Policymakers and practitioners in the field of skill development often carry individualist and narrowly instrumental understandings of the reasons people enrol in their programmes. This article argues that people in the Global South seek to develop skills for a range of reasons, many of which are strongly influenced by their social environment and factors outside of their control. It presents the findings of a study involving surveys and semi-structured interviews with 53 trainees enrolled in agricultural skill development programmes in the state of Himachal Pradesh in the Indian Himalayas. Trainees’ responses were analysed to determine common ‘pathways’ to agricultural skill development programmes. Seven major pathways were identified: supporting one’s family; adopting commercial approaches to agriculture; managing a transition to agriculture after working in other sectors; gaining new knowledge; contributing to society; working from home; and developing a fallback option while seeking other work. These pathways were highly inflected by gender, age and caste. It is suggested that agricultural skill development practitioners will benefit from working with these pathways rather than assuming trainees carry more economistic motivations, but also from being critically aware of how the social factors that impinge on trainees’ pathways are influenced by local power structures.

中文翻译：

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印度喜马拉雅山脉农业技能发展的途径

技能发展领域的政策制定者和从业者通常对人们参加其计划的原因持有个人主义和狭隘的工具性理解。本文认为，全球南方的人们出于多种原因寻求发展技能，其中许多原因受到社会环境和无法控制的因素的强烈影响。它介绍了一项研究的结果，该研究涉及对在印度喜马拉雅山喜马偕尔邦参加农业技能发展计划的 53 名学员进行的调查和半结构化访谈。对受训者的回答进行了分析，以确定农业技能发展计划的共同“途径”。确定了七大途径：养家糊口；对农业采取商业方法；在其他部门工作后管理向农业的过渡；获得新知识；为社会做贡献；居家办公; 并在寻求其他工作的同时制定后备选项。这些途径受到性别、年龄和种姓的高度影响。建议农业技能开发从业者将受益于这些途径的工作，而不是假设受训者具有更多的经济动机，而且还从批判性地意识到影响受训者途径的社会因素如何受到当地权力结构的影响。