Illicit relationship btn Indian education system and Indians. or The Moral Bankruptcy of a Job-Centric Society
The fundamental problem with the Indian education system—and with Indian society’s broader mindset—is the belief that education exists solely to secure a job or generate substantial wealth. This unhealthy relationship between society and education has pushed the nation toward intellectual, moral, and structural insolvency across nearly every sector. If an individual does not secure a prestigious position after completing their education, they are often unfairly labeled as useless, unskilled, uneducated, and without value.
This is a colonial-era mindset inherited from British rule, when the system was deliberately designed to produce clerks rather than well-rounded, responsible, and ethically grounded human beings. Education was reduced to an instrument of administrative utility, not a means of nurturing wisdom, character, civic responsibility, or human dignity.
After independence, this mindset should have evolved. Instead, the roots of this clerical colonial mentality have only deepened alongside the expansion of educational awareness. Degrees multiplied, institutions expanded, and literacy improved, yet the purpose of education remained tragically narrow: employment, status, and wealth.
Even many of India’s so-called thinkers and intellectuals continue to reinforce the same flawed philosophy. On the surface, they speak of wisdom, morality, good governance, and the importance of becoming a better human being. Yet, in practice, they often validate the belief that the higher the designation, the greater the income, and therefore the greater the social respect.
As a result, an excellent farmer, a disciplined sanitation worker, an honest cook, a hygienic driver, a skilled mason, or an expert cobbler is rarely considered as respectable as a wealthy individual or a high-ranking office holder—even when that office holder may be corrupt, exploitative, dishonest, rude, or morally bankrupt. In such a value system, dignity is not attached to honesty or contribution, but to salary slips and social titles.
The consequences of this mindset are now deeply visible in the social fabric. Many young men in rural areas remain unmarried, not because they lack integrity or character, but because they do not hold prestigious jobs after completing their education. The first questions they face are often: What is your job title? and How much money do you have in your bank account?
Rarely are they asked whether they are loyal, honest, disciplined, or compassionate individuals. Almost no one asks whether they abstain from drugs or alcohol, whether they are free from corruption, or whether they are involved in any illegal activity. Character has been sidelined, while financial worth has become the dominant measure of human value.
This thought process inevitably breeds social discrimination and gradually manifests as superiority and inferiority complexes at the individual level. It creates emotional wounds, fractures families, and pushes vulnerable minds toward despair. In its most destructive forms, it contributes to social tragedies such as suicide, crimes including sexual violence and ransom-related offenses, communal hostility, substance abuse, and the fragmentation of social peace into countless pieces.
And then society wonders why moral decline, distrust, and social instability continue to rise. The answer lies not merely in economics or politics, but in the deeply flawed philosophy through which we define education, dignity, and success.
A nation cannot remain healthy if it teaches its children that worth is measured only by job titles, bank balances, and social rank. True education must produce not just employees, but enlightened citizens; not merely wealth creators, but ethical human beings; not only degree holders, but people capable of preserving justice, compassion, and harmony.
Until this mindset changes, the crisis will not remain limited to education alone—it will continue to erode the moral foundations of society itself.