Develop skills and minds

http://www.livemint.com/Articles/2008/02/21230612/Develop-skills-and-minds.html

"Please, ba, find me a job,” begins my cousin’s whine.
“How on earth can I do that?” I ask. “Where?”
“GAIL, SAIL, Oil India—any of those would be my dream,” he says.
“You know nothing about gas…or steel…or oil,” I say, exasperated. “Besides, what was all that schooling for?”
My cousin has a bachelor’s degree in economics, a master’s degree in the same, a law degree and is pursuing a master’s in law. He is the most educated among the dozens of 20-something relatives I have—yet has struggled to find steady employment. So, we have this dialogue at least weekly.
Every time I read about India’s talent shortage—or even as I myself frame it using words such as “crunch” and “crisis”—I ponder if the countless youth scattered across the country in my cousin’s predicament would agree with the characterization. According to a report by TeamLease Services, 57% of India’s youth suffer from some degree of unemployability, while 75% of those who finish school make less than Rs75,000 annually.
This week, policymakers and labour ministry officials met in New Delhi to formulate a training policy for India. The government has announced that an area fuzzily known as “skills development” is expected to get a whopping Rs31,000 crore in the 11th Plan, the five-year blueprint that lays out its objectives. Compare that with the mere Rs350 crore spent on skills development in the 10th Plan. Inevitably, finance minister P. Chidambaram’s Budget next week will begin the big boost in spending.
For the ground reality, I headed to the small, shabby South Delhi Polytechnic for Women, which sits behind the prestigious Lady Shri Ram College. It is polytechnics such as this one that the government seeks to replicate nationwide to lift to those who need it most. Ironically, in the mid-1990s, as founder Ashima Chaudhuri discovered that being approved by the government meant limiting seats and offerings, she decided to shirk affiliation and moved to a system of vocational courses that don’t offer degrees, but the promise of jobs. Courses in jewellery design and catering, childhood development and office administration, media and fashion last anywhere from one year to four years.
What strikes Chaudhuri most is that more Indians are coming to her with actual college degrees, unable to find employment because they have no technical skill. For example, I came upon sisters Sunita and Sangeeta Yadav, 23 and 22, respectively, who already had a bachelor’s in education but were studying art so they could blend the two and become teachers.
This astounded me: Shouldn’t a liberal arts background at least instil the ability to input, analyse and produce— the very basics of a job? Especially given the alleged teacher “crunch”.
But another crisis looms—in confidence and comprehension. When I asked Sunita what she was studying, she looked at me blankly.
“Didn’t you say you were taking an art course?” I reminded.
“I don’t consider that studying,” she said. “That’s training.”
Perhaps some of the breakdown was due to my sorry Hindi and her weak English, but the disconnect foreshadows a part of what will be the government’s challenge: to ensure that skills and knowledge go hand in hand, that citizens understand one is nothing without the other.
If that does not happen, sheltered students will continue to look to the same place for employment coveted by their parents and grandparents— the government. Young women, particularly, will seek escape in another institution—marriage.
As we spoke, Chaudhuri was cutting articles out of the newspaper. She posts them on bulletin boards around the simple campus in the hope that students will stop and realize there is a world beyond them and their skill. Even as she does, she concedes that is hardly the role of vocational schools.
“It sounds strange, but we need to not think globally, but locally,” agreed vice-principal A.M. Banerji.
Isn’t it possible to do both? With its massive funding of education and vocational training, the government’s heart and purse appear to be in the right place. But massive poverty and underemployment—against the backdrop of a private sector begging for qualified applicants—force us to first revise the calculus of how we learn, what we learn and why we learn it.
After my day at the polytechnic, I headed for the labour conference, listening to a panel on how other countries have built and repaired their workforces. Envy filled me as slide after slide showed alliances among schools, the private sector and the government. The success stories offered training early, often and repeatedly. In Korea, a sound vocational policy helped per capita income double decade to decade.
Here, the 11th Plan’s spending must inspire Indians to embrace more than degrees or skills—but true lifelong learning.
(Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com)

Guests guests guests

A few of you have asked where we are -- I wrote a column on this once and I am pasting it in below. But I think I am really starting to appreciate my mother more and more after moving to this country. The first week back from the states brought my aunt, uncle and cousin's wife. Then came a few days off. Then my cousin and her husband.
Topping it off with my meeting with a publisher, the worst work pressures I have had in a while, Naya's school changing and my suitcases STILL unopened from the US, I think I am ready to collapse. Oh and there was a retreat thrown in there to strategize The Future of My Employer. And a birthday party. And the column. Felicia's toothache and indecision on staying or leaving. I am a wreck (well, more like a drama queen)...
Real bits of conversation from the last few days:
Relative: It looks like you've gained weight in these few days.
Me: Yeah, how the @#@$%@ do you expect me to get to the gym if I have to feed you breakfast every morning?

Another:
Relative: Wow you work really hard. (door open, AC on)
Me: Yeah, well, someone has to just to pay the electricity bills around here.

I love my family, I really really do. We moved here so much to reconnect with them. But it is absolutely amazing to me how history repeats itself... Off to Guwahati on Friday so I can be the guest for a change ;)


Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita font size

Last week, I had nine overnight guests. The previous week brought just three.
This being India, I know that doesn’t shock you.
Atithi devo bhava. The guest is divine. We’ve all grown up hearing it. The ministry of tourism is even using the philosophy in a marketing campaign to promote Indian hospitality. And at no time do we feel it more than June and July, as families head off for holidays—some of them in our houses.
There’s irony here because one person’s relaxation becomes another’s (read: mine) added workload. And that’s on top of, of course, the wage-earning work we’re supposed to be doing 40-60 hours per week. Employees can use the guests-waiting-at-home excuse to leave office early once in a while, but nine times?  
It makes me wonder if it’s time for an update to the sloka, given the constraints and stresses of modern Indian households. Should we ask guests to take pre-paid taxis from the airport, fetch their own water and wash their own underwear? Should stays be limited to three days? Should a collection bowl sit atop the fresh towels on the guest bed to offset our skyrocketing gas and electricity bills (especially in these summer months)?
Yet, each time I thought of saying something recently, I bit my tongue and remembered the refrain. I recalled images of my mother carefully matching towels from the closet. She fried fish, rolled rotis, squeezed limes. And I remembered the countless visits that I, the American cousin, made to India when others treated me as divine, making my favourite dishes, pulling threads out of my beloved pomegranate, shuttling me to zoos, forts and temples. Guest, after all, is god.
Because the people who might govern such elements of Hinduism were too busy over the last few days protesting kissing, sex education and artwork, I turned to those on the front lines of implementation: my fellow working women. They tell me they have quietly made some amendments of their own.
“I don’t compromise on my son’s time,” said Megha Nihalani, a Delhi-based travel agent with lots of family abroad and some in Mumbai.
Last year, her husband was chauffeuring an uncle and aunt to Hardwar when her nine-year-old son, staying back at home with her, developed typhoid. Distraught, she made her husband turn around and come right back, the holiness of Hardwar unseen.
In the Nihalani household, this month and next will be “100% guests”.
But volume, she said, was highest in January, when 17 relatives trickled in and out. After that experience, Nihalani said she was more than happy to offer some tips to cope. Saying no, we agreed, was really not an option.
Nihalani says she never lets her travel company take a back seat to the visiting company. A common request she makes: “Aunty, can you lay down the plates while I do my ticketing?”
Towels, I asked her. How do you manage all the towels? And laundry?
She laughed. Same philosophy—guests might be god, but they are self-sufficient ones. To understand these intricacies and instructions, arrivals are given a few minutes of orientation to Nihalani’s home in Mayur Vihar, from the towel cupboard to the jugs of water and empty glasses.
“Your clothes have been laid out, please take whatever is yours,” she’ll say. “Here’s the glass, here’s the water, please help yourself.”
This reflects an attitude shift in Indian home hospitality, said brand consultant Lulu Raghavan. Her employer, Landor Associates, counts Jet Airways and the Taj hotel chain among clients.
“As nuclear families are being set up, a lot of the attitudes are very western,” she said. “Our generation doesn’t welcome guests with open arms as much. Typically, both the husband and wife are working. When guests come, they just sort of upset everything. In Mumbai, people put up with it more than any other city because hotels are so expensive.”
As an assurance to me, she also cautioned that guests’ expectations are similarly changing. They might want to venture to sights on their own, even eat out for a few meals.
“It’s so generic—what is Indian hospitality?” she said. “If you take the worst elements of Indian hospitality, it’s overwhelming. You just want to be left alone.”
If all our vacation time is spent taking around others, then when do we get to relax?
“It’s what we need to do staying in India,” Nihalani said. “This is something we cannot avoid. But what I have started doing now is arranging them and not letting them take over my house, my time, my work.”
On our first night of freedom this week, my husband and I went to someone else’s house for a change. Around midnight, my mobile rang. It was a friend in Dubai.
“Do you mind if I stay with you for a few days in June?”
“Of course,” I said.
For the months of June and July, it looks like office will be my escape.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com