INTRODUCTION, also to list/offer

Gita Dewan Verma, Planner. B.Arch, SPA, 1985.
M.Plg(Hsg), SPA, 1987. During 1987-97 I worked with
several premier organizations and, since 1997, as
consultant exclusively to citizens? groups and
occasionally also as adviser to
non-funded/self-sustaining voluntary/business entities
on issues relevant to my clients? matters. I?ve been
engaging on professional space issues ? as student,
throughout my mainstream career, and substantively
since I quit mainstream over differences about
professional rigour, ethic and responsibility. A few
such engagements involving the professional fraternity
are listed at the end of this message.

I believe I am in as unique a position to advise as
young planners / architects are in to engage on the
professional space crisis-cum-opportunity lately
arisen, which is why I am making this offer. However,
worried by ?ageing? of the profession I?d decided I?d
retire at 40 and at 41 am no longer soliciting
clients. Partly because I am uncomfortable in making
an exception, but mainly because your window of
opportunity might already be closing, my offer is
valid only for a month.

For a month I offer to moderate this list to assist
you to form a viable group to engage and to get
started on an agenda for engagement. My offer requires
you to do the following:

1. Remain a member of this list by posting a message
introducing yourself right away. Start as in this
message and say INTRODUCTION in subject. (I strongly
recommend you identify ONE profession for yourself).

2. Discuss with others the agenda for engagement as
well as what will make the group viable for engagement
and post joint messages about these as soon as
possible. I suggest you use, respectively, AGENDA and
GROUP in the subject lines of these messages.

3. For other messages use appropriate subject.
Documents, etc, can be uploaded in Files section, for
which you can send them as attachment to me at
mpisgplanner@xxxxxxxxx

I will not normally post messages, other than
list-moderator ones, on this list. In November I will
post a message making my suggestions and you decide
how to proceed.

I must emphasize, whether or not you accept my offer
is not important. What is important is you understand
it is about your professional space. I am only trying
to plug a rupture in trans-generational continuity in
professional thought, mainly to be able to retire,
pride intact. This is really about pride and
pride-worthiness of the professions. If you value
that, please get organized about it, and if this space
helps you in doing that, please use it.

Best wishes
Gita Dewan Verma

-------------------------
At http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proudpora/files/gdv/
the following can be downloaded:
· 1998.pps, presentation at IIA , Vizag.
· 1999.htm, protest flier circulated at IIA , Indore.
· 2000.pps, presentation to YASA, Delhi
abstract at 2000.htm).
· 2001.pps, presentation to NOSPLAN, Delhi
· 2001.htm, open letter to young planners
· 2002a.htm, marginalization of architects by NGO
· 2002p.htm, marginalization of planners by politician
· 2003d.htm, about young professionals after DDA scam
· 2003g.htm, professional space in context of GATS
I have also been writing about professional space
issues on www.delhiscienceforum.org (Delhi Master Plan
2021 Minder, especially Engage section) and
www.architexturez.net (profession and enaction).

For a quick idea of my stand on professional space
issues, I also include here two texts. The first is
the introduction to the presentation to IIA at Vizag
in 1998, my first formal engagement with the
professional fraternity after quitting mainstream. The
second is what I had started the Profession and
Enaction space on architexturez.net with in 2002.
Halfway between these was written the chronicle of
events in 2000 published as my book, Slumming India,
Chapter 4 in which is largely about professional space
issues.

--------------December 1998
I graduated in architecture from SPA with a gold medal
and wisdom enough to decide I wasn?t cut out to
practice architecture. I post-graduated in planning,
with specialization in housing from SPA - again with a
gold medal and the feeling that I had found my
vocation. In a few months of working, I figured my
chosen profession required much more theoretical basis
than it had. I then went to IHS to study research for
housing and urban development and returned with top
rank and many ideas for development practice as well
as education and training. Later I studied design of
training in continuing exploration of the gray areas
between training-as-activity and training-for-impact
and also between education and training. During
1987-97 I worked as a development consultant, was
visiting faculty in SPA and TVB, and training
consultant and briefly also senior fellow in
HSMI/HUDCO. It took me these 10 years to figure out
the significance of the dissipating drift of
development professions towards becoming business
rather than vocation, even career. Now I am in the
process of figuring out if and how this can be fixed.
This presentation stems from this state-of-mind about
state-of-art of our professions. Some might find it
?provocative?, which is fine, as I intend it to be
thought provoking. Some might even find it
?impertinent?, which too is fine, as that is often the
nature of introspection.

--------------July 2002
Our professional generation ? cutting across
professions and places ? is caught in the midst of
sweeping changes in the way economy, society,
technology and development are working and being
viewed. With professionals becoming increasingly fully
occupied in surviving, coping with or getting on top
of new, newer and newest paradigms and processes, the
chasm between ?profession? (as vocation encompassing
ethic, thought, teaching, practice) and ?practice? (as
occupation or just business) is growing, as is the
distance of profession and practice from
socio-economic and spatio-physical realities. These
trends are most marked in what are known in current
development parlance as ?less developed? regions,
where the vast majority has nothing to do with
?benefits? expected to accrue from professions.
Professional space seems to have been stripped off
CITIZENSHIP. A corollary to the process of distancing
of professions from the realities of our times has
been the emergence of ?para-professionalism?. From
para-teachers being invited to teach village schools
to administrative heads of donor agencies being
invited to expert group meetings in the Planning
Commission, from resident welfare associations being
allowed to take the lead on local planning and design
to ?NGOs? being allowed to make or dictate national
policies. With growing mainstreaming of ?alternatives?
to professional expertise, professional space is
getting more and more marginalised in development and
politics and there is more and more CHAOS. Even as
both competence, purportedly found in the professions,
and responsiveness, meant to be a defining
characteristic of ?alternatives?, are equally
important, obfuscation of development roles is making,
not for synergy, but for CONFLICT. And, as
?alternatives? reinforce the paradigms that generated
them, ?conventional? professional thought is being
transformed in ways better defined as drift towards
the contemporary, even fashionable, than as logical or
robust evolution. Systems of professional trusteeship
seem to be failing in ensuring professional
COMPETENCE. Obviously, a lot of serious introspection
is in order to revisit, refine, redefine, reinvent
professional space so it fits better, makes more
sense, works. Profession and Enaction is for exploring
this territory ? empirically. Through accounts of real
experiences and experiments relating to citizenship,
chaos, conflict, competence and whatever else features
on the rather ravaged professional terrain. To
objectively assess where exactly things stand and why
and, perhaps, also where they might stand and how. To
carefully define the right questions and, perhaps,
seek, posit and engage on some answers as well.
[at http://www.architexturez.net/+/topic-listing/e/]


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