About the Institute

Welcome to Basanti Government Industrial Training Institute.

If you are reading this page, you are most likely a young person who has just finished Madhyamik and is deciding what to do next — or a parent trying to help them decide. Let me tell you plainly what this institute is, and what it is not.

An Industrial Training Institute teaches a trade. Not a subject, a trade. At the end of it you will hold a National Trade Certificate awarded by the National Council for Vocational Training, and that certificate is a statement about what your hands can do — that you can wire a distribution board, overhaul an engine, read a drawing and cut to it, lay out a survey line, charge an air-conditioner, run an office computer, or stitch a garment to a customer’s measurements, correctly and safely and without somebody standing over you. It is recognised across India, for employment, for apprenticeship, for government recruitment and for work abroad.

I want to be honest about the effort that requires. Most of your week here will be spent standing at a bench or a machine, not sitting in a classroom. You will make mistakes in front of an instructor and be corrected in front of your classmates. You will be asked to come on time, to wear your safety equipment without being reminded, and to leave your workspace clean. Trainees who attend regularly and take the practical hours seriously leave here employable. Those who treat the workshop as a formality leave with a certificate and not much else, and the difference shows in the first interview.

To parents and guardians, particularly those of you from Basanti, Gosaba, Canning, Jharkhali and the surrounding islands, I would say this. There is an old idea in our families that a trade is what you settle for when studies do not work out. That idea is out of date, and it costs our young people dearly. A qualified electrician, fitter, welder or AC technician in this country today is in short supply and is paid accordingly, while thousands of general graduates wait years for work that never comes. Sending your child to an ITI is not a step down. For many families here it is the shortest honest route from Class X to an income earned with dignity, close enough to home that the family does not have to break up to survive.

I would also encourage the girls of this region and their families to look at us seriously. Every trade in this institute is open to women, and our women trainees do well — in COPA, in Dress Making, in Electronics Mechanic and in Surveyor especially. A skill is the most portable form of security a young woman can be given.

To the employers and establishments of the district: our Training & Placement Cell would like to hear from you. Tell us what skills you are short of and we will train towards them. Take our trainees as apprentices under the Apprentices Act and judge them by their work. That conversation between an institute and the industry around it is what keeps training honest and relevant, and we are open to it at any time.

Finally, a word about how we intend to run this institute. Admissions here are made through the state’s centralised online system on merit — nobody is authorised to collect money for a seat, and any such demand should be reported to me in writing. Our workshops, our staff list and our records are open to inspection. If a trainee or a guardian has a grievance, my office is open during working hours, and it will be heard.

Come and see the campus. Talk to the instructors. Look at the machines your child would be trained on. Then decide.

Amit Kumar Datta
Principal, Basanti Government Industrial Training Institute