NN38, February 2007
Technical and Vocational Skills Development
TRADITIONS IN SKILL AND MICRO-ENTERPRISES
By Harmeet Sarin, ILO, New Delhi
KeywordsSkills training, Micro-enterprise, India
Summary
The tradition of imparting skills through micro-enterprises has had a long history in India. This article describes how the feminization of many traditional male-dominated trades is steadily becoming the norm. It also notes that while traditional skills need to be upgraded to achieve higher productivity and competitiveness, the traditional value systems in imparting these skills need to be kept alive.
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India has been home to a diverse and intricate array of crafts and skills which have developed over the centuries into the form they are seen in today. Crafts and trades have flourished as artisans/craftspersons themselves have taken pride in their products and the involvement of the next generation has ensured continuity.
Traditionally, ?skills? have been passed on from one generation to another through in-house training from a parent/teacher (or ?guru?) to son/daughter/student (or ?shishya?) - a gradual initiation into the trade starts early in life by initially just watching, leading to further steps starting with handling of tools as an on-the-job training and (if possible) eventually to managing the family or micro-enterprise. Sometimes, of course, students from the neighbourhood would also join in to learn a particular aspect of the craft (such as etching/painting on artefacts). As has been seen in the brassware industry in Moradabad in the State of Uttar Pradesh in India, children as young as five years old have been initiated into the trade by just sitting with parents and playfully turning the wheel for lighting the furnace nearby or by just hammering on the metal brass plates. It was and is still believed that the interest of the younger generation in the craft builds up through a day-to-day involvement ? in other words ?catching them young? to carry on the skill or enterprise.
Skills training, as is the case in most traditional trades, seemed to be the male bastion and adolescent girls/women were relegated to secondary tasks. For example, in brassware where women were confined to cleaning brass artefacts or setting/clearing the workplace, they are gradually taking to learning specialized tasks such as etching, painting and also moulding the metal at the furnace. This aspect also comes to the fore in traditions of weaving as seen in the weaving of Kota Doria fabric in Rajasthan where women are gradually taking over as is also the case for example with ?chikan work? (fine needlework usually done with white thread on white muslin) from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh where women have already taken over in large numbers. Feminization of many traditional trades is steadily becoming the norm as traditional skills, though keeping their essence, need to be upgraded at various levels for them to be lucrative in today?s competitive world.
The tradition of imparting skills through micro-enterprises has kept the communities together but winds of change are beginning to throw this off balance. True, the traditional skills need to be upgraded to achieve higher productivity and competitiveness but the traditional value systems in imparting these skills needs to be kept alive. Pride in the end-product, developing interpersonal relationships/bonding, and networking laterally and vertically succeeded in developing synergies which were all a part of skill training imparted gradually through day-to-day interactions between the teacher and the student over a period of time. These traditions kept bubbling hubs of activity and creativity alive through centuries. It would be imperative to inculcate the positive dimensions from these traditions into today?s changing scenario of imparting skills.
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