Humanities and Social Sciences

Dr. Stefan Tetzlaff
Georg-August-Universit�¤t G�¶ttingen

Have industrial corporations in India been interested in training and skilling their workforces in the past? If not, what were the reasons that led to this neglect? This talk addresses these questions by looking at the trajectory of technical training in India since WWII. Industrialization drives during and after the war required a large pool of skilled workers that were subsequently trained primarily in government-run "Industrial Training Institutes" (ITI) and not within companies. In the 1950s and 1960s, technical assistance from abroad influenced legal provisions for technical training and in-company training, but this did not mean that Indian corporations began to think differently about
technical training. This paper argues that industry continued to neglect skilling and training workers and relied instead on state-funded institutions and foreign input to train workmen throughout the period.

A historian of South Asia and its connection with the world, Dr. Tetzlaff has held positions at different academic institutions in Asia, Europe, and the US. These include positions at the Centre for South Asian Studies in Paris (CNRS-EHESS), the German Historical Institutes (GHI) in London and Washington, D.C. and the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies (ZMO) in Berlin. Stefan is currently a Arts and Humanities Visiting Fellow at NYU Abu Dhabi and a Senior Research Fellow in Business History at the Godrej Archives (Mumbai).