Pondering over our future

Today, I was having coffee with a friend of mine… Heidi Morrison.

Heidi is a Fulbright Scholar… did her Undergrad from University of California, Berkeley in French… Grad from Harvard University in Middle Eastern Studies… and currently doing her Doctoral course. She is in Egypt for her field studies. There is something very unique in her personality. You talk with her for a while and feel happy that such simple and kind people exist. Add to that, she is amazingly intelligent.

I happened to meet Heidi a year ago at a common friend's place… his name was Khveh Niazi. Khveh is an ethnic Iranian, though his family migrated to US when the Islamic revolution took place in Iran… ever since Khveh has been living in US. I met Khveh, when we were going to Siwa Oasis… we both were alone and therefore packed up together and enjoyed a wonderful time in Siwa… among other things, Khveh loves photography, dramatics. His personality is magnetic. A great person, indeed. Khveh did his Undergrad and Grad from University of California, Berkeley in Physics… and his Doctoral course in Solid State Electronics. Currently he is studying Arabic and specializing in Middle Eastern Studies. I was intrigued by his choice of career… I gathered that perhaps he also worked with Intel for a while, before taking a plunge into a totally different field. Intel, the Shangri-La of any Indian engineer!!!!

Knowing Khveh set me thinking… of my days in Jamnagar, when I was working as an Engineer. I and my chummery-mate Saurabh Agarwal used to think differently from a large number of people around. We wanted to break free from the environment we were in. Though we had somewhat different philosophy; Saurabh gave his 100% to the current job-even though he was dissatisfied but I had practically given up- inviting ridicule and becoming a butt of laughter… for my more efficient colleagues. (However later, I realized that Saurabh was right… there is no excuse for non-performance. I adopted his philosophy in life thereafter… proved myself to be a good engineer before leaving the profession.)

One day, one of our senior- an IITian- asked us what we want to do in life… Saurabh told him, quite earnestly, that he wanted to study Economics. I told him that I am unsure of what I want to do in life but expressed a strong desire to study Law. Later, I found out that he was making fun of both of us as madmen… It is another story that he himself joined a MBA from a little known school to further his career and that due to circumstances, I joined MBA in one of the top-of-the-league B-schools in India and that Saurabh joined MBA in one of the top-of-the-league B-schools in the World. I developed a disliking for that man, thereafter.

I didn’t want to revisit the entire episode… but for the fact that I wanted the readers to relate with the reality as it exists. India is progressively becoming a society of MBAs… where studies are done for the sole purpose of earning money… where the joy of studying has diminished, where we are no longer producing good Historian, Sociologists, Scientists etc. We are producing only frustrated Academicians… doing their jobs as efficiently or inefficiently as a Bureaucrat would. They aren’t to be blamed… they are reflecting what our society has become.

A few years ago, India saw the advent of BPO industry…. Today it has become a huge money and job churner for India. It is often hailed as India's ticket to the big league… similarly China has been seeing a manufacturing boom… it has become world's workshop and a reverse-engineering hub. The two countries are smug about it. I haven’t seen China, so I would not comment on it. But in India… thousands and thousands of students are two-timing with their academics and joining the nice paying Back Office Centers… often getting a salary that their parents got only at the fag end of their careers. These students could have been good Engineers, Lawyers, Sociologists, Historians, Linguists, Academicians, Researchers- but they fell prey to the glamour and became a BPO employee… Off course, they will always be materially well off, but would the country be sharing their success.

No country becomes great by the contributions of employees, bureaucrats and managers. It needs social and economic entrepreneurs, political and business leaders, Researchers, Academicians and Out-of-the-Box thinkers to become great.

That makes me wonder about two questions…

1. Why in India, off-beat options of education are ridiculed by people. Why was I ridiculed for dreaming of Studying Law…? Why enrolling oneself for a course with a lower monetary return on effort- is often perceived as a mark of incompetence? And more importantly, could Khveh have dared to do the same in India? When I was attending the first ever class in Arabic… I told the class (consisting of 2 Italians, 2 Americans, 1 Canadian, 1 Spanish and a Danish teacher) that in India, the best candidates opt for Engineering or Medicine after schooling. Everybody burst laughing. A Student remarked- it explains why Indians come to study only Engineering and Business Management in US.

2. Why material success has become so important in India… we were not always like this… for instance, my father's generation laid a lot of importance on erudition… Is it the effect of globalization? And if it is, we are in for a huge shock… we will only realize this when we would have lost an entire generation… when we would realize that an entire generation losts its way- it made a lot of money… but did not produce enough enterprises, research papers… did not add to our understanding of our society, our history, our cultural milieu… did not add to our consciousness of the world we live in… did not produce enough think-tanks in the field of public policy, international relations et al. We will be humungous at the global scene and yet lacking in wherewithal to enact our hugeness.

Heidi articulated what I always knew. US education system is very very open… it allows you to decide the way one is going to proceed in life… it makes you in-charge of one's own life. In her Undergrad in Berkeley, she studied Chemistry, Natural Sciences… her colleagues studying for their Engineering degrees studied Culture, Political Sciences- in fact for first two years of engineering, they hardly had any engineering course…. And we are talking about a University that is often hailed as the world's best in Engineering.

However, there are few hopes… one of my friend Raja Karthikeya who did his MBA from one of the best institutes in India… is currently pursuing his masters in International Relations at Georgetown University. He plans to start a think-tank on International Relations in India. Her friend Aditi Vyas an MBA from Singapore plans to start a career counseling centre- where students will be made to realize that there is more to life than Engineering, Medicine, MBA and Civil Services. They and people like them hold a hope for the future of India.

Talking of materialism, I was wondering one day… what will be my priorities once I go back to India… one of them would be purchasing a car… a fairly costly one, lest I may be perceived as a failure among my acquaintances. Ha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rejoinder