Topics for Group Discussion: Tips to remain the centre of discussion

SECTION 1

Mental Preparation – Knowing and Feeling

CHAPTER 1

Career in Tourism

1. Opening: Tourism is about visiting places. It is about meeting unknown people and getting to know their life and culture.

In the modern era, tourism has grown as an industry, and it is growing fast with globalization. Now, it is among the fastest growing industries in the world. Nothing is going to affect this ever-growing industry: neither terrorist attacks nor threats of wars; neither natural disasters like tsunami nor high price.

2. Follow up: The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) has predicted that international tourism will continue to grow at an average annual rate of 4 per cent. They claim that for India and China, the growth rate will be much higher.

Tourism is now a global phenomenon and is influenced most by the Internet and modern amenities developed by different governments to attract tourists.

3. Developer: Most of the tourists belong to higher earning group or are sponsored by international organizations or are on official tours, so they are capable of spending enough money in the form of cash on their tours.

The Internet, tourist bureaus and commercial tourist organizations are helping them in planning their tours; arranging tickets; booking hotels for lodging and managing vehicles for sight-seeing, purchases and packing.

4. Follow up: Modern tourism aims at eco and adventure tours. Cultural diversity also attracts the tourists. Interest deepens when one realizes that most of the cultures are on the decline and many are at the verge of extinction. Tourism can help preserve what man has learnt and followed and lived with for many millenniums.

5. Enlarger: Both the government and the private sectors are interested in the huge money that is flowing from the inflated purse and ATMs of the rich executives and directors. So, they are investing a fortune in tourism. The unusual flow of money is attracting all sorts of businessmen, traders and investors.

6. Analyzer: All these things that have come before us are enough to establish the most natural need of manpower. It indicates the scope of a great, interesting and progressive career in tourism. The travel and tourism industry is the largest employers of young and active; experienced and skillful manpower. It is generating highest employment per unit investment for skilled and unskilled unemployed manpower.

7. Summarizer: Because of the consistent growth that tourism is showing, career and employment in this sector is also growing fast in different branches closely associated with it. The job opportunity in travel and tourism industry is varied and the pay packages are attractive along with the promise of adventure and novelty that it offers. The jobs range from those in travel agencies and tourism departments to infrastructure; tourist guides; or at travel desks in hotels and guest houses; airlines or as planners and consultants.

8. Concluding: The sectors closely or otherwise related to tourism offer different career opportunities and have great prospect in store. Short-term training program to fulltime courses are available for those who are looking to join tourism industry and to grow with it. There are many benefits of tourism. It gives both knowledge and earning. It is needless to mention the immense pleasure that it gives to all working in this field.

CHAPTER 2

Increasing Temperature

1. Opening: The earth temperature is steadily increasing. It is becoming exceedingly difficult for the living beings and plants to bear it. The developed countries and rich people use air conditioners excessively without realizing that they are weakening their bodies and both, directly and indirectly, adding to the growing temperature and greenhouse effect.

2. Follow up: Usually, the statements published in the newspapers regarding increasing temperature are incomplete, one-sided and misleading. Take one such news for example: ‘ Earth near Warmest Point in One Million Years .’ How is it one million years? Who has been living and witnessing it for one million years? What and where are the records?

We don’t know but speculate that the temperature on the earth was well below 18° C but the records that we have are only for the last hundred years or so. There is a big gap between one hundred and one million years. One must always mention the source behind such records.

3. Developer: Of course, the scientists accept that the rise in temperature is due to human activities and excesses; notably the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, particularly, carbon dioxide which is present in the sunlight and traps its heat like the glass of a greenhouse. Global warming caused by human beings influences El Nino as it affects tropical storms.

4. Follow up: According to the climatologists, El Nino is a violent weather pattern that develops in and around the ocean and disrupts normal weather around the world. A scientist, James Hansen of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, has said that El Nino may not occur frequently but it will be stronger every time it occurs.

5. Enlarger: According to a paper published in the National Academy of Sciences, El Nino phenomenon is an important factor in monitoring global warming. It can push the temperature higher than it might ordinarily be. A Super El Nino helped heat the earth to a record high in 1998. This phenomenon is affecting the surface of the Western Pacific Ocean before it affects the deeper water.

6. Analyzer: This is not all. It is claimed that the waters of Western Equatorial Pacific Ocean are warmer than in Easter Equatorial Pacific; and the difference in temperature between two areas could produce greater temperature swings between the normal weather pattern and El Nino.

7. Summarizer: The newspapers point out a recent steep rise in the average temperature with global surface temperature, markedly increasing. When will this ever-rising temperature stop? It will not stop if we keep on producing industrial wastes; if our vehicles and supersonic planes keep on adding poisonous gases to the atmosphere.

8. Concluding: Yes, there is no respite in sight. Nobody knows and nobody can predict when human beings will act like human. If human beings continue in the same manner, then, within decades the earth will not remain conducive to life. It will spell the extinction of all living beings from the only living planet.

We have a few decades left to correct ourselves, change our materialistic thinking and the unhealthy way of living. We are destroying everything fast and ourselves faster. In place of luxury and easy ways, we should opt for simple living of labour, wisdom, natural wealth, human health and compassion towards all.

CHAPTER 3

Work and Wages

1. Opening: Disparity in work and wages is the most important cause of mass poverty in a big country like India. Some workers get high wages while others don’t. The former section of people is able to opt for luxurious living, the other is not able to feed his/her family. Despite hard labour, most of the workers in India don’t get two square meals.

2. Follow up: Instead of considering the problem figuratively, it must be analysed rationally with the ratio of employment and payment rates. The population of India has already crossed over one hundred and twenty crores. Out of this population, only four crores are employed. If Work Participation Rate is considered and calculated, it is something like 39 per cent. Out of them, 41 per cent are rural workers and only 32 per cent work in urban areas. But the number of people below the poverty line in rural areas is much higher than that in the urban areas.

3. Developer: In the rural areas, 27 per cent people are below the poverty line while in the urban areas, it is only 23 per cent. Why? Why are the people in the rural areas unable to earn even Rs 3990 per person per annum while in the urban areas the workers earn well over Rs 4563 per person per annum? It is because of a great disparity in the wages. This is the figure fixed by the central government to distinguish people above and below the poverty line.

4. Follow up: There are a few questions: Why is the rural population not getting enough to even feed their family? Why is it that one family of six persons remains poor even though four among them are workers? Why are the workers not getting enough wages for the works that they do? Why is the rural population suffering even though a higher percentage of them is working somewhere? There are two reasons for it: one reason is obvious that there is disparity in wages; that the workers are not getting equal or even adequate salary; that the person working in rural areas will definitely get less than the person engaged in similar work in urban areas.

5. Enlarger: The second reason is that most of the rural workers work on daily wages. So, invariably, for a few days in a month, they don’t get work and hence, get no wages. Naturally, they are forced to starve on the non-working days. There is no guarantee of employment or work or standard wages or fixed working days. Neither the wages nor the days are fixed. It is true for some urban areas also.

6. Analyzer: The 39 per cent working population clearly shows that at on average basis, one worker supports two other family members also. These people produced goods and services worth Rs 20,81,474 in 2008. If that income is equally distributed among the working people, then each one will get something like Rs. 51,778 per person per annum. This can be enough for anyone to live in a decent and dignified way but a huge population fails to get even a square meal.

7. Summarizer: In place of getting Rs 51,778; 23 per cent of urban population and 27 per cent of rural don’t even get Rs. 4563 and Rs. 3942 per person per annum respectively. Officers and bankers get twelve times more than the per capita income of our country while labourers and village workers get two and half times less than the average income of an Indian.

8. Concluding: As a rescue step, the government has prescribed minimum wages for the workers but they are hardly getting it. Naturally, most of the workers are not getting enough to hope for a civilized, cultured and economically suitable life. A balance must be maintained among the minimum wages and the distribution of wealth. The masses are hungry and dissatisfied. The wages must ensure a fair standard of living.

CHAPTER 4

Hole in Ozone Layer

1. Opening: Ozone is a poisonous gas with a strong smell. It is a form of oxygen. It is a molecule of oxygen. It filters out dangerous ultra-violet rays emitted by the sun. The ultra-violet rays damage the vegetation and cause different diseases including skin cancer and cataracts. If this layer wears out, life on the earth will cease to exist. No other planet has such protective layer to protect its living beings against the dangerous and harmful rays of the sun.

2. Follow up: It is wrongly called a hole in the ozone layer: the fact is that its dimension has taken alarming proportion. The hole has been increasing fast due to the damage done to the ozone layer by man-made chemicals, dynamite, pollution smoke, nuclear tests, bomb blasts, supersonic planes, satellites and space vehicles. It is damaged particularly by chlorine and chloro-fluro-carbons (CFCs).

The hole was first detected after the World War I and widened further after the World War II. But the major cause is excessive industrialization; extreme pollution and uncontrolled race of vehicles all over the world.

3. Developer: The chemical reaction that thins this layer reaches its peak in high altitude in the southern hemisphere. It has accumulated over the south pole, over Antarctica. The so-called hole was 27 million square km in 2000 but spread over 28 million sq. km in 2003. It has now spread over 73 million square km. Is it a ‘hole’? Can it be called a ‘hole’?

4. Follow up: Some scientists, politicians and newspapers are trying to play down the danger. Perhaps they think that since they are powerful, the ultra-violet