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 6^th 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 6^th 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;

• Business Language Skills – The universal language ENGLISH

• Reading, Writing, speaking, Articulation, Assertive & questioning Skills

• Problem solving, cognitive thinking, Values, Ethics & Social Responsibility etc.

•  Industry/domain knowledge skill & ability to deal with uncertainties in ever changing world

•  Behavioral etiquettes – Social life style, personal grooming, corporate etiquettes, appreciating culture etc.

•  Leadership Skills – Self leadership, People, Diversity Management 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.