Monday, June 11, 2001		Article

WHEN you move away from Chandigarh you see many a sleepy towns on both sides of the road. These left-behind are fast joining the IT race. Though the PC per capita remains low as ever it is the computer institute mania that is spreading through all medium-size and small towns and major villages in this region.

Almost daily new companies spring from ground that offer you to use their name in turn for money. They call this 'franchising' that has become a buzzword among small time entrepreneurs looking to make a fast buck. The trick is to use 'technology' and 'USA' above and below a fancy title. The investor has then to convince the young minds that they would be made 'Sabeer Bhatia' if not a Bill Gates, within a matter of months. That is enough to make a small town chap go and borrow money to join the course. And you should read their recruiting advertisements in newspapers where they require nothing less than a B.Tech or a B.E. with three years experience and accomplishments in latest technologies. Well, this is done to convince everybody around that they really are high quality chaps and deserve what they ask. What actually happens is that most of these 'small-town centres' suffer from lack of good teachers, often hiring their own precious old students for a jokingly small salary.

It is said "those who can, do it; those who cannot, teach." This is true about IT teaching in small towns, at least. Nobody with real IT skills will stand against a blackboard unless he or she is starving. And a large pool of badly educated young men provide inhumanly cheap labour for these shops to run. It is this ever-increasing army of unemployed computer literates that is encouraging new start-ups daily.

Computer education got the 'greatest honour' in Muktsar sometime ago, when two or three such great educators joined forces and brought the cheapest franchise they could find. The institute had to be closed later, needless to say and the last time when I passed by, the chaiwala was also searching for the elusive 'sirs,' who owed him money.

The franchise pushers should do something to reform themselves if they want their game to go on. In education you have to think beyond money. But this is turning out to be plain brand name stamping.

On the other hand, we have our universities throwing PGDCA like grains. The lure of a government job security and its comfort of not having to work is making thousands rush to one of the Haryana-based university's "super easy no-preparation-needed diploma exam." Of course, there are no government jobs yet and this is catalysing the ever-increasing 'master' race.

People living in small towns must be made aware that, of course, the world is going to need computers more than ever before. Of course, persons would be needed to run them and do infinite number of jobs from manufacturing them physically to coding them. Moreover more and more businesses will need computerisation in time to come. There will be no dearth of jobs now or later, but remember learning fundamentals of MS Office from a third-class institute is not going to get you on the airbus. They need pioneers out there. Person who could make pathways is needed on the world stage. Nothing short of that would do if you want to make it big.