Labor of love
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Life skills class being taught at Unnati by A. Narayanan
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By Deepashri Varadharajan
BANGALORE (Feb. 7)—Srinivas studied in a government-funded school till grade 12. He stayed away from home in a hostel at Kolar, a district in southern Karnataka, that provided free accommodation for economically backward students. His parents worked as laborers in farms, earning Rs. 50 a day, to feed three children.
Srinivas discontinued his studies after grade 12 and came to Bangalore in search of a job in order to support his family.
Poverty and unemployment, especially among people living below poverty line (set at Rs. 26 and Rs. 32 in rural and urban India respectively) are two major, interlinked problems plaguing India.
A report by Azad India Foundation, an organization committed to rural development, says an estimated 260.3 million are living below the poverty line in this country.
According to a 2010 survey by the central government’s Labor Bureau, 40 million people are unemployed in India. The 2011 unemployment rate is 9.8 percent.
Srinivas had to save enough money to get his sister married. He worked as a shopkeeper for two years. He earned Rs. 1,500 (less than $30) every month, out of which he sent Rs. 1,000 back home.
“One day a small kid came to my shop asked me for something in English. I couldn’t understand what she was saying,” Srinivas said. “That’s when I felt there was no point in all these years of education.”
Unnati: Making progress
In 2008, a friend took Srinivas to Unnati (Progress), an initiative aimed at empowering economically underprivileged and unemployed youth by training them in various vocations and spoken English, computer basics and life skills.
Today, he is a system associate in Capgemini, a leading IT services company, earning Rs. 16,000 per month. He bore the expenses of his sister’s marriage and singlehandedly supports his family.
Unnati, started in 2003 by Sree Guruvayurappan Bhajan Samaj Trust, also trains spastic children and integrates them into a normal life.
“When I joined, I didn’t know anything about computers,” Srinivas said. “Today, I assist users at the application end.”
Unnati provides youth below poverty line free meals, hostel facilities, health supplements and study materials for the 70-day
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The computer science laboratory at Unnati |
training period. Various vocations such as retails sales, field sales, guest care, driving, security services and business process outsourcing are taught.
“I didn’t know what self confidence was before I joined Unnati,” said Anjali, a trainee at Unnati, who’s learning retail sales.
“I just joined here to avoid the frustration of people around me. This was the best decision of my life,” said Harish, an Unnati alumnus, who now works for Tata Consultancy Services. “What my education did not give me in 15 years, Unnati gave me in three months.”
Preparing people for life, not just a job
Susheela Venkatraman, one of the trustees at Unnati, said small things that maybe obvious to other people need to be told to them, like paying attention, realizing your responsibilities and managing time, because no one has ever told them before.
I sat through the life skills class, taught by A. Narayanan, curious to know why it had such a huge impact on their thinking and lifestyle.
Narayanan narrated a small story, as the class listened with rapt attention.
Ganga is considered a sacred river by Hindus. People believe that taking a dip in the holy water would wash away all their sins. One day, Shiva and Parvathi, a Hindu deity and his consort, descended from the heavens, to test their disciples. They were disguised as an old couple.
The old man pretended to be drowning in the water, crying for help. Parvathi said, “Please save my husband,” and as people approached them, she added, “But beware. He is cursed. His sins will rub on to anyone who touches him.”
Everybody backed away.
Then Narayanan raised a question: “One of the onlookers was an Unnati student. What would he/she have done?”
One student answered, “I would have saved him. If Ganga washes away your sins, it wouldn’t matter if I touch him.”
Till the end, I did not know what the message he was trying to convey was.
“Believe in what you do.” Nobody wanted to save the old man because nobody strongly believed that the sacred river would wash away their sins. They merely followed it as a ritual.
“Believe you will grow in the company you work for,” Narayanan said.
Café Coffee Day, Titan, Godrej, and multinational companies like AkzoNobel, Concentrix and FirstSource are few companies that come here for recruitment.
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Srinivas (left) and Harish, Unnati alumni who are now working in Capgemini and Tata Consultancy Services, respectively.
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Reaching out beyond Bangalore
Presently, over 500,000 people have enrolled in the Karnataka Employment and Training “live registration form,” a dynamic datasheet that has the names of people in search of employment. This number was 2 million in 1999.
“This does not necessarily mean unemployment has decreased in the society,” V. Venugopal, assistant director at the Karnataka state government’s Directorate of Employment and Training, said. “It could even mean people have stopped registering with the government employment scheme.”
In spite of such national employment service and vocational training schemes, if we still have poor people abandoning their agricultural lands in distress and migrating to cities in search of jobs, it shows it is a result of many interlinked economic issues. When the harvest season is over, a farmer has not other source of income till the next cycle begins.
Not many people are aware of existing opportunities. It is generally through word of mouth that many of them are informed.
With better awareness and implementation of government schemes, and extension of private initiatives like Unnati beyond Bangalore to reach the rural population, we can deal with the current unemployment rate more efficiently.
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