Some consultancy companies that had grown too big in man power due to the work loads in the past decades had to adopt various means such as voluntary retirements to reduce its man power when work inputs reduced. This way a good chunk of their expertise in various areas got removed. Later when investment momentum began picking up, they faced human resource crunch which had its own effects in the quality of their engineering expertise and services. I would not like to name those groups because their managements officially would not like to highlight such drawbacks for obvious reasons.

The human resource vacuum that happened in India in core engineering fields with regard to real engineering experience, in all industries both in the public and private sectors, is the main reason why India is facing cost and time overruns in almost all infrastructural and industrial projects.

As engineering is a group activity, it would be very difficult to identify the areas of competency vacuums that exist in the various organizational hierarchy by statistical studies.

To identify this we need to adopt a different approach. The top authorities should open their eyes to recognize the ground realities in this important area that is critical to the country's future developments if at all progress is to be achieved in a reasonable time frame.

An open discussion by the people who are working in this area of EPC and engineering consultancy fields might be helpful.

It would be an interesting study if some one undertakes to find out the number of engineers working in design and engineering field in India and the details of their qualifications, experience, age, expertize, etc. I percieve a human resource (HR) inadequacy in this field. There is also a need to make this area an interesting career option for young and bright engineers. If the field does not attract them, progress of India would depend on foreign help perennially for ever.
I may be wrong in my perceptions.

Please correct me if I am.