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Leadership Training Workshop = Students-Creators or Victims
By A Staff Writer
Bangalore
A unique workshop organised by Sanchetana, Femwob and the Talent Promotion Trust in the city, provided tips for building leadership qualities among the youth.
A ‘Leadership Training Workshop’ was organised here for the students on February 19, under the aegis of the Ahmedabad based NGO Sanchetana in cooperation with the Femwob and the Talent Promotion Trust. Around 40 students from professional colleges participated.
Vishnu Agnihotri from Educational Alternatives provided tips for building leadership qualities among the youth. He said the students will have to choose between what they would like to become, creators or victims. He said creators create opportunities for themselves, while victims keep on blaming others for their miseries and tragedies. He conducted several tests for students to enable self-assessment.
Clifton Rozario, an activist from Lawyers Collective spoke on ‘globalisation’ and its impact’. Explaining the US’ exploitative policies and hegemonistic designs, Clifton said the US based multinational companies were out to dominate the world. He said under the name of market and competition, the MNCs were eliminating the smaller companies around the world and monopolising the world market. He said, Nike and Reebok have such domination over the world market now that all other shoe companies have collapsed. Similar was the impact of Coke and Pepsi, soft drink majors who have invaded all corners of the globe and eliminated all smaller soft drink companies. He said the IT companies in Bangalore were being allotted expensive land for setting up units that employ the previous land-owners as peons, attenders and chaiwalas. He said Coke was using millions of litres of water from Plachimada river in Kerala almost free of cost raking in huge profits. He said, but for the resistance from bodies like Narmada Bachao Andolan etc., the government would have privatised the water bodies enabling the MNCs to plunder India’s natural resources. He said all governments have sold out the sovereign rights to MNCs.
Prof. Hasnat Mansur, chair-person, Federation of Women of Bangalore (Femwob) said, often Muslims perceived themselves only as Muslims and said one should be aware of the multiple overlapping identities one was endowed with. She said a Muslim should also be conscious of his Indian, human and gender- related identities which go into making the personality. She said the Muslim students should create spaces for themselves at all levels and urged the students to develop a positive outlook of life. Prof. Hasan Mansur, President, PUCL in Karnataka speaking on “Social and Political Scenario in Karnataka,” said the latest turn in politics was pregnant with dangerous portents for the communal situation. He said secular credentials of the political parties could not be taken at the face value as it is seen from Karnataka where a political party suffixed with ‘secular’ has embraced a communal party for grabbing power. Quoting Dr. Ambedkar, he said his prophecy of there rising a ‘communal majority’ in India seems to be coming true. He also took note of the rise of combination of social forces under the banner of ‘Ahinda’ movement on the political firmament of Karnataka.
Maqbool Ahmed Siraj, journalist, presenting a statistical profile of Indian Muslims quoted figures from the latest six-state survey of Muslims. He said only 9.6 per cent Muslims were crossing the 10th standard level while only 1.5 per cent are graduates. He attributed the educational and economic backwardness to the orthodox leadership which was interested only in raking up emotive issues and being devoid of vision for the future. He said lakhs of people can gather and million of rupees can be raised for organising agitations and procession on issues like cartoon outrage, but the community cannot muster up resources for modern education, libraries, media and institutes. Mr. Rafiqullah, advocate and several students took part in interactions.
Prof. Nazni Begum thanked the organisers and the participants and expressed the need for such workshops frequently so that students could discuss the current issues affecting the entire society.
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