Graduated college. No job. In the millions. In India.

When American politicians hype up the "competition" from China and India to the extent of praising the Indian schooling system and the number of graduates the country produces every year, I feel the urge to yell back at them that they are doing the American public a great disservice with such propaganda. 

The reality is far from this, because sheer number of high school and college graduates is not the same as being employment-ready, or being entrepreneurial, or being innovative.  It is also a great disservice to India because it then precludes Americans from understanding and appreciating the enormous scale of the development problems that the country has been relatively successfully dealing with.

Here is the WSJ reporting on this very issue:

India projects an image of a nation churning out hundreds of thousands of students every year who are well educated, a looming threat to the better-paid middle-class workers of the West. Their abilities in math have been cited by President Barack Obama as a reason why the U.S. is facing competitive challenges.
Yet 24/7 Customer's experience tells a very different story. Its increasing difficulty finding competent employees in India has forced the company to expand its search to the Philippines and Nicaragua. Most of its 8,000 employees are now based outside of India.
In the nation that made offshoring a household word, 24/7 finds itself so short of talent that it is having to offshore.

Imagine any American politician saying all these at a rally! 

75% of technical graduates and more than 85% of general graduates are unemployable by India's high-growth global industries, including information technology and call centers, according to results from assessment tests administered by the group.
Another survey, conducted annually by Pratham, a nongovernmental organization that aims to improve education for the poor, looked at grade-school performance at 13,000 schools across India. It found that about half of the country's fifth graders can't read at a second-grade level.

Just terrible, the situation of schools in India is, particularly in the rural areas.  The anecdotal information I have is worrisome enough for me.  And then to think that the youth and their families are investing their precious resources on more and more education with the supreme belief that it will be rewarded with that ticket to a successful middle class life, or more, only to find that they are not ready for employment at the end of it all!

"My family has invested so much money in my education, and they don't understand why I am still not finding a job," says Mr. Shivanand. "They are hoping very, very much that I get a job soon, so after all of their investment, I will finally support them."

Awful!

Maybe I should send this piece to the President, eh!