ExpertDabbler

India has many faces and IT is India’s most glamorous face. After all, it’s not often that India is amongst the world’s best in something. Just imagine the pain of scrolling down the medals tally to find the sole Indian medal right at the bottom. In fact if you are logically inclined, you would start right at the bottom while looking for India in the medals tally.

But being good is one sector is one thing. Talking about development as a country is a completely different ball game. All this ‘development‘ and other luxuries I mentioned in the prev. post are relevant and applicable only for those who have a BE/MCA or higher with a good academic record(read consistent right from standard 10) from a reputed institute and a handful of years of experience.

On the other hand if you have cousins in villages and happen to meet them, try asking about the last time they made some money from their cultivation, the last time the water walves were opened from the nearby reservoir and the way the average agricultural productivity has gone in the last 10 years and alas we have a different tale to tell. The not so glamorous face of India. An India which let thousands of farmers starve to death while the food grains in the FCI godowns are left to decay.

This in essence is the story of India ever since 1991. The fate of agriculture is shared by all other local industries. For example, Coimbatore which was an important textile and mechanical engineering hub has been a witness to a gradual closure of these industries.

With the IT companies sweeping the recruitment in top engineering colleges, Non-IT friendly (IT friendly branches includes ECE,EEE, Instu etc.) branches of engineering is all but vanishing. Hey have anyone but heard about one branch called civil engineering? Not many private eng. colleges give that course. By the way where do all these IT engineers work? Open air? Don’t they need civil engineers to construct 300 crore campuses which can house 20,000 employees at the same time?

This gradual decline in other industries contribution to the economy has led to a surge in the people coming to bigger cities for survival. It was mentioned sometime ago that about 3000 families migrate to Bangalore every week. No wonder Bangalore’s traffic is a pain in the piles region. And Chennai is not exactly offering a pleasure ride either.

There exist in the same city two distinct sections of the population in the Indian cities. The techie community and the community which survives by servicing the techie community. True there have always been rich and poor. But there was also one section called middle class which was like a buffer. But now that middle class has been ripped apart and pushed to upper class and lower class respectively.

While a techie thinks 100 bucks is peanuts, there are youths coming to Chennai and Bangalore and willing to kill for the same 100 bucks. This lopsided growth is unsustainable and unrealistic. In fact this is not growth at all. What do we call if a cell in one part of the body grows disproportionately at the expense of the other cells? Medicine calls it cancer.

What is the way out? I don’t know.

On a different note. Satyam acquires Knowledge Dynamics of Singapore. So what? Well my school buddy Amar works there. Interesting times ahead dude.
I have worked in a smaller company and am working in a bigger company.I somehow miss the familiarity and the bonding between the associates in a small company.
A 5000-6000 workforce has its advantages. People know the company.
But nothing like a 100+team and the camaraderie in a small company.