Education is the Cause of Unemployment
- Madhukar Dama
- 4 hours ago
- 6 min read
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👣 Part 1: What We Were Told
From childhood, most Indian families say:
“Go to school.”
“Study well.”
“Get a government or office job.”
But after 15–20 years of school and college, lakhs of youth still ask:
“Where is the job?”
They have degrees, but no income.
Certificates, but no confidence.
Education, but no useful skills.
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🔥 Part 2: How Modern Education Creates Unemployment
1. Too Many Degrees, Not Enough Work
Every year, lakhs of youth graduate with B.A., B.Sc., MBA, etc.
But there are only a few thousand jobs available.
Everyone fights for the same few seats — a job lottery.
2. No Practical Skills
Schools and colleges teach theory — not practice.
Students know how to write answers but not how to fix a wire, cook a meal, grow a plant, or help a sick person.
3. Shame of Real Work
A degree holder feels ashamed to work as a farmer, tailor, or cobbler.
He thinks such work is "low."
But such work feeds families every day.
4. Made to Wait
Educated youth wait for someone to hire them.
They become dependent on government or private offices.
Until they are selected, they feel useless — even if they are healthy and able.
5. Expensive and Dangerous
Parents take loans or sell land to educate children.
The child feels pressure to succeed or "repay."
When he fails, depression, anger, and suicides increase.
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🌾 Part 3: How “Uneducated” Youth Learn Skills Naturally
Let’s look at a boy or girl in a village who never went to college — or even school.
🧒🏽 Childhood Learning
By age 5–6, the child is already watching mother make buttermilk, clean fish, soak pulses, milk cows.
He sees his father repair tools, stack wood, or drive a bullock cart.
She watches her aunt collect herbs, treat fevers, feed neighbours, or stitch clothes.
🧹 Helping at Home
The child helps cut vegetables, carry water, look after goats, sweep the yard, or mix cow dung for fuel.
Every action builds skill, not boredom.
🛠️ Learning by Apprenticeship
By age 12–14, they start working as helpers:
boys with carpenters, masons, tailors, barbers
girls with midwives, weavers, potters, or in small shops
They learn by watching, then by doing. No theory needed.
💼 Starting Their Own Work
By age 18, they start independent work:
Cutting hair, fixing leaks, farming, weaving baskets, grinding flour, selling pickles
They earn daily — no boss, no interviews, no certificates.
🧠 They are skilled because they learned slowly, early, and naturally.
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🌸 Part 4: What We Miss When We Only Choose School
Real Life Learner Educated Job-Seeker
Learns by doing Learns by reading
Starts work by 18 Still jobless at 25
Builds income Waits for salary
Confident with tools Nervous in real world
Apprentice to master Stuck in coaching classes
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👩🏽🌾 Part 5: What About Girls?
In villages, uneducated girls learn to run a home business from a young age.
They make snacks, pickles, oil, papads, clothes, toys, natural medicines, even help in deliveries.
Some run tea shops, tiffin services, or help run kirana stores with fathers.
An educated girl, on the other hand, may be trained only for jobs in malls, BPOs, schools, or beauty parlours — often underpaid and unsafe.
> 💡 In both cases, the “uneducated” girl ends up more skilled, confident, and local — while the educated girl often becomes dependent and confused.
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🔍 Clarification: Education is Not the Enemy
We are not against education.
We are against useless education that:
Does not teach skills
Does not build character
Does not connect people to land, health, or work
Makes people ashamed of real, useful, humble work
True education must help you live — not just survive.
If it takes away your ability to work, it's not education. It’s a trap.
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🛑 Part 6: The Trap of Never-Ending Study
Many youth, after failing to get jobs, start:
Coaching for IAS, Bank, SSC
Doing “courses” in soft skills, English, Excel
Taking loans for fake diplomas
Joining online scams and fake work-from-home sites
This becomes a life-long loop of preparation, but no peace or purpose.
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🧠 Expert Notes and Policy Gaps
NEP 2020 talks about vocational learning — but most schools still teach only books.
Skill India exists — but local tradespeople are never invited to teach.
Digital education widens the rural-urban gap — poor kids can’t even log in.
Women’s skill programs are often badly run or unsafe.
Why?
Because the system doesn’t really want independent, practical youth — it wants obedient, trained job-seekers.
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✅ What Can We Do Now?
1. Respect Skills — farming, cooking, carpentry, healing, stitching, building.
2. Bring Back Apprenticeship — let children help parents, elders, and local workers.
3. Unschool at Home — daily chores teach more than worksheets.
4. Start Small Work Early — pick a skill, serve your area.
5. Reconnect With Land — nature teaches faster than blackboards.
6. Let Women Lead Skills Again — make every home a healing, cooking, farming unit.
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🔚 Final Words
Education, today, is like a locked door.
You are told, "Study more — one day, it will open."
But even after 20 years, many stand outside with degrees in hand, hungry and tired.
Meanwhile, the boy who never entered that building —
built his own hut, grew his food, started work, and fed five others.
So ask yourself — is your education helping you live?
Or has it quietly stolen your hands, eyes, and courage?
THE HOLY CERTIFICATE
they told you,
get up early,
polish your shoes,
tie that stiff school tie tight
like a noose around your neck —
this is the ladder to heaven,
they said.
every morning,
you stood in line like a polite prisoner,
reciting someone else’s poetry
from someone else’s life,
about rivers you’ve never seen,
wars you never fought,
dates you never felt.
you passed
tests where the only correct answers
were already printed in the teacher’s guide.
you became
what they called “educated.”
you forgot
how to climb a tree,
how to sharpen a knife,
how to smell rain before it comes,
how to sit with silence,
or fix a broken tap.
but they clapped,
because you had a certificate
with shiny borders
and a fake stamp of dignity.
—
now you wait
outside the employment office,
clutching your laminated degrees
like a beggar clutching old gods
no longer fed.
no vacancy
job mela cancelled
interview postponed
— the walls laugh in your face.
your eyes
no longer know where to look.
the world doesn’t need
another obedient, scared man
who only knows how to wait.
—
meanwhile,
across the dusty street,
a boy who left school in class five
is sharpening knives,
fixing tyres,
serving tea with joy,
earning enough to feed his goats
and two sisters.
he never learned English,
but he knows how to barter,
how to save money,
how to build something from mud,
how to heal a cough with tulsi and turmeric.
he is not “qualified,”
but he is needed.
you?
you are over-qualified
and under-necessary.
—
you studied for 18 years
and still don’t know
how to light a fire without LPG.
your father borrowed money for your MBA,
your mother fasted during your exams,
you stopped playing, stopped asking questions,
you became good at following.
but now you have no one to follow.
—
there is no job
that pays you for your marks.
there is no salary
for remembering irrelevant things
better than someone else.
there is no dignity
in a degree that cannot dig,
cannot fix,
cannot feed,
cannot grow.
—
you keep applying.
one more course.
one more entrance exam.
one more motivational quote.
you keep upgrading
like a phone with no signal.
you think the next certificate
will save you.
it won’t.
—
somewhere inside you
a small voice
still remembers
your grandmother’s hands
kneading dough without measurement,
your grandfather’s back
curved from honest soil.
you were born from those hands.
you were not born
to beg for jobs
in glass buildings
that don’t even want you.
—
come back,
to the land,
to the sun,
to the smell of sweat
that means something.
come back
to work that leaves your body tired
but your heart full.
come back
to life.
—
and maybe,
if you have the courage,
burn that certificate.
not in anger.
but like a cremation.
a funeral
for a lie
you believed too long.
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