I distinctly remember the world of the 1980s. Growing up feeling that once I missed getting into engineering there was nothing more to live for which is worthwhile. This was aggravated when I missed getting into an elite B-school. The compounding effect was that I was doomed to plod on in life with no hope of making it count. This mindset of mine should be contrasted with the India of the dotcom boom era and post 2000. Yes, there is still that ache for those who miss their chosen destiny in education – the pathway to make life worthwhile, but the chosen destiny for many is no more just engineering, medical, CA or the B- School. Today the youth of India see dignity in a variety of avocation and are not fixated with the stereotypes. To me this is the biggest liberation that has happened. This would not have been possible without the burgeoning service sector which over the last 12 years has contributed more than half the GDP.
When I started working in 1984, the thought that in an organization, an employee can truly be entrepreneurial, was a politically correct promise from the employer. There were very few truly professional Indian corporate players who could have brought it alive and real with their headquarters only being a couple of floors away and not 10,000 km away. The MNCs lectured and made available to the poor Indian managers their bright inventions and management practices to be rolled out flawlessly in India. There never was any intellectual equality that the manager or an entrepreneur can ever shape a management thought/strategy. To do this they had to be selected and transported to the conducive environment in the west to rub shoulders with their condescending mentors there. Have one look at the advertisement world and you will know now where the locus of creativity and decisioning lies, even for the MNCs. Today, India has become the hub of not just the BPOs, but for animation, affordable health care, R&D, telecom, journalism, novel and fiction writing, hosieries, fashion and even auto design – let us call this the Nano effect. Thus the definition of entrepreneurship has changed and Indian professionals are really shaping their own institutions or the Indian institutions they have chosen to work for and not merely rolling out the best practices handed over by their western colleagues. This to me is the second liberation – the liberation of self belief that working in India we can build world class organisations and not merely be the distant poor cousin. You will also see that the classical manufacturing stereotype has been shattered by the Indian choice of service industry leadership.
I still remember that August day in 1984, when the only god I recognise came to the doorstep of my house and delivered to me my future – our postman delivered to me my appointment letter from HAL. Oh! God! I mean the employer not the postman now. Fortunately in the world post dotcom these gods have also disappeared or have been democratised. The power balance has decisively shifted in favour of the employees, who now make the choice of whom to work for. With this employees can now seek the unions to communicate fearlessly and with dignity with their employers. Today in most organisations the voice of an employee cannot be stifled, whatever his level may be in the hierarchy. Thus there is a work place liberation and democratisation which has also happened. There is no more the need to find security and the right for freedom of expression in brute numbers through unions or patronising godfathers. The young India now has the paradox of young leading the young, which while reducing the power distance also brings along with it the problem of the “young parent syndrome” viz the young boss finding it difficult to provide emotional support for his ward and ending up competing for reward and recognition.
Finally we have delivered to a section of Indians a pay which is in parity with global level. This is the first step in learning to value Indian talent in India. Though excesses are being committed by irresponsible and misinformed players, we are at last unapologetic of good living and a good pay as means for the same. Those who want more should bear in mind that the current level of pay when factored with the purchasing power parity is very globally competitive. The age old hippocracy that compensation does not matter and people work for good old values and that the kick of doing good quality work is satisfying enough, is being consigned to its worthy place - the dust bin. Everyone is tired of the moral sermon of how money leads to greed and how the generation before us was saints, who worked only for the nation and institution building. This is not to say that they did not build the nation or the institutions they were associated with, but to disabuse ourselves from believing that to bear abuse without complaint is a virtue. However if we are not careful we may commit the excess of paying ourselves to bankruptcy and killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Liberation from the socialistic mindset of equity and egalitarianism has been the bedrock of kindling the capitalistic energy of meritocracy and entrepreneurship, which has powered our economic growth. If we do not use this liberty well the envious and the ideologues will take us back through regulations and moralistic sermons to the dark ages of company law specified tyranny.
I was in Singapore in 1996 and saw the wide choice of cars, electronics and even chocolates that a citizen had there. It used to be a ritual in the 1980s to buy chocolates, jeans, Seiko watches and the tech gizmo called Casio calculator. In just about 15 years, you may still buy chocolates as a hangover from the past but no more yearn for choice in cars, electronics and the highly valuable jeans. Every dollar spent was converted with trepidation into rupees on these trips. Today Nokia, LG, Samsung, Ford, Honda, Levis and many others have their manufacturing hubs in India. The obsession which is called “foreign “is gone. However the two areas where the colonial hangover has not yet disappeared. These are with respect to the belief that any job outside of India should be of better quality and any management educationoutside of India, including importing material and teachers for executive education, should be better. There is still some self-worth confusion we Indians suffer. Like even after 18 years of economic liberation and sterling achievements in many areas, it takes a slum dog millionaire for us to discover the value in AR Rahman and Resul Pookutty.
The work place post the economic liberalisation has also to contend with the new kind of employee, who has grown up in “the one child” families as a fairy prince and princess. A generation of ‘touch-me-not’ employees is entering the work place. While they value their freedom of expression and will be quick to reach out to the next blog space to air their views, many still hide in the security of anonymity as in the past they hid in the security of the unions. It is distressing to see many unprepared to rough it out in the outdoor contact sport called workplace. Having got used to the fine ‘touch and no bruise’ co-curricular activity of games on the virtual space, the fantasy of building the after life in the imaginary virtual world and engaging on faceless virtual conversations, seems to be too challenging to many. Add to this is the “trophy child syndrome” of the parents pushing the ward for successes, a need of the parent to boost their own brag status. The space has now spilled out from the schools and thecolleges to the work place.
It is unfortunate that this world of liberalisation has not truly reached a section of our fellow citizens. We still predominantly are an urban centric human resource country. We in the world of commerce refuse to recognise that employable human resources exist beyond our obsession of the 9 cities and English speaking populace. We confuse language ability with knowledge and skills. In a multi ethnic country where a few hundred kilometers changes the language and yet we move around and learn new languages in a few years, we are biased towards those who have learnt English but are not proficient in conversing in English or being grammatically correct while writing. Since our selection system into B-schools and into employment is in English, we have no means of recognising and valuing those who are knowledgeable and skilled and have even learnt English but have a handicap in expressing in English. When will we liberate ourselves from this language bias which blinds us to abilities in people who do not speak the language we speak. The tragedy is any language including English is learnable like many of the immigrants who went to the western world have demonstrated. The taxi drivers from the sub-continent all over the world exemplify this.
No comments:
Post a Comment