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The things they say
S. MUTHIAH
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According to the report, "A vision for the Tamil Nadu industry" no one wants to join the manufacturing industry. Tamil Nadu which produces a third of the country's engineers has less than 10 per cent of them getting into manufacturing units
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* V. Krishnamoorthy, Chairman of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council and `father of the motor car revolution in India' as a consequence of what he wrought at Maruti, was as pragmatic as ever when he addressed the conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry - Tamil Nadu State Council on developing `Tamil Nadu as a manufacturing hub'. After releasing a report on `A vision for the Tamil Nadu auto industry', he urged both the Council and the authors of the report to take a fresh look at their numbers. Those numbers indicate a current output of $3-3.5 billion a year in the automotive industry increasing to $18 billion by 2015. Apart from citing the figures he himself has, he pointed out several things that might stand in the way of such achievement. Employment creation in the country is only 4 million a year, whereas jobseekers number at present 8 million annually. Trade unions are still not confident that managements are taking care of their interests. And, most important of all, no one wants to join the manufacturing industry! Tamil Nadu which produces a third of the country's engineers has less than 10 per cent of them getting into manufacturing units. When BPOs and call offices pay Rs.15,000-20,000 a month, who would want to be an engineer at Rs.6,000-10,000 he wondered.
* The first of what is hoped will be an annual interaction between the University of Madras and the University of Sri Lanka, Peradeniya, in the fields of Anthropology and Archaeology was recently launched in Madras with a two-day seminar on Indo-Sri Lankan links in these fields. Concluding the seminar, Dr. Sudarshen Seneviratne, Head of the Department of Archaeology, Peradeniya, and one of the two current Sri Lankan authorities on ancient Sri Lanka, spoke an hour and more to reveal his findings in Anuradhapura that indicate organised settlements of people in the island a thousand years before its narrated history begins with the legend of the exiled Prince Vijaya and his 800 followers from northern India settling there. Those early residents had left behind symbols and drawings not dissimilar to those found in South India and dated to the same period, he stated.
Prince Vijaya and his men, an article of faith of the Sinhala people, married into the Naga and Yakka families who they found inhabiting the island. These, according to the legend, were demons - but surely demons are not what Dr. Seneviratne was trying to disprove to his audience in this day and age with his findings! The Nagas and Yakkas were undoubtedly the aborigines who inhabited that belt from Australia to South India and westwards. And their forefathers could well have been those inhabitants of the island whose traces Dr. Seneviratne has found. After all, everyone accepts that this part of the world was populated 3500 years ago; who the population was might be of greater significance than stating the obvious. In fact, even more interesting would be finding out what happened after that original admixture. For instance, is one theory presented at the seminar - that successive waves of mercenaries from Kerala and Tamizhagam's fisheries coast, who fought for various Sinhala kings and then settled in their masters' territories, were partly responsible for the Sinhalese of today - an acceptable one?
Prof. Rm. Pichappan of Madurai Kamaraj University, who has been working with genomes and DNA, started a comment on the above by saying "We are all Africans", but concluded by saying that we are in a position today to find answers to what happened after those first African migrations to every part of the world. We could, today, for instance, identify more accurately who the ancestors of the Sinhalese and Tamils of Sri Lanka were, thus settling the issues raised at the seminar, he said. He's working on just such a project in India and hoped the University of Sri Lanka, Peradeniya, would join him in this search.
*Providing the answer to a much-asked question was Dr. Rangaswamy Srinivasan when he recently spoke in Madras about the Arbuthnot Crash. Did Sir George Arbuthnot go to jail? Yes, said Dr. Srinivasan; though two of the three charges against him were dropped, he was sentenced to 18 months R.I. on the third count and was released after 14 months, "no doubt for good behaviour". R.I.? "Yes; he probably didn't get his tea served in bed!" What Dr. Srinivasan did not say much about was his great grandfather, T. Narasimha Iyengar, the only Indian vakil to appear in the case - "because of his knowledge of commercial law and accountancy." But Eardley Norton, who appeared for the defence, did have something to say, according to Randor Guy, who, at one of the meetings, quoted Norton: "Mr. Narasimha Iyengar tore the auditor's evidence to shreds in his cross-examination. The poor Mr. Lewes was no match for the superior South Indian Brahmin intelligence!"
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