A Myth: Education eradicates poverty

In my country, many middle class young graduates are getting employed and being well paid because they managed to get professional degrees. Since their education helped them to earn their living, they are promptly advocating the role of education in removing unemployment. Many NGOs (UNICEF too) are educating children all over the country and it seems like that it is the main activity on their agenda. Many professionals are joining NGOs for part time and giving their time to educate poor children. The real question here is, it really is the education which will create the job opportunities for the young graduates?

Simple economics explains that consumption in the economy drives the production and production is the responsible factor for creating new employment opportunities. And, the mass consumption simply depends on the purchasing power of the public. Where does education come in this simple explanation? Will educating poor increase their purchasing power? Or, educating poor will increase the competition bar in current employment market? Most of the professionals are earning good living, because they created new job opportunities for themselves? Or, they just got enough educated to beat the competition and get a decent job?

Purchasing power of public means the proportionate or even distribution of wealth in the society. That means no one should be extremely rich or poor. That is not the concept that most of the professionals use to buy today. I have many friends from IITs and IIMs, premier institutes of India. Almost all of them want to live luxurious lives. They share the common idea that people get good education to earn more and more money. If the students getting best quality of education in the country have that kind of thinking then how it can be made sure that giving normal quality education to people will make them contributing in the society? How can it be made sure that they will help in creating the balance of wealth which is the blood line for creating employment opportunities?

I also have a few friends working with CRY (NGO). They have the firm belief that the cause of every problem in India is illiteracy. They are very much involved in helping CRY to educate children of poor. I do appreciate their efforts and gesture. But those are the fellows, who want to earn as much money as they can. All of them want to be rich enough to spend unlimited amount of money on all kind of luxuries. I watch them spending every evening in some fancy branded restaurant, pub, coffee shop or movie theatre. Most of the Brands are brands because some rich can afford to spend a lot of money to make them publicly known. And, spending on those brands is helping the Brand owners to become richer. If a few people are having much more money than many in the society then that is certainly not helping to increase the purchasing power of the society. And, if someone is educating the poor children so that they can get a decent job and on the other hand is a part of the community which is very much responsible to tear down the very essential fabric which creates avenues for employment, then this doesn’t make much sense.

Of course, I don’t mean that education is not an important factor to create a balanced society. But to make everyone just professionally qualified in science or management courses doesn’t fix anything. Some intellectuals give argument, that educating a man can make him aware of government policies or he can be self-employed. That is right and helping but still, it is very little of help. It is like trying to fix a problem without cutting or even identifying the root cause. All that makes sense only when lower class, which consists the largest portion of society, has good purchasing power. Without educating people and making them committed about the economic balance could never bring more avenues of employment and certainly can’t remove poverty.