Back to B.Tech days

Often it takes a kick in the ass to shake someone up. What if it is kicks,50 odd, literally. I entered the grihasta asharama and bid adieu to the formiddable and probably the most exciting quarter of my life. In the process quite a few chappals, feet and palms registered their mighty presence on my butt. The atmosphere was similar to that of B.Tech days probably better. And everyone, I am sure, enjoyed making scapegoats out of the latecomers to the party as they too bore the wrath / frustation / release after a hectic summer placement schedule. Its good to see people joining you in the celebration and makes your life seem meaningful and worth living. At the same time I again questioned myself as I do on my birthday.Why should I celebrate my birthday? Whats so great about it? What have I done for the world that is today rejoicing on my birthday? 25 yrs and I have been able to do just enough to fill up just one side of A4 sized paper.
The questions were all the more pinching as I had just returned from a discussion about entrepreneurship conducted by Subroto Bagchi, COO Mindtree. The videos of interviews of V.G. Siddhartha, Founder Cafe Coffee Day and Capt. Gopinath, Founder Air Deccan were still echoing in my head. They made revolutions they made seem so simple to achieve. Inspiring as they were most striking feature was the passion they had for their mission and their unassuming demeanour. As I walked out of the cozy audi at the Welingkar's my heart was still scanning for the omnipresent beautiful damsels in the campus, the mind was still with the videos and the personalities that I had just witnessed so closely.
Welingker is indeed a place to be. With beautiful cyber squatters in the literal sense (there were people with laptops squatting on the floor busy orkutting and checking mails) all round it seems all to irrestible to spend last two academic years of one's life. I am sure it proves a great release for all the frustated souls who come to do MBA. Also its not difficult keep yourself motivated to attend all the no longer tasteess lectures.

Two faces of India

"India shining" a deserving to fail campaign, which eventually did fail, had surprised me with its failure. I always thought how could a country growing at 8% annualy, attracting second largest amount of FDI, haven for jobs, IT destination of the world, growing manufacturing hub, 3rd largest economy in PPP terms and thousand other such distinctions, not shine. I thought that it was strange that people didnot buy it.
Then one day i happened to be walking towards my office, Infosys Technologies, Bangalore, with usual nonchalence and realised something which had never occurred to me.
Check out the backdrop of majestic infosys buildings against the slums around it. One is the
showpiece of indian entrepreneurship, worldclass facility and indian growth and development and the other negates it right in front of it. How can we live with a dual face is what has always amazed me. The growth indeed is exclusive.
Indian population is like a pyramid with huge base and less height. The people at the top are few but as we move down the portion of population deprived of the height increases rapidly. In my mind there are lot of reasons for this.
First and foremost is IT disillusionment. IT earns forex and is a huge margin business. IT is top end industry with lot of glam factor and is considered hi-tech and it is easy to justify it as the real sign of indian growth since anything related to intellect is easily professed by the high and mighty "supposedly intelligent"of any country in the world. The people involved earn very high salaries and its easy to spot them in posh localities, malls etc. The banks are crazy about them. Credit card issuers consider them as their king. In short everyone's talking about them. This leads to the misconception that everyone is like them. They probably represent not even .1% of the indian population. People often mistake the rise in no. of software engineers as inclusive growth. The 70% of population which thrives on agriculture is left out of this development and still is not accounted for in the scheme of things. In the current five year plan the agriculte growth has been just 1.5% compared to 4.7% in the previous plan. Growth in IT for 2005-2006 has been 28% and has been double digit growth for the last many years. Thus .1% of the population has seen high growth and 70% pretty low growth. Is India growing???
Sensex is devil no. 2. in a world is driven by money. Indian companies are doing well. How long is a question to be answered, but currently they are cynosure of every world investor's eyes. People assume sensex is directly correlated with the state of economy. People assume that growth in sensex reflects that everyone is doing well. The world media gungho about the indian bourses have conviniently ignored the darker and grim face of indian state of affairs.
Therefore its time to reassess the euphoria about Indian story. We need to take care of the regioinal and demographic imbalances in place. Else we will be faced with irreversible social consequences. Naxalites are a case in point. Farmers committing suicides is unfortunate. Soon they may revolt. India is not what is obvious. There is a whole lot of people who constitute India. We need to consider everyone and not the ones who make us feel good about the state of affairs.