Awake, Arise and stop not till you transform the world, touch lives....
It was a
very cold & breeze day at London Heathrow Airport on 28-Mar-08 when I
landed for my HR assignment with Mindtree. I have been experiencing a whole new
world which is completely new to me as this was my first ever international
assignment. The whole experience is new & it will take some time for me to
get used to this unusual environment. The more I explored London & rest of
Europe the more I thought of my motherland as I always dream of seeing a
transformed nation before I am laid to rest (As we live in a very uncertain
world and it’s perfectly OK to write this statement). I feel so excited to see
great level of planning, discipline, foresight, ability to relate to the larger
vision for every city, borough (Local councils are called boroughs for example
Eagling, Wembley, Wimbledon etc). The way each council works in London and ways
& means to manage every local area (www.ealing.gov.uk).
It’s very strange thing to
write but I am forced to pen my thoughts as these were very precious for me,
these will help me to live my dream for many more years & will act as a
bundle of energy in enabling a vibrant& competitive young Turks from North
Karnataka.
I was
born in a small village in North Karnataka, the heart of Karnataka state which
is neglected by every political party, politicians and constantly denied by any
kind development for the last 50 years. While we have to really think &
introspects of what we can do to uplift life of our statesmen, I would like to
introduce one small baby step in creating awareness among all youths of
Karnataka by igniting a need for developing Business Language & survival
Skills and how they can impact our lives and open a world of opportunities for
everyone.
I was one
of those few lucky who grew up & spent most of my childhood in my native
place (Navalagund Taluk, Tuppadakurahatti) which had no bus/rail connectivity
for a long time. I lived in my village for 11 years before stepping out to
visit Gadag, a neighboring town and now a district head quarter. It was great
fun going to school everyday, we had bare minimum shelter and teachers (Very
Few) who tried their best to teach us some basic common sense under very very
difficult conditions. Thanks to my parents and my well-wishers, when I was
moved to a nearby town Gadag which is 21 Kms away from my Village (Probably for
the first time I traveled to Gadag) to get an admission in a primary school
that’s when I realized the real need for quality education at all levels, I did
not know the basics of education, trust me I did not even knew few English
alphabets and I was already in 6th standard. All these realities hit
me like a bullet and I further unearthed many more facts about my abilities
such as basic mathematics & social skills. I was ashamed when many schools
rejected admission to me and along with my father went from school to school to
seek admission. After a long and painful run for schools, I landed up in
Jagadguru Tontadrya Primary School for my 6th class. My life
transformed after joining this school which had great amenities, teachers,
friends and a strong social/cultural system and more importantly we were taught
survival skills.
Today as
I look back my childhood after 3 decades of struggle I had to go through to
learn & develop some survival skills, we as human beings, we have the unique ability to envision our future and to
see ourselves making our dreams come true. All great people,
corporations/ companies and nations have been driven by visions of what they
wanted to do, where they want to go, & how they want to be& what they
want to have etc. Vision without action is but a dream, Action without vision
is a passing thought& it moves with time. Vision with clear action plan can
change the world around us and hence the need for a greater vision for your
motherland is of great importance. Vision is nothing but a set of clearly
defined goals with a definite period in mind to achieve those key goals in
life. It’s very critical that we build a great vision for ourselves and develop
our intellectual abilities to be able to face the ever changing world.
If you
see historically from early days of our independence we have been facing
challenges of illiteracy, poverty, hunger, caste, communal divide & so on.
As a nation we have come a long way in fighting all these evils and are now at
the cusp of emerging as one of the world’s preferred destination for talent
& manpower much ahead of china and many other Asian countries. India is also one of the fastest developing
economies in the world today, targeting double digit GDP Growth. India hosts
65% of Information Technology global off-shoring workforce, 46% of global BPO
[Business Process Outsourcing], having said that we also have many challenges
such as sustaining Diversity (Religion, language, culture etc.), unemployment,
poverty, social security, health, political will/stability and many more which
needs to be addressed to ensure Democracy and Economical prowess.
Sunrise industry of modern India,
Information Technology (IT) which has a dream of achieving 86 Billion dollar
has clearly taken India to a global arena and has made all of us proud. The
whole world is looking at Indian IT industry for solutions to their business
challenges. Many global companies are
excited about India story and they want to be part of our success story. Many
of these companies have a special chapter for India story in their business
plans. Many believe that we have the best of both the worlds “Ability to relate
to the rest of the world by means of speaking a global business language [English] & Intellect ability to
create the worlds best Intellectual Property”.
As we
prepare ourselves to face the global challenges we are faced with an impossible
task of creating great quality education eco-system which will produce best in
class engineers/graduates who are ready to face the global challenges. India's
higher education system contributes about 350,000 engineers and 2.5 million
university graduates annually to our workforce, yet at any given time about 5
million graduates remain unemployed. A survey done by McKinsey Global Institute
shows major IT organizations find only 25 percent of engineers are employable,
and NASSCOM report foresees shortage of 8 million skilled/ employable work
force by 2020.
For every industry the biggest challenge is to hire
the best talent at the right time with a right cost. Indian IT would need
300,000 qualified Employable engineers in the next few years. Today many of the
industry leaders/institutions are burning midnight oil to chalk out strategies
to build employability skills to all their workforce. Many large organizations
are spending enormous money towards training/grooming people on various aspects
of industrial & technological requirements.
Infact many large organizations have started
learning academy’s which are nothing but corporate universities to
develop survival skills. It is astonishing to see these large corporations
manage to coach/teach thousands of Engineers and make them industry ready in
less than 10 - 12 weeks time which academia is not able to fulfill during long
and arduous tenure of collegiate education. If they can have the will &
determination to transform young brigade of India, there is something missing
in all of us and more importantly in our academic structure, system & pedagogy.
I think the time is ripe to introspect and reflect on the challenges we have
and commit ourselves to develop a strong foundation which will lend itself to
nurture young talent.
Some of
the key skills that every young engineer, graduate need to acquire during early
days of their schooling/college;
Reading, Writing, speaking, Articulation, Assertive & questioning Skills
Behavioral etiquettes – Social life style, personal grooming, corporate etiquettes, appreciating culture etc.
The task of imparting all the above skills seems
Herculean and impossible at school, college level. These may not be part of any
curriculum, but we often miss out on all these and hence we are seeing
graduates/engineers who fail to acquire key competencies to enter the corporate
world and this leads to increased unemployment.
The world is changing at the speed of light & we need to develop Agility & demonstrate high levels of energy to be able to survive & thrive in this ever changing competitive environment.