Socio-cultural Processes and Livelihood Patterns at Tirurangadi - CDS

who wish to make a livelihood through labor are given the necessary opportunities for the
acquisition of skills and knowledge regarding their landscape and resources as a part of
the general education. A Degree in agriculture can create an agricultural officer, but not a
farmer. The research team, through its own experience with young volunteers, have the
opinion that given the necessary knowledge and inspiration, the young people can
become expert labor force, provided they are not deluded by the attraction of jobless
money given by the market forces.
The success of the perspective also depends on the generation of knowledge regarding
the environment and resources of the region as well as the socio-economic and
technological milieu in which these resources are utilized. This requires the generation of
regional experts. History tells us that expertise in most of the productive activities in the
locality have been handed down from generation to generation, and was wielded by the
senior most of the living practitioners. This was true of agriculture, crafts and majority of
the services, the only exceptions being scholastic knowledge, and also on the question of
laying down the moral regulations, when the so-called ‘traditional intellectuals’ were
brought in. We have seen the role of traditional intellectuals in the making of social
practice and traditions. A new generation of traditional intellectuals is today active, as the
interpreters and practitioners of the legal and moral precepts of a religion as adapted to
the needs of a capitalist civilization. Unfortunately, scientific knowledge has either been
reduced to technologies that are suited for the same capitalist civilization, or reduced to
scholastic, theoretical debates not necessarily understood by ordinary people. Hence,
there is every need for a region to develop its experts who have scientific awareness and
knowledge as well as actual expertise in the specific form labor. It is important that the
present day higher education institutions, including the University that functions in the
field area caters to this need. We should also remember that experts committees were