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Among the words that have infiltrated the vocabulary of common sense during the recent past, none is as egregious as ‘aspiration’. Its rampant use in the economic and political spheres has dented public awareness of reality. In the sphere of economics, in terms of both policies and propaganda, the use of ‘aspiration’ in various combinations and contexts has pushed aside common sense knowledge about life’s necessities. Things have come to a point where something as important as the need to work in order to make a living is referred to as aspiration. As political coinage, ‘aspirational India’ connotes revolutionary change. The users of this phrase ignore the long and tiring struggle of countless youth to find work. The vast majority spends years waiting, or in ‘time pass’ as an economist has called it. Those who portray India as ‘aspirational’ look at other basic needs in a similar vein. The security that a house gives and the basic amenities of life one needs in a house are deemed to be part of an aspirational package. We are not far from the day when the desire to avail one’s constitutional rights will be treated as a sign of aspiration.
In an ethos where words and meanings are mutating fast, we must ask whether a right — any right — can be described as an aspiration. The debate whether the right to work is fundamental or not will hopefully be settled one day; for now, let us talk about one’s need to have some income, preferably by working. Someone who has no income can only survive as a dependent. That is how children and the elderly often do. The family provides the cover that the state does not explicitly acknowledge. In our society, the family provides a financial cover to the young for remarkably long periods. No wonder, university and college teachers routinely refer to their adult students as children. No matter how much you quarrel with this usage, its hold in academic institutions persists. One reason for this is that the family continues to support a student well past the official age of childhood. Parents go to remarkable lengths to support their progeny through expensive higher professional education for howsoever many years it takes.
Degrees and jobs
When they don’t find employment, what do students do? Many enrol in another course, aiming to qualify for one more degree or diploma. They keep gathering qualifications, hoping that more qualifications will get them higher-level employment one day. Things seldom work out that way. More qualifications don’t necessarily lead to better employment prospects. When a potential job slot does appear, you are told you are over-qualified. British sociologist Ronald Dore studied this phenomenon and presented his analysis in what soon became a classic title, The Diploma Disease. This book tells us that the tendency among youth to gather qualifications leads to devaluation of degrees. Dore was interested in the comparative study of industrial economics. He noticed that in Sri Lanka, only half the graduates in any given year ended up finding a job. That was in the 1970s; things are now worse. Although Dore did not study India, his observations were equally applicable here. Bureaucratisation had led to strong linkages between paper qualifications and selection for employment. When Rajiv Gandhi spoke about the need to de-link degrees from jobs, he was referring to the problem Dore had spotted.