I am here to plead for an emergency rescue plan for the students of 9, 10, 11 and 12, Kiran Bedi announced starkly while speaking as part of a panel debating 'How to train students for innovation and leadership' at TNIE's ThinkEdu Conclave.
And why do we need a rescue plan? To stop our youth from becoming anti-national, she explained, "The students of 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th must immediately come into an emergency rescue program because in the next three years, they will become voters. As voters, they will be demanding jobs," she added, "I sometimes wonder where they will go, I hear that they will go and become rowdies. They find power through these routes to buy themselves a (political) position, which is what they are aspiring to."
Speaking alongside IIM-B 's Rajeev Srinivasan and IMI's Debashis Chatterjee, she explained her 'rescue plan', "The first step would be an immediate training programme for teachers of class 11th and 12th . They should sit together with parents and principals to decide what becomes of these students. Secondly, we need to create an ecosystem where they will either go to college or to a polytechnic institute. Without a steady plan, they will not make it to universities, engineering or anything else. They will become an unemployed generation. We need to give them the training to help develop their aptitudes. There are industries close by, we must start linking them. They can thus, remain in something useful than migrate to something harmful," she elucidated.
Bedi, who reminded everyone that she started her career as a teacher and remains one at heart, also pointed out the challenges of the national education plan and called for an immediate implementation of structural changes. Putting specific focus on students in India's vast rural pockets, she suggested, "Students can be given agricultural learning at the school level, so they could be streamlined into a useful profession."
Rajeev Srinivasan, Adjunct faculty, IIM-B and Debashis Chatterjee, Director-General, International Management Institute spoke about how bringing back the gurukul system of education would be the best way to give students a strong dose of innovation in their curriculum in the near future. Srinivasan said, "Innovation is largely driven by research and development. Unless you do detailed research, you'll never be able to catch up with the world," he said. Chatterjee spoke about how instead of complaining that our most innovative brains were going abroad, we should be able to nurture them and respect their innate potential, "It's better to have a brain drain than a brain in the drain."
