Introduction

Conquering poverty and unemployment is a supreme goal in India. The young generation must be personally involved in this effort. Modern young Indians mostly lack knowledge, confidence, entrepreneurial drive and information on business loans, which are necessary to become self-employed. Instead they seek less risky white-collar jobs - jobs which barely exist. It is therefore necessary to inform the youth that white-collar jobs are nearly out of the question, and to show them that self-employment right in their own villages is a realistic way to a successful future.

Problem Definition

Following problems have been identified in the villages in the Jaipur region:

1. Unemployment - is a big problem in villages. In this area due to desert climate and drought for 3 consecutive years, agriculture has reduced a lot - or isn't even possible. This has resulted in unemployment increasing at alarming rate. Typically most unemployed people work as manual laborers or construction workers in cities like Jaipur. Moreover the work is not permanent.

2. Education losing importance - People see no money in it. On the bright side, most of children (both girls and boys) are going to school. However, a lot of girls leave school after class 5th and boys leave after different stages (5th, 8th, 10th and 12th). School buildings in villages are in extremely poor condition. Due to severe unemployment, even educated villagers (10th - 12th class) can't find work. So they end up as educated unskilled laborers.

This results in more village students dropping out of schools at earlier stages like after 5th class or after 8th class. Why should they go to school if it ends like this?

3. Village students don't know there are lots of jobs right at home - if they get the training. - Typically village students do not know about employment opportunities. This includes both the school dropouts and current school students. Nor do they know about the training that can qualify them for dignified well-paying self-employment.

Take the example of students in Government Senior High Secondary School, Shivdaspura - Jaipur District, a small town near Jaipur with a population around 5,000. Most of the students in this school are from villages around Shivdaspura. We did a small survey involving 100 students (80 boys and 20 girls) of class 11th and 12th. Each of the 100 students was asked a simple question -

What do you plan to do after class 12th? If you have some idea, do know how you will go about it?

Following are the highlights of the survey -
a) 5% students were clear about what they plan to do after school. They wanted to start some repair workshop or some trading work. Almost everyone has some relative already working in the same line of business.
b) 35% students had no idea about what they plan to do after 12th.
c) 20% students wanted to go for government jobs, many of them talked about planning to take IAS (Indian Administrative Services Examination) and RAS (Rajasthan Administrative Services Examination). However none of them had any idea about how to prepare for or take the exam.
d) Rest 40% showed interest in vocational training and planning to start some small shop or workstation based on the training. Some of them knew one institute ITI (Industrial Training Institute) in Jaipur. Admission rate in ITI currently is 3 - 4% of the total number of applications it receives. Also most of them had no idea, how to go about starting their own business after the training. In short, they were groping in the dark.

4. Acute shortage of vocational training centers around Jaipur - There are more then 20 engineering colleges in Jaipur but only one vocational training center (ITI). ITI has 328 seats in 21 trades for which they provide vocational training. ITI receives 10-15 thousand applications a year for these 328 seats. Apart from ITI, there are only 4-5 other institutes. Most of them are private institutions and charge high fees. Also all these institutes are located in main Jaipur City, thus inaccessible to the rural poor.

5. Migration to Jaipur and other smaller cities around Jaipur - Due to all the problems, a lot of villagers are migrating to cities. Jaipur getting more crowded, making getting jobs in and around Jaipur more difficult. The villagers are caught in the squeeze. They MUST stay at home, and to do that, they must be self-employed at home.

So, what's the plan?

Project Plan

The plan is to open a vocational training and information resource center in the Shivdaspura area in Jaipur District, Rajasthan, for village students (both school dropouts and current school students).

The main objectives of the center would be to: -
" Tell students about actual opportunities for self-employment.
" Build several vocational training programs in rural areas.
" Help the trained youth apply for and get loans banks / financial institutions.

Possible areas of self-employment

Electric motor winding, radio, TV repair, Tailoring & dress designing, scooter, tractor, motorcycle repair, photography / videography, dairy management, computers, entrepreneurship development program, domestic electric appliance repair, diesel engine, generator repair, to name some obvious ones.

 

Sources of Information

All the information for the project is taken from following sources -
1. Organizations and field workers - It includes talking to some of the organizations like Khadi Gramodyog Vidhyalaya and number of social worker that have worked in the villages in Shivdaspura area for number of years.
2. Villagers - KIGS randomly talked to a number of villagers and asked them about the unemployment problem currently in villages, and what should be done to mitigate the problem. In some cases, we broached the idea of opening a vocational training institute in village for school students and asking their opinion on it.
3. School Students - We talked to school students to get their viewpoint. The details of the survey are already explained in Problem Definition Section.
4. Vocational Training Centers in Jaipur - We visited all the vocational training centers in Jaipur to -
" Get their opinion on opening a training center in Shivdaspura. In most of the places we got strong support stating that there is a need of such kind of training center.
" To know what kind of training programs are in demand and have student interest.
" Find how many student applications they are receiving and how much are they able to accommodate.

In general, the applications received are in thousands and the seats available with them are around 300.

This is the point at which the villagers get discouraged about their chances for self-employment training. The odds are clearly against their being accepted in a big city training center.