Is it an either-or situation? This morning, I bundled my washing machine in the neighbourhood rickshaw and took it all the way to Porvorim for repairs... And one really wished we had more of our boys (and girls) studing in ITIs... apart from polytechnics, engineering colleges and (why not) IITs. And rickshaw drivers too.
When I spoke to Clarence, he told me he had learnt his airconditioning and fridge repair skills at a place called St Anthony's in Mapusa. I couldn't help silently saluting the work done by all such privately-run, unfunded-by-government enterprises that have been training Goan and Goa's skills across the generations. Expats, instead of speculating from a distance, would do well to also engineer some innovative skills-imparting initiatives back home. Or are we just given to talking? Rudolf Schwartz, a German distantly removed from anything ethnically Goan, has been doing an interesting job in promoting the skills among the youth of coastal areas around Siolim. He is targetting drop-outs, a section that need it the most. The middle-classes and elites can take care of themselves! They have the State and a range of other institutions at their beck and call. In Loutolim, the Salesians of Don Bosco's are doing an interesting job by offering drop-outs technical skills. Even though they could do with more students. Alan Dias was talking about not "writing off anybody as mediocre". We seem to be writing off entire professions as "mediocre". One Supreme Court lawyer I met had this pretty blunt "oh, you're only a journalist" attitude written all across his talk. One knows better than to take offence. Yet, it reflects on the guy with this attitude. Only the one who's wearing the shoe know what social role any profession -- howsoever modest -- can play, if only they give their best to their job. Even if I was a scavenger, but doing a good and honest job of it, I guess I would have been proud of my contribution to society. While travelling through Stockholm in 1998, and visiting the sixth-floor home of Goanetter Alfred de Tavares, I met his Swedish neighbour Maria, a young lady who told me she had shifted jobs from journalism to being a bus driver -- she found the latter less stressful. Sweden is a fairly egalitarian society in many ways. Carmo seems to have an inflated opinion about IITianss and their omnipotent abilities, which is perhaps understandable since it has become a neo-caste of elites in today's India. They are after all the builders of the temples of modern India (as Nehru called big dams, but which we now know to be unsustainable and indeed a negative form of 'development'). But what does IITs prepare people for? Migration, and a job at the top of the empire of finance in the global world of capitalism, headquarted in the USofA? To be fair, I do know a handful of great IITians -- like Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala, the man behind the amazing Cordect WiLL telephony technology, Ravi Gupta who publishes the I4d magazine, Arun Mehta and Vicram Crishna of radiophony.com who have been pillars of the movement to open up community radio broadcasting in India.... But all these are people who swam against the tide. Not floated along with it to reach some lucrative destination. I disagree with Carmo's jibe against Mickky Pacheco (which I read in one of his mails) just because he had his roots in a tailoring enterprise. That is not the issue. We should judge Mickky on his contribution to politics (and one could make a case that this has been negative). But there's no ground for bias on the basis of social origins. Everyone deserves a fair chance. Something our cla/ste-driven (class-caste) Goan society won't make possible. Do IITs teach people the art of admistering and taking people ahead as one, despite their cultural, religious and social differences? If one goes by the experience of Manohar Parrikar, the answer would be a resounding 'no'. For that matter, even having an IITian as chief minister for relatively long did not help Goa build its own IT industry in a coherent way (other than giving subsidies to the wrong people, and converting IT promotion into a huge real-estate speculation game)! Carmo's point that we need to better equip our children to get into IITs is valid. But then, we need to equip them better to get into every field of life. As long as people play a productive role in life, and make good use of their God/nature-given talents (depending on which side of the theist/atheist/agnostic fence you're on) what does it really matter? FN On 26/07/06, CARMO DCRUZ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Alan, > However, in this high tech economy, we should encourage and inspire all our > Goan students to aim straight for the top and get into medical schools or > the IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) and not the ITIs (Industrial > Training Institutes). Its not just a matter of interchanging syllables - > there is a VERY BIG difference ! .... -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Frederick Noronha http://fn.goa-india.org 9822122436 +91-832-240-9490 4000+ copylefted photos to share from Goa http://www.flickr.com/photos/fn-goa/ _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list [email protected] http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org
