Making it in India Examining social mobility in three walks of life

DRAFT: September 2, 2013 Making it in India: Examining social mobility in three walks of life Anirudh Krishna, Duke University Abstract Inequality is rising in India alongside rapid economic growth, reinforcing the need to investigate social mobility Are children from less well-of sections also able to rise to higher-paying positions, or are these positions going mainly to established elites? This survey of more than 1,500 recent entrants to a variety of engineering colleges, business schools and higher civil services – each of them a highly sought after career destination – finds that class and caste continue to make an important diference Factors that stand out as significant barriers to entry include rural upbringing and parents’ lack of education Individuals who have succeeded in surmounting these obstacles have almost invariably been assisted by a relative or friend who motivated and inspired these students, providing them with mentorship along with career information and advice A way out of the conundrum – namely, that poorer children get poorer education and thus remain poorer in later life – can be explored by investing in role models and information provision Keywords: social mobility, inequality, opportunity, education, information, India Is India an open and equitable society where, in the words of Roemer (2000: 21), “each individual’s expected level of achievement is a function only of his [or her] efort and not of his [or her] circumstances?” Is there significant social mobility, with people from less-advantaged backgrounds also aspiring to and achieving higherpaying positions? Or high-achievers in India come principally from among its established elites, entrenching privilege and consolidating social layering? These questions have critical contemporary concern Inequality has risen steadily in the period after economic liberalization “The ratio between the top and the bottom deciles of the wage distribution [in India] has doubled since the early 1990s” (OECD 2011: 57) Wealth inequalities, large to begin with, have also grown larger “The ratio of assets held by the individuals at the 95th percentile to those held by the median individual rose from 758 percent [in 1991] to 814 percent” in 2001 (Jayadev, et al 2011: 88) A dualistic mode of employment growth has accompanied and fed into these trends (Mazumdar and Sarkar 2008) Low-earning informal-sector positions have grown the most, and while there was almost no net increase in formal employment (with increases in private-sector positions being ofset by reductions in the public sector), significant inter-sectoral shifts have resulted in raising the earnings of higher-skilled workers relative to lower-skilled ones Compared to agriculture, which has declined, and organized manufacturing, which has remained static, the services sector rapidly increased its shares of national income and employment, the most shining example of Indian economic success Between 1993 and 2005, the number of physicians and surgeons in India increased by 53 percent, the number of lawyers by 45 percent, and the number of system analysts and programmers increased by a phenomenal 572 percent The incomes of such servicesector professionals rank very high among all occupational groups (Vakulabharanam 2010) Other recent examinations concur See, for example, Azam (2012); Bardhan (2010); Cain, et al (2010); Chaudhuri and Ravallion (2007); Himanshu (2007); Kijima (2006); Motiram and Vakulabharanam (2012); Sarkar and Mehta (2010); and Topalova (2008) See, for example, Joshi (2010); Kannan and Raveendran (2009); Kochar et al (2006); Kotwal, Ramaswami and Wadhwa (2011); NCEUS (2007); Sanyal and Bhattacharyya (2007); Unni and Raveendran (2007) Author calculations from employment data provided by NSSO surveys of 1993-94 and 2004-05 A large and widening skills-premium separates higher-educated workers from less-educated and less-skilled ones (Azam 2012; Cain, et al 2010; Kijima 2006) Attaining only primary or middle school education does not substantially enhance one’s earning capacity Compared to the period before economic liberalization, there is “not much diference in wages of illiterates and up to primary levels of education Even the middle level of education brought a marginal diference in daily earnings Wages increased significantly only after at least secondary level of education” (Sarkar and Mehta 2010: 47, emphasis added) Those with college educations have gained the most, attaining nearly 15 times the gain achieved by people with only primary education, whose average real wages have remained static (Chamarbagwala 2006) In contemporary India, more than ever before, acquiring a college education has “become key to gaining entry to the most dynamic segments of employment” (Mohanty 2006: 3777) Significant upward mobility in contemporary India is, by and large, contingent upon having or obtaining a college degree It becomes important, therefore, to investigate which individuals – from what types of social and educational backgrounds and with what kinds of preparation – have been able to secure entry into colleges, especially the more sought-after ones Which others were able to gain influential positions in the services sector? Deep and abiding inequalities are associated with a slew of economic and social pathologies.5 However, as the record of land reforms in India shows, and as scholarship on emergent policy alignments underlines (Kohli 2012), it may be politically and administratively infeasible to address growing inequality through large-scale redistribution of productive assets Promoting social mobility may be more practically rewarding Investigating Social Mobility How can capable and hardworking individuals from backgrounds of disadvantage be assisted to gain entry into higher-ranked colleges and higher-paying occupations? Unfortunately, relatively little is known on this score, and what is known so far can be contradictory and confusing The study of social mobility is still in its infancy in India and other developing countries Even in the West, where social mobility has been Although getting a college degree does not guarantee high-paid employment (Jefrey, et al 2004), not getting a college degree almost certainly ensures against it See Berg and Ostry (2011); Weisskopf (2011); and Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) See, for example, Appu (1996) and Bandyopadhyay (1986) studied for a longer time, “the transmission of economic success across generations remains something of a black box” (Bowles, Gintis and Groves 2005: 3) Conventionally, social mobility has been examined by comparing individuals’ social origins – examined in relation to their father’s social class, occupational status, income, or education – with these individuals’ own attainments expressed in similar terms In general, a robust correlation has been found to exist between parent’s and children’s socioeconomic status: richer fathers tend to have richer daughters and sons, while poorer children tend to go together with poorer parents Variations across time and space indicate, however, that the pattern of this relationship may be mutable: intergenerational mobility varies significantly across countries; within countries, mobility prospects can change over time.7 Explaining these diferences has proved so far to be contentious and inconclusive Diverse factors have been shown to have varying degrees of influence Exposing a persistent myth, it has been found that diferences in “IQ cannot explain why children from less-privileged social strata systematically perform more poorly than others or why children from privileged families systematically perform better” (Esping-Andersen 2005: 149) Education can help raise social mobility prospects, but the efects of education are contingent and contextual Other sources of influence – including early childhood nutrition and child rearing practices, race- and neighborhood-related factors, school quality, state-supported daycare centers and pre-school programs, health conditions, aspirations and cultural capital – have also been shown to make a significant diferent within particular contexts Calculations show, however, that all of these factors taken together explain no more than one-quarter of the observed intergenerational correlation in earnings in Western contexts (Bowles, Gintis and Groves 2005: 20) Initial examinations of social mobility and equal opportunity in India and other developing countries provide indication that parents’ and children’s earnings may be even more closely correlated – mobility may be lower and opportunity structures more impermeable – in See, for instance, Bowles and Gintis (2002); Corak (2004); Erickson and Goldthorpe (1992, 2002); Hout (2006); Hout and DiPrete (2006); Jantti, et al (2005); Morgan (2006); OECD (2010); Roemer (2000); Solon (2002); and Smeeding (2005) See, for example, Behrman, Birdsall, and Szekely (2001); Bourdieu 91986); Breen (2010); Currie (2001); Danziger and Waldvogel (2005); DiMaggio (1982); Erickson and Goldthorpe (2002); Hannum and Buchmann (2005); Mayer (1997); Paxson and Schady (2005); Scott and Litchfield (1994); Torche (2010); and Trzcinski and Randolph (1991) developing countries compared to the West Identifying the factors that matter, however, remains even more of a black box than in the West Few large-sample projects are available for India that compared sons’ and fathers’ educations, levels of well-being, or occupations Because data are not available that track the same individuals over long periods of time, such studies have been limited to making crosssectional comparisons, examining all fathers and all sons (or daughters), regardless of age or cohort diferences A disparate set of conclusions has resulted from these studies On the one hand, Jalan and Murgai (2008) find encouragingly that “intergenerational mobility in education has improved significantly and consistently across generations Mobility has improved, on average, for all major social groups and wealth classes.” Similarly, Azam and Bhatt (2012) find “significant improvements in educational mobility across generations in India.” The popular media in India has especially of late been playing up this impression by highlighting accounts of and by individuals whose rise, especially in the world of business, has been nothing short of meteoric.10 Other studies come to radically diferent conclusions, for example, Motiram and Singh (2012) find evidence of substantial intergenerational persistence and considerable inequality of opportunity Similarly, Kumar, et al (2002b: 4096) conclude that “there has been no systematic weakening of the links between father’s and son’s class positions… The dominant picture is one of continuity rather than change.” Majumder (2010: 463) uncovers “strong intergenerational stickiness in both educational achievement and occupational distribution,” especially among Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), both historically marginalized groups, noting how “occupational mobility is even lower than educational mobility.” Hnatkovska, Lahiri and Paul (2013: 468) report results that are more upbeat in this regard, finding “a remarkable convergence in the intergenerational mobility rates of SC/STs to non-SC/ST levels in See, for example, Behrman, Birdsall and Szekely (2001); Birdsall and Graham (2000); Castaneda and Aldaz-Carroll (1999); Graham (2000); Grawe (2004); Moser (2009); Perlman (2011); and Quisumbing (2006) In the specific case of India, Bardhan (2010: 132) asserts that it may well be on the way to becoming “one of the worst countries in the world…in terms of inequality of opportunity and intergenerational mobility.” 10 One such story that attracted a great deal of public attention was reported with the provocative title: “Your Birthplace, Background Don’t Determine Your Success.” Retrieved June 27, 2012, from http://www.redif.com/getahead/slide-show/slideshow-1-achievers-vikas-khemani-your-birthplace-background-don-t-determine-yoursuccess/20120626.htm both education attainment and wages.” Desai and Kulkarni (2008) uncover some equalization of educational achievement across caste groups but only at the primary level, with inequalities remaining high at the upper end, especially at the college level, while Gang, Sen and Yun (2012) find evidence of occupational mobility among SCs but not among STs These competing visions are hard to resolve using the conventional methods Until the required longitudinal data sets have been assembled, which can take a very long time, new and unconventional methods are required to shed more light upon the critical questions of opportunity and social mobility in India In one promising alternative mode of inquiry, investigators have looked directly at particular occupations or within educational institutions that serve as gateways to such occupations The earliest study of this type was conducted by Rajagopalan and Singh (1968), and it investigated the social backgrounds of students admitted to one elite engineering institute (one of the Indian Institutes of Technology, or IITs) Later, Fuller and Narasimhan (2007) examined the social profiles of employees at one software engineering firm in Chennai; while Krishna and Brihmadesam (2006), followed by Upadhya (2007), looked within small groups of such firms in Bangalore Because these inquiries have focused on only one college or a tiny group of business enterprises, their conclusions, while illuminating, have lacked breadth Extending the Scope: Methods and Data The present examination substantially broadens and takes forward this manner of examining social mobility in India by looking within three separate walks of life: engineering, business management, and civil services Within each of these walks of life – referred to below as occupational silos – we looked at multiple institutions, ranked in terms of quality and status from high to low Within the silo of engineering colleges, we looked within five separate colleges corresponding to diferent quality tiers, and within the second silo, of business schools granting MBA degrees, we studied eight institutions, once again ranked from high to low Our sample among the third occupational silo, civil services, is smaller in comparison, consisting of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), an elite cadre, and two lower-status cadres of civil services Taken together, this data base, which took more than three years to compile, represents the broadest inquiry of this genre to date These three career choices were carefully chosen: each sits close to the pinnacle of aspiration among youth in India While the civil services have traditionally been the career of choice among collegeeducated youth, the other two pathways discussed here have been on the ascendant, arguably eclipsing the IAS as the foremost career preference.11 Especially in the years following economic liberalization, “enrolling in an MBA program, particularly at an elite school has become for some the equivalent of taking an elevator to the executive suite.”12 The number of MBA-granting institutions has grown explosively.13 The report of the National Knowledge Commission, appointed by India’s Prime Minister in 2005, notes however that while “the number of business schools has trebled in the last ten years… many [are] of indiferent quality The market has already started discriminating the quality of institutions.” 14 Business magazines in India publish annually their pecking orders of business schools, strikingly similar across diferent publications Similarly, a rapid growth of engineering colleges has followed upon the rise of the software industry, the largest employer of graduates, ofering each year a large and growing pool of high-paying positions While in early 1980s, there were only about one hundred engineering colleges in India, admitting fewer than 25,000 students each year, the number of engineering colleges in the country has grown apace, reaching nearly 1,600 by 2010, collectively admitting over 500,000 students each year – a 20-fold expansion over 30 years, the fastest within any sector of Indian higher education 15 Once again, there are significant diferences in quality 11 A contentious debate on this point has been waged in the popular press The following news reports are illustrative: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2159428/Babus-flight-IASofficers-make-beeline-greener-pastures-pvt-sector.html; http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2007-07-01/news/28415967_1_civilservices-top-career-financial-facilities; and http://www.theweekendleader.com/Dreams/1025/Mules-and-horses.html 12 Bolshaw, L “Push to Help Women find the Keys to the C-suite.” Financial Times, November 21, 2011.Retrieved from http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/23b91ca8-0ee011e1-b585-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1fAbUCUcd 13 Starting from a tiny base in the early 1950s, business schools in India increased slowly in number over the next 30 years Since the mid-1990s, more than 100 new business schools have been established annually, and more than 100,000 students start MBA programs every year 14 Report of the Working Group on Management Education of the National Knowledge Commission Accessed on April 29, 2013 at http://www.knowledgecommission.gov.in/downloads/documents/wg_managedu.pdf 15 For these and other trends related to engineering education in India, see the 2007 report by Rangan Banerjee and Vinayak P Muley, titled Engineering Education in India, available at http://www.ese.iitb.ac.in/EnEdu.pdf Simultaneously, competition for entry into the civil services remains fierce, assisted in part by salary increases mandated by the central government.16 The ratio of those who make it in to those who apply continues to remain hefty, with no more than one in nearly 500 applicants making it into the IAS.17 As seen below, however, the social character of the IAS intake has changed from earlier times Corresponding to each of these occupational silos, three sets of original data were assembled between 2009 and 2012 A standardized questionnaire was formulated, pre-tested, and revised, before being administered among entrants to diferent engineering colleges and business schools as well as to new recruits to the IAS and two lowertier civil services A total of 671 engineering students were surveyed, comprising nearly equal numbers in each of five engineering colleges located, respectively, in the north, south, east, west, and center of India These colleges correspond to three diferent quality tiers – with one belonging to Tier and two each to Tiers and – that were determined in reference to the educational qualifications of faculty, the employment prospects of graduates, and students’ average test scores.18 The same questionnaire was administered to a total of 802 students in eight business schools, also located in diverse regions of India and also belonging to three diferent quality tiers 19 Once again, 16 As Azam (2012: 1145) notes, “The public sector workers at the top-end not only enjoy a positive premium but this premium has increased between 1993 and 2004.” 17 See http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2009-0325/news/28435314_1_civil-services-private-sector-aspirants 18 A large majority of faculty teaching at the Tier institution (widely regarded as one of the best in India) has a PhD degree, most from highly-ranked institutes in India and abroad, compared to fewer than 50 percent of Tier and less than 25 percent of Tier faculty Students’ employment prospects also vary considerably across these three tiers A national employability report, based on a sample of 55,000 students from more than 250 engineering colleges across India, found vast diferences in employability across colleges of diferent quality tiers (see www.aspiringminds.in) While this report did not look at the very best colleges (such as IITs and IIITs, which constitute Tier for the present examination), it did examine diferences between the next one hundred engineering colleges (our Tier 2) and the rest (our Tier 3), finding, for example, that 31 percent of Tier students would be able to find employment in the IT services sector, compared to only 16 percent of students in Tier 19 Almost the entire faculty of our Tier business school has a PhD from eminent national and international institutions Starting salaries for the class graduating in 2010 averaged Rs 965,000 annually Two institutions in our sample are Tier About half of all faculty members have PhDs Average starting salaries for the class graduating in 2011 were Rs 550,000 Another eight institutions belong to Tier Only a handful of faculty has PhDs Average starting salaries are close to Rs all students in the entering class were solicited for the survey Tier broadly represents the top 20 Indian business schools and besides others includes those six state-managed Indian Institutes of Management that have been in operation for more than five years One institution was selected from this tier, which is consistently placed among the top-five business schools in India, and 208 students were interviewed here (n=208) Three institutions ranked between 21 and 50 were considered within Tier (n=333), while another three institutions ranked below 50 were clubbed together in Tier (n=361) For reasons of confidentiality, we not refer to any of these institutions by name The names of individuals, extracts from whose interviews are cited below, have also been disguised to make good on our promises of anonymity Students in all but two of these engineering colleges and business schools were administered the survey instrument online when they appeared for the AMCAT (Aspiring Minds’ Computer Adaptive Test), a standardized examination that helps students and employers connect with one another.20 Students in the highest-tier business school and engineering college were separately administered an online version of this survey In the third occupational silo, higher civil services, a paper version of same survey instrument was administered at the National Academy of Administration to an entire recently recruited cohort of the IAS (n=117) The entering cohort of the state administrative services of one north Indian state (often termed the PCS, or provincial civil service) – who tend to occupy positions just below the IAS – was similarly surveyed (n=38) Finally, a broad grouping of state civil services, ranked just below the PCS, was also surveyed in the same state (n=63) Response rates were, in general, greater than 90 percent across institutions, except in the highest-tier business school, where these were 68 percent, and in the middle-tier civil service, where the response rate was just under 70 percent, all of which are more than the average achieved in surveys of this kind 21 Distinguishing quality tiers within each of these occupational silos was helpful for a variety of reasons Most usefully, it helped us deal with a basic problem of comparison, not otherwise easy to handle: Individuals who not get into any engineering or management 300,000 20 A fuller description of this test, as well as details about the innovative company, Aspiring Minds, that has designed and which administers this test, are available at the web site: www.aspiringminds.in 21 The average response rate for online surveys is around 34 percent, according to Cook, et al (2000) college or civil service are hard, even impossible, to identify, especially if we consider, in addition to those who applied but did not get in, all those who did not apply, thinking their chances were slim The way in which we deal with this problem is best explained by considering the following thought experiment Imagine that the population of MBA students is stratified according to the pecking order of colleges People who get into the top-tier business school constitute the top stratum of this population; people who get into the second-tier college, the second stratum; and so on Otherwise eligible and capable people who not get into any business school constitute the (hypothetical) lowest stratum If the analysis is able to identify some factor or factors that regularly decrease (or increase) in value from the highest to the lowest tier, so classified, it stands to reason that these same factors might help distinguish those who not get into any MBA school, particularly if after examining secondary data it is found that these factors exist at even lower (or higher) levels among the general population This analysis of diference is complemented below by an analysis of similarity Factors that have commonly high (or low) values across tiers, but which are, on average, much lower (or higher) among the general population also bear paying attention, because they help identify threshold efects, minimum levels associated with successful entry into higher-paying occupations To the extent that common trends are discerned across separate occupational silos, a more general statement can be ventured about correlates of social mobility in India Results Some such commonly significant results can be foreshadowed at the outset: - People who were brought up and educated in rural areas are at a disadvantage The longer the time spent at rural schools, the greater tends to be this disadvantage - Higher economic status confers an advantage in terms of gaining entry, but by itself does not get one a place within the highestranked institutions In combination with rural residence or lesseducated parents, however, relative poverty has a more severely disabling efect - The representation of SCs and STs within the student bodies of engineering colleges and business school is greater at the current time compared to historical trends, but these numbers remain considerably lower than the population proportions of these groups 10 Suraj Kumar, another outlier whom we interviewed in detail, explained how these limitations operate in practice: Families where the parents are less educated lack the environment necessary to prepare for competitive exams, and people are also not aware of the opportunities that exist outside Such a family may not have enough faith that so many years of additional education, beyond schooling, would result in some additional benefit or improvement in quality of life Such students also sufer lack of pre-established network of friends or relatives and lack of proper information regarding the methods and means of becoming successful For many years I did not know what to in future No one in my circle dreamed big I also faced lack of other means of information like libraries, good television channels like Discovery, internet, etc Such students need teachers capable of nurturing talent I was lucky that my teacher in th class motivated me constantly Even after I went higher [in school] he guided me Without his help, I would not have made it Inequality of opportunity is sustained in contexts where access to diverse role models is limited Young people in these circumstances tend to develop “a more brittle horizon of aspirations… and a thinner, weaker sense of career pathways;” while others, who live in cities and whose parents are educated and professionally employed, come to “have a more complex experience of the relationship between a wide range of ends and means… a bigger stock of available experiences” (Appadurai 2004: 68-70) A study carried out among high achieving students from backgrounds of relative poverty in the United States showed how even a limited amount of careful guidance and information provision can make an important diference Low-income students in the treatment group who received easy-to-understand packets of information about the college application process and about college costs were much more likely to apply for and be accepted to selective colleges Once they had entered into these elite colleges, the low-income students performed as well as their better-of peers, showing how a potential exists which needs to be activated 35 That lack of role models and poor information likely play an even larger role in India was underlined by diferent parts of our survey Such a situation cannot be allowed to continue; the happenstance of having a well-informed friend or well-connected relative does not compensate for lack of institutional provision India’s 35 See Hoxby and Turner (2013) 24 first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, writing in 1961, stated “I have no doubt that there is a vast reservoir of talent in this country If only we can give it opportunity!” 36 Opportunity, however, is still not widely dispersed in India, resulting in a far-from-optimal utilization of the talent pool about which Nehru wrote Institutions are required, especially in rural areas and urban slums, that can help endow individuals with soft skills – providing career information, guidance, and motivation and building role models for the future More equal societies have invested in building public institutions responsible for providing career-related information 37 – including career counseling agencies, employment exchanges, textbooks detailing diverse career paths, interactive web sites, radio and TV links, etc Such interventions will not entirely resolve the problem; many other factors, including poor-quality health and education, need to be addressed in parallel However, absent such institutional links, talented individuals will continue to face considerable obstacles to achievement Helping even one or two talented and hardworking individuals from poor rural and urban slum communities make it into places of high standing will act as a crucial stimulus, raising the aspirations of and showing the way ahead to many others like them Communities who gain the confidence that their sons and daughters have a real chance of becoming engineers and MBAs and senior government officials will shed the defeatism, the lack of hope, that presently besets so many of them Communities and individuals motivated in this manner will no longer hopelessly accept absentee teachers and lowquality teaching; their children’s futures are critically at stake Supplyled quality improvements in education and health have proved to be of limited potential An alternative paradigm of development – led from below by communities energized by new and real faith in the social mobility prospects of their sons and daughters – is waiting to be explored 36 Jawaharlal Nehru, Letter to Chief Ministers, June 27, 1961, cited in Shourie (2006: x) 37 For instance, employment offices, privately-operated or government-run, function in every large and small town in Sweden Additional guidance and vocational training opportunities are provided at high schools and through trade unions 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