When there are vested interests all around the place, is capacity building of any type possible? This malaise criss crosses the different types of organisations; public, private, social service, joint sector in a variety of areas. Though capacity building has been talked about as an effective change agent yet why the accomplishments have been less than dismal. No single software or gadget is sold without this element, but why we don’t have men and women of expertise handling our public domain systems. Why we have become a land of amateurs and apprentices who never graduate into full fledged professionals.

The ultimate scary situation is that we don’t even have the capacity to utilise the capacity which has already been built in our Human Resource systems. Will the people who have miserably been failing in the above mentioned task would have foresight, stamina and perseverance to get into a positive and a proactive capacity building program. Gender sensitisation programs has been have happening in law enforcement agencies for ages, how much of a difference can be find on a measurable scale? If it has not happened, has any effort been made to find a better way to doing it.

The most intriguing aspect of the vested age capacity building it that conducting of training program etc is tantamount to capacity building. The person gets a certificate and both the parties are happy. The giver / trainer / employer gets money, funding or the peace of mind or compliance and the employee a certificate to prove the non-existent capacity. An ideal win win situation for the throughly demeaning ecosystem. When the world has defined its existence by the adage, only hands on is on, we are running the biggest commercial enterprise of non-proven certificates in this country.

You need some stamina and guile to project what you don’t have and too something which can be tested. The capacity building and skill industry have become like the recession that emanated out of the subprime mortgage crisis. The castles built in thin air. Financial recession can still be managed, the one of lack of human capacity / skill can never be managed. If it were to happen in the natural way, there could have been a remedy, but a self made one, with everybody enjoying the fruits of the creation of this dismal situation has nowhere to go.

CREATING SKILLS ON PAPER HAS BECOME A NATIONAL PASTIME.