Many a times I have visited Infosys campuses at Bengalooru and Mysooru.
The buildings, ambience in total the infrastructure is word class. Pune DC is also on par with the other two.
Other than the Infy campus, I had an opportunity to visit few more IT, ITeS and Non- IT firms in the last decade on various occasions. you will find almost alll the organisations today in the same fashion.
After talking to people at various hierarchies in those organizations and my friends at such organisations, I felt that the orientation of all these organizations is more or less on the applied science only from the perspective of earning, earning and earning and earning. Yes, they are meant to mint money. That’s the basic business rule. We all know it.
Even though all these sectors talk about learning, unlearning, relearning …, everything boils down to earning! They highlight the knowledge requirement but still it revolves around the term Earning!
Our teachers emphasized on the learning skills and inventory from the point of view to earn knowledge. After the globalization started at 90s, the emphasis has been on learning IT, BT, Commerce, Management, and Medical sciences. Pure science and Arts has gone to rocks! No one prefers to get into these departments.
Being in teaching from fag end of 1999, I have observed the following mentality among the students.
Speaking in the local language /mother tongue is treated as a crime!
Working offshore is very very essential and then only our life is full circled!
If you are not westernized not fit to be on earth!
Not going to private tuitions will not fetch more marks
Even majority of parents/guardians do think on similar lines. All these have led to want of money and ignorance on learning the real knowledge.
We were taught on the following lines.
विद्या ददाति विनयं विनया ददाति पात्रत्वं |
पात्रवत धनमाप्नोती धनात धर्मः ततः सुखं ||
Today this is the situation!
धनं ददाति विद्या न ददाति विनयं |
धनं ही ददाति पात्रं च सुखं ततः ||
Knoweldge is no longer the power to lead a blissful life it is the money power!
May I say that I both agree and also disagree with you? Are you against the desire to earn money? IMHO, the desire to earn lots and lots of money is not the problem; the problem is that in India quality standards in all spheres of life have dropped to a very very low.
ReplyDeleteIn a healthy society which values quality, there will be a strong correlation between possessing skills at high quality-standards and being successful. By being successful I mean, winning admiration of the opposite sex, acquiring wealth, and acquiring fame. Thus in such a society, if someone is successful, he/she will be thought of as having skills at higher quality-standards.
However, our society followed a flawed premise since independence. Jawaharian-Socialism killed the ethos of innovation and enterprise in our people, making us a bunch of employment seekers. Ask those who got educated in 1950's till early 1980's, how the craze was for a "university degree" and then a "government-job". Acquiring skills at high quality standards was not important. One needed "certificate" for jobs, and since one could get a certificate using malpractices, standards kept sliding. It became a vicious malady. Further, owing to licence-quota-permit system and a corrupt administration, motivation for innovative enterprise was nipped in the bud. Haven't you seen the rush for getting a "licence" for a petrol-pump, wine-shop, cooking-gas-agency and so on?
The other sad thing was that for decades (1950-1990!) common people were denied even small pleasures by processes called "rationing", "customs duty on imported goods" and so on. Even after earning money through crooked means, what could you buy? A Bajaj Chetak scooter, or an Ambassador car!
Having lived for decades in deprivation due to the "socialist regime", Indians developed "slum mentality", and their goal was to make money, by hook or by crook, so that they could obtain small pleasures from "smuggled" western goods. A corrupt society facilitated this to a great extent.
Interestingly, one day, the concept of outsourcing emerged in the west. They wanted their low-skilled jobs to be out-sourced to nations where labour was cheap. People like N.R.Narayan Murthy, Azim Premji and so on, jumped on this opportunity, and started these service-providing companies like Infy, Wipro etc. And a lot of Indians made huge amounts of money. Out-sourcing facilitated earning quick money and liberalisation allowed us to buy "foreign products". In the process, we have became, by and large, a nation of low-skill-services providers to rich nations. And I do not imply that all of it is necessarily wrong or bad or undesirable. But I believe and hope that we are still in a transition phase.
We need not grudge anyone his or her money; but since we are yet to become a society which values quality, we need not believe that any one who has got money has high quality-standards.
The rich need not be the wise! N R Narayan Murthy, once said (I guess in the 90's) that "For the next 25 years, all Indians should eat, sleep, dream software, and all our (India's) problems will be solved". Can you imagine the foolishness of this statement?
One can notice this decline in standards in all walks of life. Lots of hype, no quality!
When higher and higher quality standards are aspired after, the humility that you have talked about, comes naturally. But, for the moment we are into slum-mentality, hence low-quality, high-hype, and blatant-arrogance prevail everywhere.
Dhanyavada samAlochaka
ReplyDeleteEven myself agree as well as disgree with my views!
Predominantly these were my perceptions once I was out of Infy Campus.
I strongly agree that there has been a decline in standards.
You are Welcome. We need to discuss these matters well, and eventually come up with a coherent over-view, and similarly a workable solution strategy. We can hardly leave this to our politicians, who you know are ... DF's.
ReplyDeleteKeep posting, and do keep commenting. Thanks.