UN Under-Sec-Gen, Shashi Tharoor, in Technopark
By NRM
 
Former Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information of the United Nations, Dr. Shashi Tharoor, has started a new venture at Technopark in Tiruvananthapuram. As Chairman of a Dubai-based company, he is the man behind the Afras Academy for Business Communication, a soft skill training institute which was launched on May 14, 2008.
 
Dr. Tharoor has hired an US based speech language pathologist as training director for his Business Communication Academy. She has designed the course which uses the latest computer based interactive voice recognition software for training. The two months 120 hours course will cost Rs.30, 000. Technopark is providing the infrastructure while the company has spent about Rs.40 million for setting up the training facility.
 
According to him, “Kerala’s youth need to express themselves better in English if they are to do the kind of work the 21st century world needs”.  He said the idea was not to make Malayalees sound like Americans. The objective is to help them communicate clearly. Attending such a course will increase the job opportunities for a person who wants to make a career in the IT industry. He hopes to rope-in IT and BPO companies from Technopark for placements after completion of the course. He is also looking to cater to the corporate soft skills training requirements. But with such high fees for a short term course, it remains to be seen how many will sign up. 
 
For a person like Shashi Tharoor, who has been a diplomat with the UN for 29 years, this is a paradigm shift in his career. He was also India’s nominee for the UN Secretary-General’s post in 2006. It seems when he lost the race, he received a large number of calls from a bewilderingly wide range of prospective employers. “For 29 years, I haven't even looked for a job”, says Tharoor, “but I still feel I am mid-career. Like a good computer that has crashed, I need to re-boot and which way do I re-boot? So in my re-booting, I figured out having spent a lifetime in public service, that I should do something that I've never done before, that would stretch me a little bit."