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"Last Updtaed" on The Shillong Tuesday, June 09, 2009 by Dr.S.Aravamudhan.
Human Resource Development In The North East For The Management Of The Natural
Material Resources of Meghalaya
S.Aravamudhan
http://in.geocities.com/saravamudhan2002/nmr_for_oil_and_coil.html
W.E.D. 2006 submission On Higher Education Total Quality Management
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Introduction
It is by the day-to-day
natural living that the inhabitants of a region or a locality learn about the
materials around them. It is this experience, which makes them recognize the
naturally occurring materials as the utilizable resource materials [Ref.1].
Recognizing the natural material resources this way need not be a
sufficient-enough experience to manage the resource materials. This means it
would not be appropriate to reckon them as accomplished resource persons capable
of managing the resources efficiently. Managing of resources might include
trying to look for natural materials even by out-of-the-way efforts based only
on the data available for the trends of occurrences of materials till that time.
When the region is developing [Ref.4], a comprehensive outlook on the
development must include the Human Resources Development; this would be so, even
if the strategy were to mainly manage the material resources.
For obvious reasons, it
is the usual tendency to begin by modeling the region under consideration to be
a closed system- without any external inputs into the system and, also letting
no outputs from the system to the surroundings external to it. The exceptions
would be when for realistic situation, the priorities demand that, the local (inside-)
resources have to be made available for consumption outside the region (resource
availability is ‘abundant’). However, certain materials required
critically for consumption within the region may not be available as part of the
internal natural resources for the purposes of management. Then, dependence on
inputs from outside has to be counted as a factor (resource availability is
‘inadequate’ / ‘scarce’). How the activities, related to resource
management, can become a transaction across regional borders should be
appreciated from the sequences of the processes depicted in Figure-1. In this
context one may refer to the internal resources of Meghalaya; but, the human
resources situation would necessarily bring in the north-east regional situation
as a factor to reckon with.
From the above point of
view, the requirement of having to develop human resources while seeking the
efficient management of the material resources is itself posing a complicated
entanglement. It is so because the very same people, who would be consumers,
should be improving themselves with the techniques of securing the resources for
the people, adequately in quantity and quality for as much length of time that
the people do not have to be concerned about having to reduce the consumption
after getting used to it. Besides, use of one of the resources efficiently might
upset the criteria for similar utilization of another resource material.
The above considerations
are laid down in terms as the factors to be reckoned with as conditioning
factors for the utilization. Then the interdependence of these factors would
complicate the process of evolving a strategy specific to the region [Ref.2].
The strategic utilization could be either by a small-scale individualized
venture or by a viable large-turn-over industrial venture. This type of
utilization is a value addition stage before the original resource material
reaches the ultimate consumer. By this it is meant that the consumption of
natural resources through such ventures produces out of the original material
something more price worthy than the raw material. Even better would be that
these activities provide such experiences to turn out people who are much better
qualified to regulate such activities.
The modern technique, for
envisaging a regulatory pathway to disentangle dependences to promote and favor
only the reinforcing interdependences [Ref.5], is to draw out a scheme of flow
chart to include comprehensively the input-output correlations, indicating
clearly where and how the envisaged output would have to become part of the
input itself [Ref.6]. This aspect is the most crucial interdependence for the
value addition process. The advanced stage of such interdependence of inputs on
outputs can be envisaged from the flow-chart of Figure-1. The enterprises which
thrive from the internal resource materials might build up experienced
managerial teams which can become a valuable human resource potential. The
occupation of such experienced personnel would propel such entrepreneur activity
that gradually engulfs material possessions outside the region to let benefits
flow into the region. Such a multiplicative activity where the internal resource
management has fall outs to become capital investments outside the region cannot
be termed as a banal import activity for reasons of paucity of internal
resources. Such a turn can become an eventuality only by a broad based
human resource development even with a liberal availability of
internal material resources.
An attempt would be made
in this paper to find out the possibility of such an optimization process and
describe a scheme to provide a comparison with what is currently a prevailing
strategy.
Global Awareness for Local Management
This is the
perspective which essentially brings in the importance of Human Resource
Development while managing the material resources available in a specified
Location by the people who are resident in that locality. With regard to flow of
materials and flight of people who migrate looking for greener pastures, there
is a necessity to find an answer to the following question: namely, to what
extent a specified location can be independent of other neighboring locations?
This can be answered only with a wider awareness of the consequences of what is
implemented locally. If it is a macro level monitoring and management, then a
mere peripheral awareness about the location of site could probably bring in a
rapport with other contiguous locations. But, this alone may not ensure a
long-term, durable solutions because there can be micro level changes brought
out by the macro level phenomenal changes, which must be considered for their
necessary congeniality for the inhabitants’ requirements. This micro level
monitoring of changes and the supervision of the micro level implementations
must be synchronously tracked for the compatibility with the macro level
manifestations. If the micro level operations require strict controls and
regulations, then it is quite possible that this results in an engulfment of the
micro from the macro. It would be as if a closed hard-shell forms around the on
the spot movements, since all the people would be attentive and focus on to the
micro spot. People do not turn outwards and the movements freeze soon after
leaving the spot. Thus micro motivations would remain concealed, and the micro
level changes would not permeate through the Shell to surface out and become
conspicuous to macro level manipulators. Then the voices from the on the spot
supervisors would not be heard at the macro level dispensations. The situations
contrary to the foregoing would be that there may be a euphoria created by the
macro level indicators, but in reality not much advantage would be brought about
at the level of individual well being. In either case the total management would
be elusively a failure resulting in disgruntled population. The nature of data
gathered and how the time dependent developments are related to the factual data
requires a development of skillful management techniques. This is the Human
Resource Development which calls for much broader potential than, what
apparently seems to be only modest requirements in certain curtailed contexts
of management of local natural resources. The practical managers must be well
aware of the Scope of the modern technologies on a broad based comprehension so
that, for any specific task arising locally at a specific site, from the broad
based awareness a specific direction becomes discernible, which pointedly leads
to activities with certainty without much of trial and error approaches [Ref.3].
Thus an
understanding of the micro level processes synchronized with the macro level
homogeneous development requires a smooth transition from the micro level
practical system through middle level operation to the macro level realities if
the outcome is to be a comprehensive growth and development. Such a
comprehensive integrated development must be envisaged at every location and
this must be further synchronized for the regional processes encompassing all
the constituent location. This is essentially to suggest a fractal design in
which at any constituent level the management schemes are patterned as much
similar to the pattern which is apparent for the integrated level. For the
people involved to act cohesively in the development process, the management
should be endowed with a skillful Human Resource which becomes available by
conscientious initiatives of naturally talented people.
Hence, if
it is a question of efficient management of resources of Meghalaya, it is
imperative that it calls for a conscientious effort towards Human Resource
Development in the North East.
Prerequisites for Evolving a Strategy for Human Resource Development
In
accordance with the reasons put forward in the previous section, it seems
imperative that the people who are the on-the-spot managers for the local
natural resources, must be all the time viewing the operations from a wider
perspective including the fall-outs into the neighboring locations in the region
and the refills from the neighborhood into the specified management location in
the region. This is necessary in order to ensure that micro level regulatory
exercises at no stage becomes a confrontation at macro level because of the
inattentive disposition of the people on the spot, to certain slow and
inconspicuous changes at micro level. Such negligence, if it persists over the
continued operation, which could be over a considerable length of time, then
there can be cumulatively built-up manifestations. Perceiving such subtle
changes at any given time and, devising precautionary steps for the cumulative
consequences is the skill that is aspired for while human interventions and
initiatives are called for. The required skill can be acquired only by the
experience gained under instructions and, by the practice of the precepts
innovatively for the on the spot solutions. In the following sections an effort
is made to elaborate on the documented materials on Meghalaya and North East for
the available natural resources and what messages it carries for inferring about
the management of resources. Also a simple simulated data would be enough to
caution against the possible erroneous projections when such data are subjected
to statistical treatments as can be seen from Table-1. In this Table-1 a case of
income/revenue data on constituent states in a Region are used to calculate the
corresponding gross regional level index which results in ambiguities in
calculated numerical figures. If the treatment of data is not sensible then, the
whole effort might result in such sets of numbers which sustains
inconclusiveness and desperation while using this information.
Data
and Documentation on Natural Resources of Meghalaya
When an
effort is made to keep abreast with the management of natural resources, a
beginning can be made by trying to pursue the data and documentation available
on this matter. The convenient present day tool for documentation is the Web
Sites published to the Internet. Accessing this source of information is the
popular way and the simplest. This requires a well updated data base as
maintained by the web masters by periodically posting the changes in data and
new initiatives in the web pages. An attempt is made in this section to provide
an appreciation of such data available for the resources of Meghalaya.
Two Web
sites can be cited for retrieving information on the resources of Meghalaya:
1.
North East India Regional Databank of the North Eastern Development Finance
Corporation Limited. [NER Data Bank]
URL:
http://databank.nedfi.com/
2.
Government of Meghalaya Official State Portal
URL:
http://meghalaya.nic.in/
the summaries below are as per the data documented in the above web sites
printed out by this author on 4th Jan. 2005.
There are
data documented in both the URL’s for the natural resources of Meghalaya. A
cursory look through them seems to apparently differ marginally. But the
numerical figures are reasonably comparable to a large extent. The resources
covered in the documentation are: Land, water, Forest, Limestone, Coal, kaolin,
Clay and Minerals, Handlooms, Handicrafts, Fisheries and Live stock.
The Land,
Water & Forest resources have been found to be well detailed. A mineral map of
Meghalaya documented in the Web Pages comprehensively indicates the availability
of mineral resources. Meghalaya mineral resources include Kaolin, Iron, Copper,
Glass sand, Granite, Bauxite, Phosphoric rock, Limestone, Gold, Uranium ore,
Fire clay, Quartz, Gypsum etc.
The
statements made on the growth & development indices as reported in the website
are seemingly irreconcilable when the situation for Meghalaya as reported is
fitted to the information given for Meghalaya as a constituent state of the
North Eastern Region. For the sake of making the readers aware of the
“factual state of affairs” when documenting and reporting “factual
data” the following passages from the Web Page documents are quoted: at
the NER Data Bank [Web site No 1 cited above] on Economy of Meghalaya the
following statement was found:- “In case of per capita income, Meghalaya
continues to lag behind from the national average”. Again in the NER Data
Bank on Economy of North East, the following could be readout:- “Growth in per
capita income is almost stagnated in Assam since 90’s, was better than the
national average in Meghalaya….”. What is stated later in the context of
Meghalaya (in the context of North East region) seems to be contradicting with
the earlier statement while commenting on Meghalaya exclusively? This probably
can be resolved if one critically reads and find that there could be such
apparent contradictions if proper distinction is not made between value of
per capita income and the Growth in per capita income. But this is
the source of contradiction and how it comes about is a matter that not many
would be obviously aware. This warrants illustrating [as in Table-1] on such
possibilities of conflicting interpretation of a given set of data even by the
way simply the average values are calculated. As per documentations [Ref.8]
detailed macro economic data for all seven states of the region are available
from the year 1980-81 only. Through the entire period since then the per capita
income in the region remained below India’s per capita income. In the post 1991
years the gap has widened further.
The comment
on the situation of Human Resources i.e., ‘manpower availability’ in Meghalaya
is modest as quoted here: “Meghalaya has a fairly large pool of skilled,
semi-skilled and unskilled labour”. This statement as found in the Government of
Meghalaya official State Portal (Web Site No 2 cited above) is further studded
with comments that there are a fair number of secretarial staff and a fair
number of management and technical personnel with qualifications from recognized
professional institutions. These are qualitative, and specifically do not point
out the actual intensive efforts required in manpower training.
While
perusing the web page contents for the situation on minerals the following data
could be found documented: For the period 1997-98, the total coal ‘reserve’ was
640x106 tonnes and the ‘production’ during 1997-98 was 3.234x106
tonnes. This probably would indicate production rate capability in Meghalya for
such a huge coal reserve. But an onlooker would start evaluating this data as to
whether the production capability can be increased, at the given production rate
the coal reserves would seem to last as long as 200 more years. Then where
exactly is the need and the necessity for this coal (seemingly large compared to
the annual rates of production) reserve and what is the policy that
comprehensively projects the use of this reserve and where the readers can get
hold of such information is not at this point in the web Site. This means the
tendency would be to note this data and keep on quoting without much inference.
Hence to kindle the curiosity, beyond the availability of facts, the
documentation should include links on the texts where it becomes “clickable” to
open the relevant pages where the further discussions and details are found
readily documented. Similar look through the situation on Limestone in Meghalya
accentuates the importance of the comments made before on the coal data.
Limestone during 1997-98 total reserve was 5000x106 tonnes while the
annual production of Limestone during this period was 0.395x106
tonnes. While perusing the NER Data Bank web page on “Sectors having
Investment Potential in Meghalaya” the quality of Limestone was
specified with the CaO content of 53%, but the quality was not compared with any
standards. Its utility could be in steel, fertilizer and chemical industries.
But no mention was made on the actual places where this resource would be used;
whether in Meghalaya State itself this potential can find an outlet or is it
necessary to involve outside locations - outside the state or even outside the
North Eastern Region. Thus the documentation of resource data must
comprehensively cover all aspects of the resource management as envisaged in the
Figure-2. Such documentation is possible with Internet Publications and this is
the most convenient and compact way to document the data, inference and
perspectives such that all are available at the same point only just a “click”
away!
On
the Scheme for Canalizing Human Resource Optimally for Material Resource
Management
Either for
ones awareness about ones own capabilities or to be leading others effectively
[Ref.7], there may be an evaluation of the disposition of the individual
for the particular task and an assessment of the aptitude for the task.
The
disposition of an individual can be favorable for undertaking a task because
of the awareness that individual possesses by the tendencies of getting
interested in such problems and tasks by the exposure from media and people.
Thus to systematically evaluate a person’s disposition would require collection
of factual data provided by the respective the individuals on their educational
career and experiences. These could be mostly objective data gathered by
appropriate questionnaire which may be studded with a few subjective questions
to know about their abilities to express the relevant facts with an inference on
the on the purpose and content of the questionnaire. Probably no photo identity
cards would be required to evaluate on this aspect much less a personal
interview. The evaluation should be objectively carried out only on the basis of
the comparison of facts documented in the papers by the tabulators as was
gathered from the questionnaires. The dispositions should be appropriately
categorized and an index be assigned for inclusion in the final assessment with
appropriate weightings for the disposition aspects.
The second,
the assessment of aptitude requires setting a subjective questionnaire
which makes the candidates introspect about their own fitness for the purposes
of a career in the management of resources. The answers must be in one word or
phrase or at the most one sentence long to reveal their version of the view
points.
Having gone
through an assessment and evaluation in the beginning, a mechanism must be
instilled to update the impressions as and when the candidates gain experiences.
Being in an organization it is necessary to know how much of a global
perspectives gets built-in while the persons solve and circumvent hurdles in the
local on site situation. Thus as much as it is required to keep an updated data
base on material resources, it is necessary to maintain data bases on the human
resource capabilities with updates and upgrading properly weighted. It is
precisely this aspect which becomes elusive; that is, how to handle the Human
Resource data bases as much, as if they are on par with material resource
management.
Comprehending the totality of the situation with a good grasp of the specific
problem that has to be solved is the first and foremost criterion for effective
management. Such a comprehension also enables the interpretation of the data by
sensible statistical methods for realistic inferences. For example, the
following kind of categorical understanding of words to use for describing the
contexts with respect to materials management is a prerequisite. When we refer
to consumption which does not seem to have harmful effects, but helpful for the
present and produces good result, then it can be described as a “use” of
material. When such a use has been accounted for properly from the economic
point of view and sustainable growth and development, then such a conscientious
consumption may be termed “utilization”. When the available material is
put to use just for the sake of spending time because one does not have any
other event to engage oneself with, it would be described as exploitation. In
fact, when we have a material available in abundance but it is not known for
consumption of any purposes, then trying to spend time to find out whether such
an abundantly available material can anyway be useful, is an effort to exploit
the material.
Unused and
wasted materials should be exploited. But, it would be a crime trying to
“exploit” in this sense materials whose value and worth are known and is also
known to deplete because of demand for it. On such material if one tries to find
some other use just for spending the time with it would be atrocious. Such
materials should be put to careful utilization and should not be left for
wasteful uses. Such categorical description with conventional meanings (even if
it is not established definitions) would help people become better aware of the
value of the resources. This is all coming within the realms of Human Resource
Development, basically improving the educational standards and literacy levels.
This has to be much more broad based than the effort to focus only on the
on-the-spot requirements.
Thus from
the point of view of what has been described till now in this paper and viewing
down the Schematic in Figure-1, one can list out the kind of training the
personnel should have, category wise:
1.
Collection of Data, inventory making, and generation of data bases on the
Resource Materials.
2.
How
to assign ownerships and how to allocate the natural material resources.
3.
How
to take cognizance of the ownership transfers? Commercial aspects for the
necessary business and trade related to the natural resource materials.
4.
For
item 3 and 4 one must know how to recognize the resource materials transformed
as Commercial goods.
5.
The
policy matters related to the accountability of the available resource
materials, where and how to put them to use: only to the local requirements or
should the material be made available for global uses ?
6.
How
to be aware of the technological possibilities and trends for effective
utilization of the resources. A very broad based technological awareness to be
able to recognize the right technology that is required on the spot?
7.
Can
all these training be imparted at the very place where the materials are
available in abundance where they have to be processed?
8.
With
all the data available, there must be manpower appropriately skilled in the
statistical techniques to subject the data to analysis for inferences. As
pointed out in Table-2, there can be traps at elementary levels while seeking a
statistical analysis. It requires much more talent to be discretionary about
which technique to adapt, over and above the skills at the techniques acquired
assiduously. The criticalities of handling such data in the context of North
East region and the State of Meghalaya are vindicated in the papers of (1)
Subhendu Chakrabarti and Mousmi Majumdar entitled “The Coal Reserves of North
East India” [Ref.9] and (2) K.Sarma, S.K.Barik and R.K.Rai entitled “Impact of
Coal Mining on the Nokrek Biosphere Reserve of Meghalaya” [Ref.10]. In this
context (particularly while pointing out the ambiguities of inferences as from
Table-1) there is a revealing example [Ref.11] of how the statistical
mathematical handling can reduce the data into compact forms of equations making
the pages of source-tabular forms unnecessary, after such an analysis. Which
means the inferences can be stored and transported with much ease and more
effectively. This is discussed below: The contribution was about the nutrient
consumption pattern in North Eastern States of India. In the discussion below
only the data for Meghalaya is copied and the consequences explained. The
relevant data for the study consisted of data collected for the period from
1970-71to 1993-94. The categories were the different kind of food items namely
pulses, cereals, milk etc. For each of this category (1) the per capita
consumption value Y was gathered. And in that locality (2) the population X1
in thousand person (2) production of the food items X2 (in ten
thousand tones) and (3) per capita state Gross Domestic product X3
are also obtained. Then these are fitted into a form of an equation Y= b0
+ b1 ∙ X1+ b2 ∙ X2
+ b3 ∙ X3 This is a procedure called regression
analysis and the values of the b’s in the equation obtained by this
analysis are tabulated.
|
Food item |
Constant |
Population |
Production |
Income |
R2 |
|
Cereals |
332.25 |
-0.2222 |
1.7378 |
0.0079 |
0.99 |
|
Pulses |
2.15 |
-0.0012 |
1.7948 |
0.0001 |
0.67 |
|
Egg |
0.04 |
0.00002 |
0.0002 |
0.0000 |
0.99 |
From the table the b va
