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Hasta la vista... not really
Ashutosh Tosaria

I had left IRMA in April 2008 but the rural management institute from western India never left me. The realization hit me very strongly one fine day. The green expanse of our campus, tea time gup-shup, Amul ice cream, Ganesh Chowkdi…. all these associations with IRMA continue to be very vivid. But this post is not about any of those things.The reason I am writing this is to share the absolute joy with which I re-encountered the half credit course that I had found rather taxing (and confusing) way back in 2006 but which has, of late, infused a sense of purpose in my work. The course I am referring to is Rural Livelihood Systems (RLS). It hasn’t taken me long to realize that a circle is near completion, that a cycle of learning is coming to a close with the promise of initiating another exciting journey.

Since September 2012 I have been part of a project that engages with young people finding themselves on the fringes of India’s socio-economic development and equips them with the knowledge and skills to gain fruitful employment. ‘Vocational education’ had always seemed a very exciting space and I became keen to learn from and contribute to it. Thus Istarted meeting people in right earnest. It was during my sojourns and peregrinations that I came across argot articulating words like youth bulge, demographic dividend, unemployable, skilling and so on. Most importantly I met, and continue to meet, a lot of young people flocking to vocational training centres.

Many of these young learners find themselves in the ‘unemployable Indian youth’ category and conversations with them have always been very interesting and full of revelations. For example, during an interaction with a group of learners in Chitradurga (a town 230 km from Bangalore) I discovered that for more than half the class Chennai was a more popular work destination compared to Bangalore. Now this was really a surprise considering the distance and unrelenting Chennai weather. But I soon realized that the students had their reasons and also that they had conducted their calculations in a very practical manner. Cost of living was an important factor. Also, some of them associated Chennai with better jobs (and salaries), based on their interactions with the centre alumni working in Chennai. For a few of them, home is where all the fun was. They thought it was better to earn Rs.4000-5000 per month in Chitradurga and stay with their families than to work for Rs.7000 in Bangalore. The bottom-line: all of them were thinking and planning.

I’ve come across similar ‘rationalizations’ in many other centres. These rationalizations are not limited to pre-job conclusions but also get extended to on-the-job decisionmaking. Some learners realize that promises made by HR executives during interviews tend to dissolve by the time they start working. Some return to their home towns after having been tormented at work. (In my knowledge this hasn’t happened often but millions of job offers could easily mean tens of thousands of fake promises). Quite a few continue to work in bustling metros and I can safely assume they are progressing well in their careers.

The students spend about 90 days at the centre devoting their time to learning, reasoning, discussing, and opting for jobs.Considering that I spent 21 months at IRMA without having completely figured out what to do in life the 90-day duration at the centre seems rather short. It is within this short time span that the students are required to tap their inherent ability to think, dream, and map their course of action. To actually have a demographic dividend, in a sense, our best bet is to interact with young people as whole individuals, not (just) opportunistic job-seekers.

It was during my interactions with the students that the word ‘holistic’ began ringing in my ears making me nostalgic for those Rural Livelihood Systems (RLS) classes, which I have to confess, I hadn’t been very receptive towards at IRMA back then. Rather nostalgically I recalled that no arrangement of 9 geometrical figures has ever made more sense (to me) than 9 squares put together in a 3x3 matrix form. I have, since, been avidly reading up on the 9-square mandala and other literature on livelihood systems. All of this, needless to add, has stoked my longing for more. If the IRMA curriculum committee is reading this, I have a humble request: is it possible for an alumnus like me to find his way back to those RLS classes?