Skill Vibes: Pause..Reflect..

Perception is commonly understood as the way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted and Reality is referred to  the state of things as they actually exist. Perception easily becomes reality or rather subsume reality and has the potential to typecast an individual, group, community or even a nation. It certainly does not imply that perceptions are without any basis. These are based on individual or collective experiences.  Some years back in Berlin, while trying to adjust to time zone, in the middle of the night, infact it was past mid night, gazing outside from the hotel windows I saw a man walking down the street and wanting to cross the other side.  He waited for the pedestrian light to turn green before crossing an empty road. Next night I saw him again. Seeing this reality it confirmed my perception about the German's self discipline.  In another setting in a different city in Germany,  listening to some eminent Germans of their...

S mart Cities is a wonderful mission. To make it sustainable, it has been argued to extend the project to make cities liveable, which makes sense. One look at the websites of the 100 selected Smart Cities shows a lot of work is in progress, some bit executed, appears more for visibility with low impact, easy to execute projects, however, more serious work is in planning / tendering phase. The question that arises is who will plan and execute these smart / liveable city projects? Will the dependence continue on the expertise of existing people who have been responsible for messing up the city planning!! There are 79 indicators (57 core and 22 supporting) listed by the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India as “Liveability Standards in Cities” to generate the liveability index and rate cities. The list is very comprehensive. Each of these indicators, whether it is water management or pollution control or transport / traffic management, toilets, or energy, or crime control...

I am writing this in continuation to my previous articles, viz; Skill Development:  Lessons from Afghanistan (1) and Skill Development:  Lessons from Afghanistan (2) in case you missed them earlier: Read on further…. Another learning from the past. The India Skills centre was approved to be setup on 28 Aug 2005 through a joint statement of the two heads of the States. The entire team was overjoyed imagining what it would be like. The team made several visits to Kabul in quick succession, essentially to establish liaison with the concerned people in the Afghanistan Government, visit the training centres set up by other countries like South Korea, Japan and Iraq, visit several construction sites to understand the live issues and skill needs. These visits gave us good perspective of what must be done and what should be avoided and why. The final go ahead from the Government was received after a detailed process of budgeting and re-budgeting and responding to queries of...

I n my previous story on the subject (Skill Development:   Lessons from Afghanistan (1), I had shared the challenge posed by the then President of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, which took us Kabul to select the potential trainees for a focused short term multi-skilling capsule to be delivered in New Delhi. We now move ahead from March 2005 from Kabul to May 2005, New Delhi. The 25 Afghan trainees who were selected for a short multi-skilling capsule on use of power tools for construction related job roles arrived at New Delhi on the 5 th of May. They were well received and taken to the youth hostel in central Delhi which was set up to be their home for the next 15 days.   A lot of hard work had been put in between mid-March and 4 th of May to ensure meaningful training. All elements to make the training successful were falling in place: The Embassy of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan confirmed the broad trades of Carpentry, Plumbing and Electrical Wiring. The Principa...

S kill development lessons from Afghanistan…Surprised!!! Yes. Afghanistan. I will take you through a journey in a series of articles covering one of the best skill development projects ever I have been through. Since the purpose is to share the lessons, I will use the names of the organisations and people involved restrictively. It certainly was a show of detailed coordination between the Governments and various organisations and leadership, courage, innovation and never say die attitude of the team members at all levels. As of now I roll back to the year 2005. The then President of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan along with his Cabinet Ministers came to India for a series of meetings in Feb 2005. The meetings besides the Govt of India were also facilitated by the Indian High Commission at Kabul. One of the apex Industry Associations was entrusted the task of making a presentation to the Afghan President and his team of Ministers on skilling the human resource for re-constructi...