Can short courses creating technical expertise help solve Bengaluru’s garbage problem? Premium
The Hindu
It has been five years since Samvada Baduku started offering a certification course in waste supply chain management (WSCM). A six-month long course with a capacity of 20 students, it has been seeing an increased number of applicants every year.
It has been five years since Samvada Baduku started offering a certification course in waste supply chain management (WSCM). A six-month long course with a capacity of 20 students, it has been seeing an increased number of applicants every year.
For the batch that would begin on 1 August, around 100 applications have come in. This time there have been applications from even far-off places like Jammu and Kashmir, New Delhi, Haryana, Odissa and Nagpur.
“The medium of communication is Kannada, and therefore we will have to turn down those applications,” says Bindiya, course faculty for waste management at Baduku.
“We may come up with an online course or an English version of the current course for such applicants,” she adds.
Green-collar jobs in waste management may not still be perceived as the most lucrative career option, but according to experts, the interest in such courses has been gradually rising over the years. They note that the time may be ripe for more players to offer similar programmes.
The WSCM course by Baduku is a residential programme comprising four months of in-class training and two months of internship.
“The course has various aspects. We impart sector-specific, technical and communication skills, and perspectives on the sector, social structure, gender and climate change. Aspects such as how we represent ourselves in society are also covered,” Ms. Bindiya explains.
“Writing, in general, is a very solitary process,” says Yauvanika Chopra, Associate Director at The New India Foundation (NIF), which, earlier this year, announced the 12th edition of its NIF Book Fellowships for research and scholarship about Indian history after Independence. While authors, in general, are built for it, it can still get very lonely, says Chopra, pointing out that the fellowship’s community support is as valuable as the monetary benefits it offers. “There is a solid community of NIF fellows, trustees, language experts, jury members, all of whom are incredibly competent,” she says. “They really help make authors feel supported from manuscript to publication, so you never feel like you’re struggling through isolation.”
Several principals of government and private schools in Delhi on Tuesday said the Directorate of Education (DoE) circular from a day earlier, directing schools to conduct classes in ‘hybrid’ mode, had caused confusion regarding day-to-day operations as they did not know how many students would return to school from Wednesday and how would teachers instruct in two modes — online and in person — at once. The DoE circular on Monday had also stated that the option to “exercise online mode of education, wherever available, shall vest with the students and their guardians”. Several schoolteachers also expressed confusion regarding the DoE order. A government schoolteacher said he was unsure of how to cope with the resumption of physical classes, given that the order directing government offices to ensure that 50% of the employees work from home is still in place. On Monday, the Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas (CAQM) had, on the orders of the Supreme Court, directed schools in Delhi-NCR to shift classes to the hybrid mode, following which the DoE had issued the circular. The court had urged the Centre’s pollution watchdog to consider restarting physical classes due to many students missing out on the mid-day meals and lacking the necessary means to attend classes online. The CAQM had, on November 20, asked schools in Delhi-NCR to shift to the online mode of teaching.