While there is a need for adequate job creation across India, the fact is that graduates, especially from our technical institutions, do not match industry requirements (“Six steps to job creation”, October 14). Every year, the State and Central governments must come out with a paper on available manpower and the means to utilise this. There must be a plan on how to prepare graduates for employment.
Educational institutions should aim to integrate the need for manpower at different levels required across various job sectors. There should also be effective coordination between educational institutions and prospective employers.
The agriculture and rural sectors have to be brought into the picture. Education should also include skill development. The admission process, and later job hunting, should be pleasurable and not humiliating as it is at present for most Indians.
G.T. Sampathkumarachar,
Mysuru
It is time the scientific community stops giving alternative medicine a free ride. There cannot be two kinds of medicine — conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not; medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work. Once a treatment has been tested rigorously, it no longer matters whether it was considered alternative at the outset. If it is found to be reasonably safe and effective, it will be accepted. But assertions, speculation, and testimonials do not substitute for evidence. Henceforth, all alternative treatments should be subjected to scientific testing no less rigorous than that required for conventional treatments.
K.M.K. Murthy,
Secunderabad
The report should set alarm bells ringing and alert those who prefer treatment through such methods. The traditional medicine industry itself requires close supervision and an overhaul. The common man is constrained to look to alternate types of medication given the prohibitive medical costs of allopathy and the fear of side-effects. With the prevalence of multiplicity of ailments, everyone desires quick relief and with minimal costs. With health care yet to reach villages to the extent and standard required, the illiterate are lured by fanciful claims of untrained traditional practitioners. To tap the growing opportunities we have seen the mushrooming of traditional medical care centres which exploit the gullible. No proper investigation is initiated against such centres, whether licensed or not, and which run with impunity. For immediate relief and to stay one step ahead, patients are often treated with an overdose of medication that are said to have high toxicity and lead content. Over time, this results in complications for which a traditional practitioner may not have the wherewithal to find a remedy unlike in allopathy where specialists exist for each type of ailment. Added to that, traditional medicines are even available without a proper prescription in the open market. People consume them without proper awareness about its usage and time limit. As far as adulteration is concerned, it is doubtful whether many of the plants, herbs and roots used centuries ago in the preparation of traditional medicines still exist today. Their substitutes will only aggravate the problem. The government should take effective steps to regulate the traditional cure industry which is treated by the unscrupulous as a money-making industry. It has to evolve a sound herbal trade authentication system for standardising the quality of herbal products so that manufacturers and practitioners do not make exploit the ignorance of patients by prescribing harmful medicines with suspect ingredients.
V. Subramanian,
Chennai