Killing Motivation: At the heart of FSB and previous UPA policies

Our leaders, either knowingly or inadvertently, are leading our nation to a state of perpetual incompetency. Instead of enabling citizens to earn their own livelihoods; the government is setting policies which disincentivize them from doing so. Giving away free food is going to make the future generations full of sloth and the young demographic dividend which we often use as an argument to score above the Dragon will eventually turn into a liability. Any steps to rectify the same at a later stage will be met with similar protests that plagued the PIGS at the imposition of austerity measures. Add to this the fact that a significant portion of the funds allotted will be siphoned off in the form of leakages only emboldens the futility of the program. What is required at this juncture is to attract investments creating employment opportunities, setting up institutions of education as well as vocational learning; thereby enabling citizens to work and earn their living. Feed a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Moreover, channelizing efforts towards overhauling the rotten PDS and improving agricultural productivity deserves a higher priority than the FSB. The only stakeholder that benefits out of the FSB is the ruling party that enlarges its vote-base as it did with NREGA. Infact, the FSB will act as a trump card for them in the upcoming 2014 elections. Another major change was brought about in the domain of education sometime back which has the same common thread running through its core as the FSB- the transformation from awarding marks/percentages to grades in schools. Under the grading system, a student scoring 81/100 is treated the same as one scoring 97/100. Both are graded as A+. This clearly demotivates students from studying hard and competing. The earlier trend of students trying to argue with teachers for an extra mark will be nowhere to be seen. Dismantling the existing process which injected a sense of competition and an understanding that effort directly correlates with output, the government has set socialist policies at the very bud. School as an institution is meant to be a cradle of leadership and instead our government has transformed it into one that will produce students lacking the zeal to out-perform. Old habits die hard, they say. So, when the same students will be exposed to the real cut-throat environment, they will find it extremely difficult to adopt. We really wouldn’t want our country to lack teeth in an increasingly competitive world. It is imperative that the think-tank sitting high up in the government’s echelons foresee the repercussions that the country will face because of the policies they set.