Graduate and literacy numbers are increasing, yet unemployment is on the rise.

I have had a long love affair with India and the Indian people. It started in 1973, when after I graduated from High School in America, and I decided to hike across India by myself. I spent a year roaming from village to town, learning about the people, the culture, and the amazing foods. And like many other westerners before me, I quickly learned that about the time I thought I figured this ancient country out, it would throw me a curve ball, forcing me to admit I knew nothing about the place or its people.

So it was that back in the late 1990s, India again shocked me when it became a hub for offshoring of technical computer coding and call centers. Since then, India has found its sea legs and taken a dominate role in STEM type jobs from around the world.

As a result of it becoming the global leader in software development over the last twenty five years, the whole of India as shifted from 1800 textile oriented manufacturing to computer savvy high tech. And in this rush toward all things high tech, the majority of colleges across this great nation have taken up the banner and rushed to graduate as many STEM related students as physically possible.

With the whole of India working frantically toward this singular goal, a major issue with this approach is slowly coming to light. India now has more tech workers than the entire world needs. And India itself has not laid the necessary internal ground work of building infrastructure, power grid, literacy transportation and support of small business. It is these peripheral systems that allow every nation in the world to stay afloat economically.

While it is easy to look at all the sky scrappers in big cities are the driving economic engines that drive the country. Small businesses in America are responsible for over 80% of total employment in that country. Instead of thinking IBM as a main reason the USA is a powerhouse, you should be thinking the local Hypermarket, fueling station, and laundry service that drives economic stability in all countries. And the reason for this is simple. The average person on Earth needs local markets for food, and fuel to survive, more than they personally need an Infosys, Tata, or Accenture to get through the day.

Alas, Indian leadership, in the rush to get rich on customer service and coding, has forgotten the simple understanding that the majority of Indian people will never become STEM qualified and certified job employees. It's not for lack of want for a good paying job on their part. It's just that the majority of people throughout the world, don't have the background, intellect, personality, drive and discipline to make it through 4 years of higher education, and then sitting at a desk ten hours a day.

A 2013 study by Dworak, Revelle, and Condon show that an estimated 16.1% of the American population has an IQ of under 85. That equates to 5.4 million people in the US. And most researchers have confirmed for any person to be trained and able to carry out repetitive tasks for employment, need at least an IQ above 85. If we overlay those same percentage numbers to India's 1,463,000,000 population, it means there are over 200,000,000 people in India, that will never be able to finish school, or work in a STEM field.

It doesn't mean that segment of people can't hold a job. But it does mean there must be a wide spectrum of employment options for the entire Indian people, other than coding, AI, and call centers.

And in the rush to mine for gold in the high tech bonanza, a large majority of Indians are being left behind in the planning and execution of what India in the 21st Century should look like.

The India that I have grown up loving, confused about, and even hating at times, is a complex mesh of people with over 300 language dialects, and nearly as many cultures and peoples. A purely high tech /STEM solution will not fit such a diverse population, nor should it.

An example of what this looks like is just a few miles to India's west coast. Look no further than your neighbor across the Persian Gulf, the UAE. Twenty five years ago, that city-state was fully dependent upon oil for all of its growth. But under the very wise leadership of Sheikh Mohammed ibn Rashid Al Maktoum, he began to diversify that country into a wide range of research, and economic development. And today we see Dubai and the rest of the UAE growing from tourism, logistics, manufacturing and shipping. They no longer depend entirely upon oil export for their economy.

India in the 21st Century must focus on laying a solid foundation on infrastructures that support small business creation, and a wide range of multiple industries. To continue to focus solely on STEM is a recipe for disaster.