Skilling for work

I hate that new-fangled coinage, 'skilling' (see my other blog). Still, now that governments central and state are talking nineteen to the dozen about the need to 'skill' (or 'upskill') millions of young new job seekers to help them cope with the challenges of the current economic dispensation, I have perforce had to start thinking again of what that means (I said again. See my 2012 post, Is all work work?)

Governmental agencies - and the 'experts' who advise them - seem mindlessly focused on skills that a) can be more or less easily taught, b) are in high demand and c) do not seriously tax the learner's intelligence, patience, or native talent (such as plumbing, home appliance servicing and computer coding). However, there are lots, literally lots of skills that are both necessary and valuable as well as hard to learn, though not well-enough respected, or even discussed. Sitting at Ghalib's Kebab Corner at Nizamuddin in Old Delhi, where my daughter and I have become welcome regulars, I have noticed a little boy assiduously at work, helping his uncle and elder brothers with everything that needs to be done, from taking orders to serving them up, toting up bills and collecting them, cleaning the tables and packaging takeaway orders, even lending a hand with the cooking now and then, swiftly and confidently, never having to be told what to do, let alone corrected or reprimanded. I should guess that he is 13 or 14: in our social class he would be in class 7 or 8. Mind you, though they live simply and give themselves no airs, they are perfectly at ease among the high and mighty - there are photos on the wall showing them decked in Mughal finery, taking a trophy at a food festival organized at one of the priciest hotels in the capital, and they don't bat an eyelid whether you walk into their den or arrive in a chauffeur-driven limousine. Would this boy do better in life if he grew up in the lazy urban middle class, unable to cross the road without his mother, wasting his time and cheating his way through exams at school, and then attending some sort of vocational course in late teenage, hoping to land, say, a low-level job at a bank or IT company or hospital?

I have also watched with fascination a video showing how Kashmiri shawl weavers pass on their intricate, hard won skills down the generations, how fine their work is, how much pride they take in it, and how highly it is valued in the posh showrooms of our metro cities and abroad. Again I wonder: are their children likely to be better off, and would the country progress faster, if they all joined the middle class herds chasing pathetic jobs in the organised sector, which do not even offer the prospect of lifetime employment any longer? (think Air India, and think of what is likely to happen soon to LIC, Indian Railways and SBI. Think of what has already happened to state police forces - constables replaced by civic 'volunteers' working for a pittance - and schoolteachers).

Forget the government: are we elders, as parents and teachers, quite sure that we are not dangerously misguiding our children who must enter their working lives within a decade or so?