Amit Shah: I am lazy. How do I change that?
Fifty years ago a
young girl selling flowers on a city street in India wasn’t going to be a
candidate for the civil services or even graduate from high school. At best,
she’d become domestic help. That was then. This is now:
Girl
who sold flowers on the street in Mumbai with her father, is in a Ph.D. program
at JNU and headed to the University of California.
One
of my recent mentees from a hard-scrabble background has a job at WIPRO as a
software engineer
Another
person, an 8th-grade dropout, works as pharmacist-in-training at one of the top
hospitals in India. (https://feaindia.org/vikram-rai/)
The new generation, those who are 17 to 25 represent the largest demographic group In India. Their material and intellectual success is India’s future. Their failures will be India’s too. The rich and the privileged alone cannot make the country succeed. They can help to increase ethical, productive work habits, communication skills - reading, writing, improvement of the quality of ideas - and thereby make employability skills a primary focus.
The new
generation, where the majority of my mentees fall, must do better than their
parents. Over 80 percent of India’s workforce is in the informal employment
sector. These are daily wage workers or contract workers, often without
benefits or a future. They span across rural and urban areas and are a few
rungs above subsistence. Salaried, with benefits, and employment security
positions are at a premium in India. Most have been in government agencies till
now when the corporate sector is expanding. Still, the numbers are HUGE in
India and competition is fierce.
What I Do: I work with FEA -https://feaindia.org/about/- a philanthropic organization, which has 221 branches in 6 states - Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar. It has started a rural program, in Hindi only, that focuses on preparing students for urban job market. There are approximately 560 facilitators who work with over 1,000 mentors such as me. To date, FEA has helped 30,000 students.
I’ve written
about what the sessions are like and what the students are like and what I do.
The links below will give you a pretty good idea. I don’t lecture. I converse
with the students as much as possible. In fact, the title of the article is a
direct quote of a question asked in one of the sessions. This leads to
discussion about time management, self-motivation strategies, study skills.
I get guests ---
sometimes college students from Kamala Nehru College in Delhi and some from
IIT/Delhi; some from my old college--- to come in and talk about how they’ve
overcome difficulties and obstacles, how they’ve developed study habits, what
they like doing and how do they go about doing that. I don’t teach them content
for academic subjects. They have schools for that. I try and teach them that
their aspirations are worthwhile. That their ideas are worth exploring. That
struggle and hard work can pay off to some degree and will bring them peace of
mind. That a government job or rank is not equivalent to being a mob boss
extorting the less fortunate.
Over the past
two years, I think I’ve had about 200 or so students. It’s the most satisfying
thing I’ve done in my life….
My contact: amit@greencomma.net or DM in LinkedIn
