CONTEXT | Interviews - I

 The first interviewee was Suman Das, a 39-year old carpenter who has been working ot join for 15-20 years and expects to work till he's 60 years old. He had studied till 5th standard and was trained by his 'ustaad' who was himself a sexagenerian by the looks of it. That man only gave instructions, there was no demonstartions involved. He also his junior apprentices from time to time who take care of the less crucial work and learn by observing. He rued that carpentry work has gone down as people prefer more modern materials like stell and aluminium for furniture and much of the business is run off furniture stores that have sprung up. And thus he can find fewer apprentices. He cannot afford a smartphone, but is upbeat that he can learn to use the same in a jiffy. Similar is his enthusiasm to learn any extra skills necessary to be able to impart vocational training. As an use case, he described that he can teach students in groups of 4, one hour each week, and take approximately three months to teach them to make a chair. He would obviously need to be supplied 4 more sets of three basic tools for the same. 

The second interviewee was Srijon Chatterjee, a thirty-something B. Tech graduate from NIT Agartala who was a senior instructor at an ITI(Industrial Training Institute) run by Ramakrishna Mission. He gave an insightful overview of the current vocational training setup and revealed some attitudes in there about NEP 2020. He listed all the exit opportunities of students with vocational training(self-employment as small business, some big corporations and local production facilities). There he observed a lack of coordination with the corporate sector with regards to placements. He confirmed that there isn't much leeway in the current setup in most ITIs to accomodate newer students for trainign as may be required by the NEP. Another issue he flagged was the gap of knowledge in the tradesmen who were trained by apprenticeship, which need to be fulfilled in order for them to impart standardised vocational curricula, which he surmised might be covered with a week-long or fortnight-long training.