New marketing in Kashmir

If it is still serious about preserving borders, the Union government needs to dim its patriotic pitch and replace the spiritual sadhu with a good marketing guru instead

Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita

Last year, as I visited Kashmir with my family, every few feet we came upon army officers and their bunkers. That did not jar us as much as their signs though.

“Proud to be Indian”

“100% Indian”

“Jai Hind”

Really, all the Indian Army needed to drive its proverbial stake in the land any further was a map including Kashmir in our borders, drawn bold and thick. (Of course, they save that job for illustrators of school textbooks.)

“Do you think the army needs an advertising firm to help soften these messages up a bit?” I asked my brother on that holiday. “Because, somehow, I don’t think these slogans are winning anyone over.”

Fast forward 14 months to last week when the Union government despatched its brand ambassador du jour to resolve the conflict. Secular mediator or politically savvy negotiator? Neither, they sent...Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

As in the man behind the Art of Living Foundation, which admittedly does some good social work and has taught a lot of chief executives the art of the chill. But hardly a secular figure. In fact, a 2003 article in The Economist detailed the blurry lines between the teachings and reality among Hinduism’s so-called godmen, saying it was very difficult to separate Hindutva ideas from Hindu sages, the spiritual from the religious.

“On the issue of Ayodhya, for example, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar might be expected to urge compromise on his Hindu disciples. He has a huge following, a message of universal human values and access to, as he sees it, ‘desperate and helpless’ politicians who ask him for a blessing and spiritual support,” The Economist wrote. “Art of Living, moreover, is open to people of all faiths. But, in fact, discussing the Ram temple, its guru starts to sound less like a spiritual leader and more like a politician, talking of the long history of ‘appeasement of the minority community’, and of the unfairness of a system that subsidises Muslims to go on the haj to Mecca, while making Hindus pay a fee to take a dip at the Kumbh Mela.”

Shankar used similar logic last week, finding himself in a Muslim-majority region and imploring the state government to provide basic facilities to Hindu pilgrims visiting the Amarnath shrine. In letters he wrote, as reported by The Hindu newspaper last week, Shankar also made the controversial suggestion that if Kashmir remains in favour of autonomy, Jammu and Kashmir should be made into separate states, echoing long-standing demands of the Hindu religious right.

But, of course, Shankar himself insisted, along with the government ironically supporting him, he was there on a mission of peace.

For a moment, let’s put politics and religion aside — impossible as that may be in Kashmir. Judged on solely dispassionate grounds, say in the sphere of a business (the government) trying to gain a consumer (Kashmir), it becomes clear India has failed on many levels — the greatest failure of all its inability to win over the Kashmiri people. It’s not for lack of trying, from crores of rupees poured into the region and goodwill missions that fly Kashmiri children around the country to see what they are missing. There have been countless peace summits and much humanitarian aid, especially during the 2005 earthquake.

Yet, as a marketing campaign, India’s strategy in Kashmir needs some work.

Since I’m no marketing expert, I called the best one I know. He’s in Mumbai but his communications office caught one word of my question (the K-word) and said he couldn’t be consulted. Thankfully, he agreed to talk on condition of anonymity.

“I don’t think the government has done even a reasonably good job in the way of communication here,” he said. Over the last few weeks, it’s gotten worse, he noted, citing surveys showing that even the rest of India is sick of the issue, even ready to give up the region.

I am not taking a stand one way or the other on Kashmir’s fate — let them stay, let them go — but if the government has decided it values the valley, then at least make an attempt to get the messaging right. Slogans amounting to “we own you” are counter-intuitive. How about something to the tune of, “We’re on your side, too.” Or, “Come join our team. We’re winning right now.” How about a brand ambassador who doesn’t plan a rath yatra next month on behalf of mostly Hindu causes?

The more we try to shove India down the throats of Kashmiris in the valley, the more they are going to head over the hills in the other direction — to Pakistan. Already, this week, the green flags begun waving.

If it’s still serious about preserving borders, the Union government needs to dim its patriotic pitch and replace the spiritual sadhu with a good marketing guru instead.

Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

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Please, Airtel, Hear My Call

Merely complaining about the sorry state of customer care in India will not solve much

Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita

The headline, quite frankly, scared me: “Bharti Airtel set to increase outsourcing.”

An article in Monday’s Mint detailed Bharti chief executive Manoj Kohli’s plans to hand over even more of the company’s internal processes and functions, such as human resources and billing, to a third party. While media coverage of the Bharti success story has breathlessly marvelled at its ability to cut costs and scale up quickly by farming much of its work elsewhere, I have often cursed customer service at the mobile giant and blamed the said model for my woes. If you need any service — a plan change, an enquiry about an old bill, a desire to understand why something, somewhere, might not work — it becomes readily apparent that one hand (i.e., the third-party services provider) rarely talks to another, let alone five fingers acting in sync on anything. That is why five different people call on the same issue, but you can’t find one who has the right answer.

But merely complaining about the sorry state of customer care in India won’t solve much. And so over the next few months, I plan a few columns that will dissect the issue from multiple vantage points, effective service to worker training to the examination of our own high expectations in an economy that has galloped uphill. In my findings so far, the undercurrent of good service is an empowered work force — those who interface with customers have been given the tools, confidence and information from the higher-ups that they can appropriately defuse the situation at hand. Simple but effective. And sadly, very rare.

A lack of empowerment is why a waiter cannot give you a free drink or dessert, even as he mixed up your order. Or why the bank declines the signature on your cheque, even though you have proof showing you are who you say you are and verify the amount. Or why a customer service representative directs you to Airtel’s website, which will require you to hope she really text messages your password, instead of sending you a duplicate bill from May.

On that note, let’s return to Bharti.I asked a former manager at the company, a self-described “die-hard loyalist”, why things were so bad.

“It’s awful,” she said bluntly, requesting anonymity. “The service executives are outsourced...so they don’t feel an iota for the company.”

The problem is hardly Airtel’s alone, as global outrage over outsourcing — xenophobia and job security aside — comes from the same hunch, that agents “don’t feel one iota” of your pain. Sure, there are the accents, the distance, the misunderstandings. But mainly, there’s a lack of a connection.

They are not a part of the same work culture of the client company, nor do they have incentives to climb up its ladder. Meanwhile, business process outsourcing firms have not mastered yet how to plug growth opportunities , tap into worker potential and truly partner with their clients.

One software firm I visited recently tries to duplicate most roles in the US with a person in India; so besides the majority in customer support, there’s sales, product management, marketing, even accounting. What does that do? It prevents the teams in different countries from seeing the US as client and the Indians as those who kowtow. It forces the workplace to integrate across departments, across countries, and sometimes both at the same time.

So would it be better if Airtel’s operations were captive, or in-house?

Not necessarily.

In fact, a report last year from analyst firm Forrester Research found more than 60% of captive BPOs (business process outsourcing firms) were not in healthy shape; it predicted that by 2009, more and more companies will shelve their captive models in favour of third-party players, notably in customer support.

So maybe Bharti has had the right idea but wrong approach?

Interestingly, Jai Menon, director of customer service and information technology for Bharti Airtel, wouldn’t totally disagree. I asked, point blank — how do you think customer service is going?

“The most important pillar of our company is service... We’re not at cruising altitude yet,” he says. “But we are rising towards it.”

I appreciate his honesty, even empathy, and ask how Bharti will do it.

He says the plans to increase outsourcing rest on using a fewer number of service providers but more people. To me, that made sense. So hypothetically, if all the services I need are handled by IBM’s folks, then maybe the other firms contracted by Airtel will stop calling or messaging me after I have already paid my bill?

Right, he says, but Airtel must also ensure the technology backs them up to truly streamline and smoothen processes. He concedes those workers need to feel a part of “our DNA... We view them as part of Airtel.”

For my sake, but also for the company’s future, I hope they feel the same.

Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

Forget jobs, find purpose

I believe in lifelong learning and not spending on learning that does not work and actually keeps one from working

Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita

What could possibly be the downside of more children in schools?

Not too long ago, in 2001, 32 million children didn’t attend school. Then the government announced a universal education programme, or Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, and today enrolments have soared to about 96% — 7.1 million in 2006. There are still problems, such as dropout rates and continuous funding battles between states and the Centre, and the fact that many children go to school for the free midday meal alone. But the statistics are impressive and speak to some changing aspiration levels in this country.

That, according to some experts, is precisely the problem.

Last weekend, I travelled to Jaipur for the Rajasthan Skills and Employability Summit and the issue formed an important backdrop to discussions on vocational education and what employers want. Experts detailed a scary state of social unrest with unemployed youth feeling like they have been shut out of the Indian society that pervades their television sets, magazines, advertisements.

They turn to education as their great hope, their equalizer.

“There were 40 million kids once out of school. Now there are four million,” said NIIT chairman and co-founder Rajendra S. Pawar. “Can you imagine the hell that will break loose with expectation?”

If you’re cringing at his words and my rendering of them, I understand — I did the same at first. Don’t we want them to dream?

But stay with me and his thought. The problem is that the first-generation learners, if they complete class VIII or even all the way through class XII, are going to learn something millions of Indians already know, at least the three-quarters of them deemed unemployable: Their education is worthless. If India’s approach to schooling does not keep up with their expectations and industry’s, then we really are heading for a crisis.

We have expanded the users of our education system, but we have not expanded that same system’s utility. And so it has become necessary for graduates to go on to finishing schools, to training academies, to certification courses run by the private sector. And then we slip into this cycle of funding education, then funding courses to fix the education, then funding skills development, then funding training to keep up with technology. It’s just not an expense for taxpayers but also for the poor Indian, the one whose livelihood we are all trying to improve.

In my 22 February column, “Develop skills and minds,” I wrote “Shouldn’t a liberal arts background at least instil the ability to input, analyse and produce — the very basics of a job? ...the 11th Plan’s spending must inspire Indians to embrace more than degrees or skills — but true lifelong learning.” (See www.livemint.com/skills.htm)

So I believe in lifelong learning — but not spending on learning that doesn’t work and actually keeps one from working. Consider the semantics. How do Indians refer to their degrees? Not as education — but their qualification.

“Qualifications are not why you are in a job,” said S. Chandrasekhar, head of human resources for Capgemini Consulting India Pvt. Ltd. “Skills are. It is better to be the best sweeper than to be a mediocre engineer.”

But try telling that to someone who could have gotten the job of sweeper without any degree or diploma.

“I still believe the majority of the country is struggling with the change of vocation,” continued Chandrasekhar. “We have a clerical mindset, to get a secure job, the air-conditioned office..”

Indeed, the buzzword of this year has been jobs: jobs for land, job centres, job training, job hotlines.

Our promise of “jobs” is a part of the problem. Remember what we used to call it, that question my farming or contracting (read unemployed) cousins and uncles all dread: “So are you in service?”

Here’s my replacement: purpose.

Let’s promise purpose and stop separating education, training, vocations and “jobs”. Instead of letting first-generation learners enter the absurd pressure of arts versus science, we need to have a conversation, say by class VI, when dropout tendencies begin. It can be simple questions, such as “What do you like to do?” And then a skill can be imparted, alongside Tagore and civics, which I fear are often shafted.

Perhaps the divide between training and education made sense when only rich people went to school. But as the government and industry begin their massive roll-out of training institutes and model schools and guarantees of jobs and education, they need to send a message that all of the above go hand in hand. All are worthy.

And let’s not get bogged down in technicalities ourselves. In a nation of more than one billion, many of whom have come to see a degree as their ticket out and up, what stops us from expanding the idea of a bachelor’s degree to the so-called vocations? If we can offer it to astrologers, we can surely do the same for plumbers.

Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

New marketing in Kashmir

If it is still serious about preserving borders, the Union government needs to dim its patriotic pitch and replace the spiritual sadhu with a good marketing guru instead

Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita

Last year, as I visited Kashmir with my family, every few feet we came upon army officers and their bunkers. That did not jar us as much as their signs though.

“Proud to be Indian”

“100% Indian”

“Jai Hind”

Really, all the Indian Army needed to drive its proverbial stake in the land any further was a map including Kashmir in our borders, drawn bold and thick. (Of course, they save that job for illustrators of school textbooks.)

“Do you think the army needs an advertising firm to help soften these messages up a bit?” I asked my brother on that holiday. “Because, somehow, I don’t think these slogans are winning anyone over.”

Fast forward 14 months to last week when the Union government despatched its brand ambassador du jour to resolve the conflict. Secular mediator or politically savvy negotiator? Neither, they sent...Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

As in the man behind the Art of Living Foundation, which admittedly does some good social work and has taught a lot of chief executives the art of the chill. But hardly a secular figure. In fact, a 2003 article in The Economist detailed the blurry lines between the teachings and reality among Hinduism’s so-called godmen, saying it was very difficult to separate Hindutva ideas from Hindu sages, the spiritual from the religious.

“On the issue of Ayodhya, for example, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar might be expected to urge compromise on his Hindu disciples. He has a huge following, a message of universal human values and access to, as he sees it, ‘desperate and helpless’ politicians who ask him for a blessing and spiritual support,” The Economist wrote. “Art of Living, moreover, is open to people of all faiths. But, in fact, discussing the Ram temple, its guru starts to sound less like a spiritual leader and more like a politician, talking of the long history of ‘appeasement of the minority community’, and of the unfairness of a system that subsidises Muslims to go on the haj to Mecca, while making Hindus pay a fee to take a dip at the Kumbh Mela.”

Shankar used similar logic last week, finding himself in a Muslim-majority region and imploring the state government to provide basic facilities to Hindu pilgrims visiting the Amarnath shrine. In letters he wrote, as reported by The Hindu newspaper last week, Shankar also made the controversial suggestion that if Kashmir remains in favour of autonomy, Jammu and Kashmir should be made into separate states, echoing long-standing demands of the Hindu religious right.

But, of course, Shankar himself insisted, along with the government ironically supporting him, he was there on a mission of peace.

For a moment, let’s put politics and religion aside — impossible as that may be in Kashmir. Judged on solely dispassionate grounds, say in the sphere of a business (the government) trying to gain a consumer (Kashmir), it becomes clear India has failed on many levels — the greatest failure of all its inability to win over the Kashmiri people. It’s not for lack of trying, from crores of rupees poured into the region and goodwill missions that fly Kashmiri children around the country to see what they are missing. There have been countless peace summits and much humanitarian aid, especially during the 2005 earthquake.

Yet, as a marketing campaign, India’s strategy in Kashmir needs some work.

Since I’m no marketing expert, I called the best one I know. He’s in Mumbai but his communications office caught one word of my question (the K-word) and said he couldn’t be consulted. Thankfully, he agreed to talk on condition of anonymity.

“I don’t think the government has done even a reasonably good job in the way of communication here,” he said. Over the last few weeks, it’s gotten worse, he noted, citing surveys showing that even the rest of India is sick of the issue, even ready to give up the region.

I am not taking a stand one way or the other on Kashmir’s fate — let them stay, let them go — but if the government has decided it values the valley, then at least make an attempt to get the messaging right. Slogans amounting to “we own you” are counter-intuitive. How about something to the tune of, “We’re on your side, too.” Or, “Come join our team. We’re winning right now.” How about a brand ambassador who doesn’t plan a rath yatra next month on behalf of mostly Hindu causes?

The more we try to shove India down the throats of Kashmiris in the valley, the more they are going to head over the hills in the other direction — to Pakistan. Already, this week, the green flags begun waving.

If it’s still serious about preserving borders, the Union government needs to dim its patriotic pitch and replace the spiritual sadhu with a good marketing guru instead.

Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

A clash in class, of class

Locals and newcomers shop in the same malls and send children to the same schools. But they are not the same

Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita

The shooting has been called “American-style”, “reminiscent of American values” and “a case of violence familiar to US schools”.

In reality, it is none of the above. This week’s tragedy at the Euro International School in Gurgaon demonstrates a collision of the India we once were, the India we aspire to be and, sadly, the India we continue to accept.

At the outset, I concede not knowing how and why two class VIII students killed a 14-year-old in the sanctum of school. But a few facts and conversations with educators and residents make clear that our quest for answers might better come from examining our own behaviours than the West’s.

The day after the murder, I headed to the suburb just south of New Delhi —the outsourcing hub that can at once remind me of New Jersey’s identical housing developments and manicured landscaping, Miami Beach’s art deco towers over swimming pools and golf courses, and oddly, my ancestral village of green fields, jagged boundary walls and herds of goats and cattle.

And that is why so many people begin their description of Gurgaon by saying, “The thing about this place is it’s really a gaon.”

Because of the way Gurgaon came to be acquired and built gradually, large swathes of farmland were parcelled out even as villagers hung onto their pockets of homes, which cluster in the shadows of sleekness. Some took profits and bought into new societies clinically named “sectors”, renting out the old place to migrants or relatives.

Flush with cash or rental income, locals seek the same power—purchasing and political—as the newcomers, observes Sanjay Sharma, who runs a real estate company and the portal, Gurgaon Scoop. They shop in the same malls, attend the same resident welfare association meetings and send their children to the same schools.

But they are not the same.

“There is a struggle between people who are here and people who have come from outside,” says Sharma, a returnee from the US. His attempt to videotape a community meeting in his sector recently resulted in a brawl and seven stitches on his upper lip. “Locals here are quite bottled up. They have money but they are not well read.”

Locals concede as much, pinning their hopes on education as equalizer.

Satinder Grewal, an advocate, traces generations back to Bijwasan village on the Delhi-Haryana border. Some land has been sold, while more— about Rs50 crore, he estimates—remains in the family’s possession.

“A new awareness is coming to Gurgaon and locals, we want our kids to learn English,” says Grewal.

By virtue of shunning government schools, the families of the three boys involved in the shooting seem to hold this aspiration. Media outlets reported that the family of the victim, Abhishek Tyagi, moved into Gurgaon city from their nearby village so he and his sister could attend Euro International.

“They hoped their children would get a better education,” a neighbour told The Indian Express.

Despite its international label, the school’s website says it follows the Indian Schools Certificate Examinations. Misleading name aside, I wonder what role coveted private schools play in bridging the places such youth come from—and their methods of conflict resolution—with the global exposure they promise. School officials did not return calls, emails or text messages.

Police say the gun came from one suspect’s father, a property dealer. Why so many in Gurgaon feel they even need a gun is a question as loaded as the weapon. Status symbol, yes. A response to the general lawlessness outside gated compounds, indeed. Police also say real estate agents brandish guns because so many transactions are a combination of cheque and cash (translation: illegal).

As Katherine Newman articulated in her book Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings, shootings occur only when many factors converge, all necessary, but none sufficient on its own. In the suburb these teens called home, not much more seems needed to create a hotbed of conflict and confusion.

As he heard of the shootings this week, Sharma asked himself and his neighbours: How far have we come?

“Civilization comes into the picture when you restrain yourself from violence,” he pronounces. “Gurgaon is getting worse.”

Of course, clashes—by class, caste, profession—now mark countless cities and towns developing their geographical and metaphorical fringes. On a corner of Sharma’s desk, for example, sat this week’s Outlook magazine, its cover depicting two women smoking and dancing. The headline: “Why Bangalore hates the IT culture.”

Yet, it is naïve to say India’s social ills are borrowed from the West; sex, drugs and violence have been a reality of life here for decades. We would better serve our youth by wiping the grime of corrupt, dishonest ways off the mirror. One teen’s death warrants at least one clean, hard look at ourselves.

Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

The princess predicament

Do we really want little girls to grow up into damsels who need to be saved, always by wealthy and powerful men?

Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita

I wish the princesses would stay poisoned, in deep slumber, locked in towers. Really, they should just stay away.

For my daughter’s third birthday, celebrated in the US, she received a half-dozen odes to junior royalty, on T-shirts and pyjamas, tiaras and wands, even a huge pink rucksack stamped with the Disney characters who have been princesses: Ariel, Jasmine, Belle, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella.

I thought India would be safer.

Then, the other day as I bought a lehenga for a friend’s baby, the store attendant says in broken English, “Beautiful. She will look just like a princess.”

It got worse this past weekend when a Wall Street Journal story, published in Mint’s  Lounge, reported all the ways Disney is innovating to keep little girls dreaming of being princesses—even until they become grown-ups (think brides dressed like Snow White prancing down the aisle). Still, I chalked the phenomenon up to the wacky ways of the West, until I came to this line:

“Disney has been trying to introduce the brand in countries like India, where it launched a search for an Indian princess.”

My heart sank. We are not safe.

Leave aside the marketing gimmicks, for a moment. What is it with this newfound aspiration to princess-hood? We cannot even blame little girls because the desire is so clearly something we are encouraging, looking for, egging on. Why?

The feminist writer Peggy Orenstein got so fed up with America’s obsession with princesses that she penned a New York Times Magazine article last year on the subject headlined, “What’s wrong with Cinderella?”

Her conclusion really summarized my frustration: “Maybe Princess is the first salvo in what will become a lifelong struggle over her body image, a Hundred Years’ War of dieting, plucking, painting and perpetual dissatisfaction with the results. …In the end, it’s not the Princesses that really bother me anyway. They’re just a trigger for the bigger question of how, over the years, I can help my daughter with the contradictions she will inevitably face as a girl…”

Despite a few progressive exceptions —namely Diana, although she got much cooler after she stopped being the prince’s prize—princesses basically connote major neediness, damsels craving saving: often with a kiss, sometimes true love, always wealth and power.

In India, many of our girls sadly require a different kind of “saving” (in the womb). Then if they make it, they still grow up against messages that undermine them as less worthy and capable, for no other reason than gender. And now we are asking them to be princesses, to dream of the days when a man will enable escape?

It seems such a step backward from all that has suddenly become possible in this economy for women.

By now, my fellow mothers are either nodding their heads in agreement or have just relegated me to the crazy stepmother category.

The Walt Disney Co. India clarified that the search for the Indian princess was a one-time event staged last year when the products were introduced in India. “Princess is one of our extremely popular franchises in India,” said K. Seshasaye, Disney’s India spokesman. “When the toys were launched, within 45 days, the licensees told us all the products were off the shelves. ...Basic family values are pretty strong here in India. And Disney stories around princesses encourage these girls to take the right values.”

What’s the harm? you ask. They’ll grow out of it. They’ll grow up to be astronauts and managing directors.

Will Will they? Have they?

This week, a study released by education training institute Career Launcher shows the number of women who receive coaching for the Indian Institutes of Management entrance examination is between 28% and 33%. Yet, batch profiles at the prestigious IIMs indicate that just 10-15% of students who gain admission are women.

Despite a steadily increasing female presence on campuses, the discrepancy between those who aspire and those who gain admissions stems from more men having engineering backgrounds (a popular precursor to B-school) and more men having work experience, the study found.

About one out of 10 students in the nation’s top B-schools is a woman —yet double that number wants to be there. And we still want our little girls to be princesses?

As we opened the gifts at the birthday party, I hung on to my mother’s first words to my daughter in the delivery room, minutes after she was born: “I hope you grow up to be president.”

Already, India has achieved the milestone my mother alluded to, while the US is just beginning to consider it: A female president.

Skip the marketing hype. Our girls need to move on to bigger titles—the kind they can earn and seize themselves.

Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

If I Were Prime Minister...

I dedicate these words not to the two-thirds of the nation I usually pander to — farmers — but the other two-thirds: our nation’s youth

Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita

My dear countrymen, countrywomen, brothers, sisters and dear children. Today we celebrate the 61st anniversary of our independence.

But given recent events and the disenchantment many Indians feel over the government, today I will diverge from my speeches past in this august location of the Red Fort, where our forefathers defended and fought for our freedom. I will not invoke the tricolour or the words of Mahatma Gandhi or even those of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Because, my brothers and sisters, we have reached a critical moment in our nation’s history and the responsibility of its citizens. The state of India and the many fractious Indians within are in crisis, making hindsight and nostalgia a most useless exercise.

Thus, I dedicate these words not to the two-thirds of the nation I usually pander to — farmers — but the other two-thirds: our nation’s youth, those under the age of 35 who stand on the cusp of whether this 61-year-old experiment will prosper or sputter.

For at least two years now, I have come here and laid out my mission for this country: An India that is united in thought, not divided by religion and language. An India that is united in Indianness, not divided by caste and region. An India that is united in seeking new opportunities for growth, not divided by disparities. An India that is caring and inclusive.

I admit today, my fellow citizens, my government has failed on many counts. My party, particularly, has helped fuel this divide with its ambiguous policies on caste and religion. While affirmative action is definitely needed to correct ills, the current system treats lower castes like second-class citizens on college campuses, while general-caste students run around telling everyone how their failure is entirely the fault of others.

Meanwhile, pride in our own Indianness feels shaky. Just as it appears that young people are more confident in their own skin, we have popular nightclubs banning guests in “ethnic” dress. Among lower and upper classes alike, consumer products wage battle with promises of whiter skin.

Our cities have become bastions of resentment between old and new money, old residents and newcomers, often divides cut along ethnic lines. Perhaps you do not flinch when the Diwali party invite in your gated community includes a line saying, “No maids”. The middle class divides the world into two: maids and people.

Opportunities for youth have not been inclusive. Of the one million who graduate every year, only a quarter are ready to report to work. This represents a failure of our education system.

And so today, young people who represent this nation’s future, I offer you an apology. But unlike years past, I make no promises.

Because too many times, from this perch, I have listed all the ways government can and will help your life. Universal education, rural employment, health missions, committees devoted to this and that.

But let today go down in history as the first time an Indian head of state will tell you that government is not the answer to your problems. Don’t get me wrong — there is much we must do, there is much we will do. But somewhere in our conversations about the future of India, we have lost the covenant, the partnership between a people and their leaders, and the idea that only together they can make a country great.

So, brothers and sisters, I have no answers. You do.

For proof of this, look no further than our own home-grown hero Abhinav Bindra, who did us proud in Beijing with his gold medal in a 10m air-rifle competition. It marked India’s first gold medal in an individual sport — but no thanks to the government. Rather, Bindra relied partly on his own fortune and that of the Mittal Champions Trust set up by steel tycoon L.N. Mittal; the trust gave him a physical therapist, a trainer and practice equipment.

Young people of this nation, all of you have the power to be like Bindra. You might say you have no access, you have no connections, you have no clout. Bindra, an MBA graduate from a prosperous family in Chandigarh, had all those things and he had talent — and we in government still didn’t help him. But he did not wait.

At some point, all of you have been entrepreneurial enough to make up for the shortcomings of the government. I ask you to apply the same to your life — and to each other.

You cannot wait. If there are no jobs in your village, migrate. If you don’t speak English, learn. And as you go about your life, find ways to give back to where you came from, to each other and to society at large.

Let me conclude by rethinking the obligatory “Jai Hind”. Instead, I ask you to join me in my deep wish that India in its current form should not live much longer. But if the young of this nation rise — in ideals, compassion, service, responsibility, a belief in self and country — then that would be a New India worth celebrating indeed. Jai Hind.

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Develop skills and minds

We must wonder what countless underemployed youth make of the declaration of a labour shortage and skills crunch

Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita

Please, ba, find me a job,” begins my cousin’s whine.

“How on earth can I do that?” I ask. “Where?”

GAIL, SAIL, Oil India—any of those would be my dream,” he says.

“You know nothing about gas…or steel…or oil,” I say, exasperated. “Besides, what was all that schooling for?”

My cousin has a bachelor’s degree in economics, a master’s degree in the same, a law degree and is pursuing a master’s in law. He is the most educated among the dozens of 20-something relatives I have—yet has struggled to find steady employment. So, we have this dialogue at least weekly.

Every time I read about India’s talent shortage—or even as I myself frame it using words such as “crunch” and “crisis”—I ponder if the countless youth scattered across the country in my cousin’s predicament would agree with the characterization. According to a report by TeamLease Services, 57% of India’s youth suffer from some degree of unemployability, while 75% of those who finish school make less than Rs75,000 annually.

This week, policymakers and labour ministry officials met in New Delhi to formulate a training policy for India. The government has announced that an area fuzzily known as “skills development” is expected to get a whopping Rs31,000 crore in the 11th Plan, the five-year blueprint that lays out its objectives. Compare that with the mere Rs350 crore spent on skills development in the 10th Plan. Inevitably, finance minister P. Chidambaram’s Budget next week will begin the big boost in spending.

For the ground reality, I headed to the small, shabby South Delhi Polytechnic for Women, which sits behind the prestigious Lady Shri Ram College. It is polytechnics such as this one that the government seeks to replicate nationwide to lift to those who need it most. Ironically, in the mid-1990s, as founder Ashima Chaudhuri discovered that being approved by the government meant limiting seats and offerings, she decided to shirk affiliation and moved to a system of vocational courses that don’t offer degrees, but the promise of jobs. Courses in jewellery design and catering, childhood development and office administration, media and fashion last anywhere from one year to four years.

What strikes Chaudhuri most is that more Indians are coming to her with actual college degrees, unable to find employment because they have no technical skill. For example, I came upon sisters Sunita and Sangeeta Yadav, 23 and 22, respectively, who already had a bachelor’s in education but were studying art so they could blend the two and become teachers.

This astounded me: Shouldn’t a liberal arts background at least instil the ability to input, analyse and produce— the very basics of a job? Especially given the alleged teacher “crunch”.

But another crisis looms—in confidence and comprehension. When I asked Sunita what she was studying, she looked at me blankly.

“Didn’t you say you were taking an art course?” I reminded.

“I don’t consider that studying,” she said. “That’s training.”

Perhaps some of the breakdown was due to my sorry Hindi and her weak English, but the disconnect foreshadows a part of what will be the government’s challenge: to ensure that skills and knowledge go hand in hand, that citizens understand one is nothing without the other.

If that does not happen, sheltered students will continue to look to the same place for employment coveted by their parents and grandparents— the government. Young women, particularly, will seek escape in another institution—marriage.

As we spoke, Chaudhuri was cutting articles out of the newspaper. She posts them on bulletin boards around the simple campus in the hope that students will stop and realize there is a world beyond them and their skill. Even as she does, she concedes that is hardly the role of vocational schools.

“It sounds strange, but we need to not think globally, but locally,” agreed vice-principal A.M. Banerji.

Isn’t it possible to do both? With its massive funding of education and vocational training, the government’s heart and purse appear to be in the right place. But massive poverty and underemployment—against the backdrop of a private sector begging for qualified applicants—force us to first revise the calculus of how we learn, what we learn and why we learn it.

After my day at the polytechnic, I headed for the labour conference, listening to a panel on how other countries have built and repaired their workforces. Envy filled me as slide after slide showed alliances among schools, the private sector and the government. The success stories offered training early, often and repeatedly. In Korea, a sound vocational policy helped per capita income double decade to decade.

Here, the 11th Plan’s spending must inspire Indians to embrace more than degrees or skills—but true lifelong learning.

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Words to live and love by

Whether you work, or stay home, or manage some super combo of both, we are amazed at how you manage to squeeze so many hours, chores and meetings into one day

Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita

Dear husbands,

If you came here looking for a repeat of last year’s Valentine’s Day letter that gushed over the liberated man’s role in helping women succeed, Wider Angle is sorry to disappoint. But the results of a recent Hindustan Times survey of 500 middle-class men between the ages of 20 and 45 from six large cities have not left us feeling quite so loving — or even loved. Around 60% of those surveyed say they prefer stay-at-home wives. Only 24% of respondents said that their ideal woman should be “independent, yet a good homemaker”.

No, no, you say, that’s not me. And as proof, you might count yourself among the Indians who spent a record Rs3,000 crore on gifts yesterday. Perhaps in a moment of desperation, you even typed the phrase “what women want” into a search engine.

Here’s a thought — it’s not luxury watches or chocolates, not a fancy dinner, or even countless roses. In fact, maybe you should have been doing the letter-writing this year… Something like:

Dera Wives,

Well, you know we’ve never been quite as good with emotions as you but, every now and then, we suppose we should at least try.

Valentine’s Day is filled with this four-letter word: love. And we certainly do love you. But we also wanted to take this opportunity to tell you that we cherish you, appreciate you, respect and honour you.

Whether you work, or stay home, or manage some super combo of both, we are amazed at how you manage to squeeze so many hours, chores and meetings into one day. That really puts us to shame.

There’s a lot more that makes us ashamed. That same Hindustan Times survey found that four out of five of us have made lewd comments to women. (The Hindustan Times is published by HT Media Ltd, also the publisher of Mint.) Nearly half of us surveyed felt women at a pub are “asking for trouble”

We recognize that we have played a role in perpetuating the double standard that is making India’s streets unsafe for women. Troubling, dangerous cases of sexual harassment are euphemistically called “eve-teasing”. Somehow, we get away with many more “passes” than we should.

We are sorry. We are sorry for the results of these actions making life more difficult for you, whether it’s at a nightclub, or on your commute to work. Even as we judge and mistreat members of the opposite sex, we realize they are someone else’s wives, mothers and sisters.

Not as an excuse, but by way of explanation, many of us grew up in households where we were the centre of attention. Our mothers waited till our fathers ate, then us, before imbibing the remaining morsels. They made sure our needs were put before theirs, and so we grew up with this tendency to dismiss what women do, say, want.

Despite such an upbringing, you women somehow manage to look the other way and take us in. In many cases, you have softened us, wakened us, bettered us. For that, we — and society — should be grateful.

In recognition, we are trying very hard to change. Admittedly, we’re not there as much as we should be, as involved in the rhythms of the household, from the mundane tasks such as remembering to order another gas cylinder to the more important child rearing. We understand that our lapses to you represent not mere forgetfulness, but a return to that regressive behaviour that doesn’t have a place in the new India we all are working so hard to create.

Sometimes, we wonder if you have given up on us. We ask you to hang on and hang in. Valentine’s Day seems such a frivolous continuation of typical gender roles: woman longs, man provides. The reality is that you Indian women have played a role of providing and sacrificing for centuries, modifying self as required by shifting mores and changing times.

We concede it is we men who have not been able to keep pace.

“India is not that advanced when it comes to the way many men treat women. Men here are not used to listening to women. That’s beginning to change, but it’s going to take a lot of time,” Barkha Singh, chief of the Delhi Commission for Women, which is under the social welfare ministry, was quoted as saying in a recent story by Cox News Service on the sorry treatment of women in India.

So the flowers, the chocolates, the gifts are mere things, we recognize. Actions are really what matter, you have shown us.

We are trying to change. But because we recognize some of our errors are deep-seated and institutional, perhaps it would be more meaningful if we pledged today to raise our sons and daughters as truly equal beings.

Blurred, liberalized gender roles in the next generation of Indians? Now that would be a real gift.

Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

IPL lessons for the office

Most people discounted the Rajasthan Royals before this whole thing started, a team devoid of stars, save the captain

Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita

My biggest mistake was to abstain from the selection of the team. Though I watch a lot cricket whenever possible, I am no cricket expert at the end of the day. I had a separate list of players that I wanted. But since (Rahul) Dravid is such an iconic player I trusted his judgment. …Later, when I questioned the team’s performance, poor practice facilities and the lack of infrastructure were given as reasons. It was also said that there was no bonding in the team.

—Vijay Mallya, owner of the Bangalore Royal Challengers

Right now, all of us have become part of a failed script. A bad IPL script. Let’s try and keep our chin up. ...The beauty of failure is that it brings people together. So, let’s stick this out together. I am too much of a sport myself to get beaten by defeats. I am not the kind of owner who has issues with the team because of losses. ...So, head’s up. Have a good match and let’s make 200 runs.

—Shah Rukh Khan, owner of the Kolkata Knight Riders

Well, I’m no cricket expert either. But over the last few weeks, as fans have been glued to their television screens and will be again in the coming days for the finals of the Indian Premier League (IPL), I’ve been celebrating for another reason: I think I’m finally getting the game.

Most people apply cricket analogies to their daily life and work, but this week’s column will engage in the reverse. After all, if IPL has reduced cricket to nothing more than a business, then let’s evaluate its success as a workplace.

Good teams make good companies. Most people discounted the Rajasthan Royals before this whole thing started, a team devoid of stars, save the captain. But in its ability to pull together as a true team, relying on strengths and, importantly, being able to stretch skill sets evenly, it emerged victorious. This is a major challenge of Indian workplaces trying to make employees more well-rounded and not stuck in the babu years where one person only handled one core competency for his whole career. It helps when the leader — in the Royals’ case, captain Shane Warne — is also able to execute on several levels.

Good human resources always win. Can a nice boss still be an effective one? While Kolkata didn’t advance to the semi-finals, the team endeared itself to fans and even made some new ones, thanks to the excellent public relation and down-to-earth attitudes of Shah Rukh Khan and juhi chawla.

When the team was down, his text messages oozed the perfect blend of sincerity and pushiness. He became the boss we all love, in the trenches with us, overjoyed and generous with a pat on the back when we succeeded, ready with sympathy and advice when we failed. If more Indian managers were like this, succeeding — and even learning from our mistakes — would be so much easier. Now those middle-management captains, they’re another story...

Start-ups take time. On the other hand, Vijay Mallya looked like the sorest and biggest loser of all. Sure, he views the whole game as a business venture, is upfront about wanting to be best, win best. But he should have saved the harsher words for the locker room and avoided demeaning his employees in public. And there’s a reason these contracts are for three years — building strong teams does not happen overnight. Mallya did, however, effectively leverage his brand name and millions of Indians will never swig his whisky again without thinking of a poor, scorned Rahul Dravid and the micromanaging “I told you so” Mallya.

There’s strength in diversity. How did Chennai Superkings’ Mahendra Singh Dhoni become “Veeramani”, at least according to one Tamil radio station? At once, the beauty of IPL has been the ability of a nation to bring new blood into its fold, look beyond regionalism and parochialism and cheer for talent (such as the Delhi crowd hooting for Sachin Tendulkar last weekend), but still root for the home team. The offices and global cities we are building must be eclectic but borderless. It is possible, really, to have multiple places to which we belong and use it to our advantage.

Indeed, the first season of IPL serves as apt metaphor for the evolving Indian office. Both face similar challenges, down to the accusation that all the guys in charge care about is money. The success of the teams remaining show mastery of humanity and humility, strategy and skill. If IPL grows to more than one season per year, along with more teams and more sponsorships, it should not lose sight of what matters as much as profit. In sport, as in business, winning is great, but how you play the game matters, too.

To quote from the most benevolent boss in SRK, a crowd-pleasing, nice guy who didn’t finish quite last but far from first: “We have nothing to lose now, except our character... Let’s not lose that.”

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Hers was a wonderful life

My grandmother defined family broadly, forced others to think beyond their front gate, stirred them to action

Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita

We had a tradition, my grandmother and I. Every few years, during childhood trips to her village of Sadiya on the banks of the Brahmaputra, I would spend the last night with her. She’d scratch my head and my back and mosquito bites. Often, I sobbed, sorrowful over my impending departure.

She was stronger.

And so last week, it seemed only fitting to be there for her last night, along with about 35 other relatives huddled around a bed in my home in Guwahati.

By coincidence or calling, I was there from the beginning of her end. She saw me, who had conned her way into the intensive care unit before visiting hours, and asked if I wanted to sit, have a cup of tea.

A few hours later, she slipped into a coma.

We were told nothing could be done, so we brought her home.

Even as I write this, I feel numb at what it means to lose the only person who so represented my connection to this country in its reality. Like 40% of India, she was illiterate.

Like about half the population, she was married off before 18 (11, in her case). Like nearly two-thirds, she made her living primarily off the land.

And yet, she was one of a kind.

Over the last week, the stories have come tumbling out.

How she threatened the district’s most infamous dacoit, known as Hemen-goonda, with a kerosene lamp at night and called him a dog.

How she got around her illiteracy by lining the girls on the veranda and having them recite their studies to keep each other in check.

How she ensured the household and farm workers always toiled on a full stomach; “that way, they don’t really care if I yell at them”.

How she told my cousins to stop watching the World Wrestling Federation on TV after she learnt, on a trip to America, that it was really all fake.

Deceit, even as entertainment, had no place in her life. I mourn not as much the loss of the person—at 86, she had had a full life— but the loss of a generation that we can never get back.

Their values, however, are something I suspect to which we will, rather must, return.

Just two months ago, when my grandmother fell and broke her arm, I dropped everything and packed my husband, my daughter and a video camera.

As I wrote in a recent column, this tough-as-nails lady grew tender for the first time and thanked me for coming, told me how much my family and my alleged success mean to her.

She spent some time detailing her life’s philosophy, which—given her background and achievement, in spite of it—might hold some secrets for others.

Namely, she was thrifty. She bargained, counted her money every night, reined in extravagance.

Last week, as I rode autos and taxis to get around Guwahati, I could just hear her cringing that the Rs11 bus would have been a much better option.

She defined family broadly, forced others to think beyond their front gate, and in doing so, stirred them to action. She was often the voice called upon to represent civic concerns. In the 1980s, when a politician and singer and artist Bhupen Hazarika came to call, she chastised them for the sorry conditions of roads, schools and health care in Sadiya (as lore goes, she first fed them, then yelled).

By not being educated, she served as the ultimate example of why it matters. During family gatherings, it was often said: “What would have been if she had learnt to read?” The lack of an answer kept her children and grandchildren always reaching for more.

She was a big believer in long-term planning, even for her own death, from heavy gold bangles cut into eight pieces for each of her children to Rs10,000 she donated for the final shradh’s feast to a cream and gold mekhla chador (Assamese two-piece sari) left for my daughter.

When I contacted local newspapers to run her obituary, one editor told me he didn’t think my grandmother met standards; they preferred business leaders, politicians, “people who have made a big difference”, he told me.

“If she were alive,” I retorted, “she’d say that her life might not amount to much, but people like you will serve her dinner in her next life.”

He laughed and relented.

My obituary included these lines: “It was the end of a remarkable journey that began with her birth in the Kamrup village of Gorput to marriage in Baranghati to settlement in Sadiya, where she spent most of her life. In recent years, Mrs Kalita divided her time among her family’s homes scattered across Guwahati. Her heart—and stories—however remained in an India fast disappearing...”

As I wrote, I shed tears of regret. For so many questions and untold stories remained.

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Memo to coddled workers

Transportation to the office from strategic points around the city will continue but the latest Hollywood releases will no longer be played on your morning commutes, nor the latest Bollywood on the evening ride

Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita

Dear employees,

We would like to take this opportunity to salute the good work you are doing. However, internal and external conditions have forced assessment of our suite of employee perks. Thus, we regret to inform you that due to this past quarter’s results — just 60% sales growth compared with last year, the first drop to double digits in three years — we need to cut back a bit.

In the game room, billiards balls timed to match the colours of seasonal fruits will cease monthly delivery. The attendant at the table tennis table has been asked to undergo a separation from the company; you must now chase after stray balls yourself.

We truly believe your health is our wealth. Thus, the gym will remain open but we are no longer providing two trainers per user. The Supersonic Sweat Removal Machine also will curb hours, as it consumes vast amounts of power. Employees are encouraged to shower after a workout.

Free dosas on Fridays remain but chutneys no longer. Ice cream breaks are unaffected, but in the winter, we plan a shift to the more cost-effective and season-appropriate hot chocolate.

Transportation to the office from strategic points around the city will continue but the latest Hollywood releases will no longer be played on your morning commutes, nor the latest Bollywood on the evening ride. The price of DVDs was inversely proportional to the quality of the movies. After protests of neglect from key south Indian staffers, we will make exceptions to show the latest Rajnikanth.

This year’s corporate weekend offsite — welcome among younger staffers but detested by those with families — has been cancelled. Anyone seeking intense workplace bonding can make use of our guest house in the hills. But we won’t provide ropes for three-legged races. Bring your own.

We also would like to prepare you for the possibility — the matter is under intense negotiation between us and the Young Workers Caucus for a Better Here and Now — that the firm will cease hosting weekly happy hours. Similarly, the monthly dance at a five-star hotel moves to a pot luck system at rotating managers’ homes; Deejay Korporate Kick also will undergo a separation from our company — but not before he mixes 16 hours of music and teaches older managers how to download onto their iPods and utter the words: “Give it up, give it up.”

Effective immediately, pens and markers of all colours of the rainbow will no longer be available. Reflecting the sad times we are entering, blue is preferred for all correspondence.

Luckily, the order for this year’s Diwali gifts had been placed before costs soared, so our generosity will remain intact for the most auspicious season. While we hate to ruin the surprise, suffice to say you will have a place to hold your blue pens soon enough.

Our cost cutting, thus, does not go as deep as our competitors, who eliminate silly things as free coffee and bathroom tissue (our vendor for the extra-soft, two-ply is under a five-year contract). Still, ridding some luxuries allows us to focus on others that might prove more beneficial for work-life balance: longer paid parental leaves and a crèche on site. A training programme for first-time managers and more overseas client visits. Also, less time playing ping pong and imbibing spirits means workers have more time for, well, work.

In our haste to keep employees happy and retained, somehow, we lost sight of the big picture. We hope these testing times allow us to renew our mission and commitment. These steps also attempt to correct a recent spate of out-of-hand spending. We look to our counterparts in the West and see that even after the dot-com bubble burst and business began humming again, companies still did more with less — a helpful lesson when good times turned sour.

As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh repeatedly encouraged corporations and their leaders to embrace a more austere lifestyle, the once-booming private sector mocked him. Today, we — like the Samajwadi Party — have come to see some wisdom in his wonky ways. Last year, he encouraged corporate profits to meet the “bounds of decency and greed”. In June, Singh followed his own advice and said public sector undertakings had “a moral duty to cut out all wasteful expenditure in our own establishments”. One ministry’s replacement of plastic folders with paper serves to doubly inspire us — a thrifty action and a green one, too.

If any of these initiatives leads you to feel you no longer want to be a member of our family, please call or email the Senior Vice-President for Human Resources, Staff Happiness and Eventual Separations. No need to print out a resignation, as we are also trying to conserve paper.

— The Management

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Get IIM out of matchmaking

Because of the way placements are structured, students develop conflicting goals and personalities during interviews

Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita

They are supposed to be the best and the brightest, the future business leaders of this booming nation that needed them ready yesterday. They attend classes that encourage innovation, thinking outside the box, challenging convention.

Before taking on corporate India though, students at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) need to apply their lessons a little closer to home. Job placements have been unfolding this week at several elite business schools. Like years past, a sea of stress and black suits marks both sides of the table.

Indeed, interviews should force preparation and cause some palpitation. But the placement process has evolved into a scramble for a certain “A” list on “Day Zero” with the crumbs left for companies deemed second-rate in the alphabet soup of IT (information technology) and FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods). The lousy feeling, of course, extends to the students who are interviewed by these once sunrise darlings of the placement process and so, their experience goes a little something like this:

“Investment banking represents a challenge and I love working with numbers and I aspire to go overseas.”

Rejection.

“Consulting plays to my greatest strength—strategizing and problem-solving. I love working with clients and building relationships quickly.”

Rejection.

“FMCG is booming. I have had many opportunities to go overseas, but home is where the action is… Patna to start, you say? I’d go there. Tier II towns represent our future.”

You get the picture. Suddenly, a large chunk of the batch has multiple personality disorder as they very horizontally hop among “verticals”.

In many ways, the placement process represents the culmination of what’s wrong with business schools today. Students don’t know what they want. Understandably. At IIM Ahmedabad, the class of 2008 consists of 43% freshers. At Harvard Business School, the same batch has an average four-and-a-half years of work experience.

While the premier Indian School of Business (ISB) and even the IIMs increasingly encourage applying with experience, the number of MBA aspirants whose exposure to the workplace amounts to visiting parents at the office is scary. Even that other brightest of the bright group—graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)—fuels the trend by applying for IIM right after graduation. Work experience? A whopping month of internship.

Besides links with the private sector and superb infrastructure, a part of the reason for ISB’s success is that students do their best learning from each other. They can swap stories about dealing with difficult bosses, wooing international clients, and the pluses and minuses of certain sectors.

Sadly, ISB’s pioneering spirit falters when it comes to placements; its campus last month, according to observers, felt as much a circus of stress, tension and inadequate interviews as its government-run counterparts this week. Business schools also need to recognize that there is nothing wrong with less than 100% placement; graduates who take time to find their passion or dream job or start a business should be celebrated.

Besides candidates, employers also jockey for prime recruitment positions and try to strong-arm candidates into taking their offers. Obviously, the integrity of the recruitment process can help determine whether or not an offer is accepted. Why then are companies bad-mouthing other employers, forcing decisions to be made right away, even refusing to participate if they don’t obtain a Day Zero entrance? A lot of top business schools, in response, now have two Day Zeroes—mere semantics to assuage ego.

The American way is not necessarily the solution either. For example, I attended a government-run college and, despite a stellar education, can’t remember a thing the place did to help me get a job. My brother, alternatively, attended one of the Top 10 universities in the US and went through 40 interviews before choosing a gig. Neither scenario is ideal.

But to the US’ credit, in good economic times and bad, employers generally give coveted candidates time and space to make a decision. They bring them back to meet more people, tour the office, dine with immediate supervisors and future colleagues. It helps ferret out the candidates who are just GOP—good on paper. Any recruiter in India can regale you with tales of the surfeit of GOPs at the IIMs.

There is little reason for institutes to play the role of meddlesome matchmaker. Career centres, information sessions, advice on interviews, resumés, even wardrobe—all of those are still needed. But IIMs can best serve applicants and the private sector by staying out of the way. If students had to fend for themselves as adults and home in on goals and desired profile, they might focus less on the brand and salary—and more on the work.

Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

Saving the Indian marriage

There’s a dearth of research in the Indian context on how relationships work, even how globalization has changed family

Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita

It’s not that marriage has gotten harder. It’s just gotten harder to hide its challenges.

That’s my theory on the soaring divorce rate in India. Talk to any friends in their 20s and 30s these days and you’ll find a few in the middle of splitting up or experiencing serious problems. While statistics are elusive, one marriage counsellor says the divorce rate was 3-5% in 1974 and grew to 13-15% in 1998. He observed it has only grown further, although he had no data to back up the claim.

But there’s a bigger group that’s cause for concern: the married and miserable.

“There is an alarming rise of not just divorce, but people who are emotionally divorced from each other,” says Rajan Bhonsle of the Heart to Heart Counselling Centre in Mumbai. “There is no relationship left. This is equally sad. On the contrary, even worse.”

Yet, much of India is still dwelling on where we’ve come from—joint family systems—to where we’re going—a nation of the divorced and depraved. The in-between state is something that needs to be addressed urgently, from the government to the private sector to individuals like you and me.

Once upon a time, everyone crammed under one roof and pretended to be happy about it. It’s not that mom and pop went out on clichéd date nights, while grandparents watched the baby—far from such a thing, actually—but the elders in the next room certainly prevented uncensored honesty (read: real fights, not angry whispers in the middle of the night). Who knew the nosy in-laws actually held our marriages together?

In this nuclear era where kids fend and fight for marital harmony on their own, work hours and commutes are longer. Salaries have gone up, but so have needs—for cars, holidays, gym memberships. And as everyone likes to point out when asked about divorce in India, women are asserting themselves as equal partners in the relationship. (How dare they?)

Obviously, thankfully, this aspect of new India isn’t going to suddenly rewind to the way things used to be. Yet, how to save the bedrock of the world-famous Indian Family Values?

Perhaps one institution in disrepair—the government—can come to the other’s rescue. For starters, sex education in schools needs to span relationships, families, decision-making, conflict resolution. How to balance a family budget, for example, would be a very useful thing for government to mandate on syllabi, of use to rich and poor alike. (Not to mention that a euphemistic “family curriculum” would get past a lot of prudish states easier.)

One researcher who has studied family therapy in India says the government also must reduce its stranglehold on education to allow existing universities to add mental health programmes or new institutes to open. Currently, the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences in Bangalore has the only certified family therapy degree programme in the nation, according to Mudita Rastogi, a US-based clinical psychology professor. She also cites a dearth of research in the Indian context on how relationships work, even how globalization has changed family.

My cursory search for counsellors or degree programmes yielded more “sexologists” than experts on marriage. Ironically, the focus on sex instead of relationships perpetuates the repressed state of Indian youth. So, the first lovebird that flies their way—through arranged introduction, a website, the workplace—becomes mistaken for The One and a symbol of eventual freedom and release.

This is where others who are redefining courtship need to step up. I suggest the big players in the business of matrimony scrap any corporate social responsibility programmes involving unrelated gestures as vitamins or clean water—and focus entirely on saving the institution that represents their livelihood.

A year ago, BharatMatrimony.com rose to the challenge with a free counselling service: through email or online chats, matches could avail of pre- or post-marital counsel. The Chennai company has 10 million registered users, and an estimated one out of 10 finds love (or at least weds someone encountered on the site); 2,500 users have availed of counselling.

“We think marriage can be saved so we are sending people through this counselling process,” said BharatMatrimony founder and chief executive Murugavel Janakiraman. “Perhaps they will discover a difference of opinion on something. That is good.”

Another website for those seeking to remarry—SecondShaadi.com—turns 1 in June and also offers free counselling to users. Its message boards are jammed with recent divorcees swapping legal and social advice.

Yet, even founder and CEO Vivek Pahwa, who remains a bachelor, says there should be clearer focus and huge incentives to make marriage work the first time. “From some discussions and what we see on the site,” he says, “it is a lot tougher the second time around.”

Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com

Last lectures to remember

In the final class, the best teachers take accrued course material and relate it to concepts such as meaning of life

Wider Angle | S. Mitra Kalita

On 25 July, the man who delivered possibly the greatest last lecture of our times died of pancreatic cancer. His name was Randy Pausch and he taught computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. I first read about him in the pages of this newspaper, as Wall Street Journal reporter Jeffrey Zaslow recounted the dying professor’s inspiring talk and plea to parents to let their children paint their walls however they desire.

I became obsessed with Pausch, googling him, watching him on YouTube over and over, and chuckling over his blog entries: “Just to prove I’m still alive, here I am, holding today’s New York Times!” Pausch imparted wisdom of great value to his own students and us metaphorical ones in simple terms, significant because his career was one spent not in philosophy or theology but in writing and teaching computer code. Explaining away why we encounter obstacles, he said, “Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things.” Patience, he reminded, is a great virtue. “Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you.”

The last lecture, whether it ends a semester, or, as in Pausch’s case, a lifetime, ideally connects the dots of all that has been learnt and all that remains to be. The best professors take accrued course material and relate it to lofty concepts such as “The Meaning of Life”. Sadly, students complain that link can be lacking in Indian academia; they get bogged down with cramming in coursework before the exam and trying to ensure not too much time or mushiness passes before regurgitation is required. There are brilliant homegrown teachers, of course, as anyone who has seen Indian Institute of Management Bangalore professor Ramnath Narayanswamy in action will attest. But the problem is that there are too few overall educators to begin with—a problem globally, but especially acute here.

A few weeks ago, I happened to be on the campus of the Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad as another last lecture unfolded. No, in this case the professor was not dying, but he was wrapping up his six weeks as a visiting professor. After that, he’d return to his home base of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

For the first half of Jagmohan S. Raju’s presentation, I confess drifting in and out. The hundreds of students around me seemed riveted and excited but I just couldn’t get into the exercise on price points, market forces and competition for hypothetical products named Sonite and Vodite.

But after about 45 minutes, Raju’s tone changed and I too tuned in with a different ear. The professor began extrapolating lessons from the data relating to marketing and strategy, or “MarkStrat”, the shorthand moniker for the class he taught, and I felt sudden relevance to my life.

Responding to one group’s sudden plummet, Raju said, “The difference across the industry is how you care for these customers.”

Pointing out seemingly scattered approaches on old and upcoming product lines, he warned, “Don’t spread your resources too thin. We want to launch new products but it’s just as important to manage existing products. Staying there is very hard.”

Great ideas, he said, should not languish too long, on a lab bench or in the brain. “The world is not going to catch up with you. You have to catch up to the world.”

Moving away from the projected images, the turbaned and eloquent Raju turned to the class and reinforced the exercise. Not about their numbers going up or going down, but teamwork, ethics, motivation, drive.

“How well you are perceived outside as managers will depend on do you make good decisions and how do you go about making good decisions... Life is rough. It is best to suffer and then learn. Then it will stay in your head forever.”

He likened the students’ lessons at ISB to a set of golf clubs. The real challenge was to come. “The hard decision is knowing which club to pull out. Here you got a manual. There, you will not get a manual.”

But pace yourself, eager students. “Life is a marathon. You will be working more than managers have ever worked in the history of the world.”

Fittingly, he ended with a reminder about integrity: “It’s somebody else’s money. You better be just as responsible and treat it as your own.”

ISB and many stellar institutions in India are often criticized for their lack of permanent faculty, which leads them to rely on professors such as Raju, who perform short stints. ISB, for example, has 28 resident faculty, but nearly four times that in visiting faculty. While plans for its second campus in Mohali are still being devised, a spokeswoman says the school is likely to follow the same model—not an ideal solution but a necessary one to marry and master soft and hard skills. In the meantime, more Randy Pausches and Jagmohan Rajus need to be groomed, first lecture to last.

(Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com)

IIT’s new social networking

The Internet feels like ‘time-pass’ peanuts served on the train. Only, with Google, there’s no bottom to the bag

Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita

At the stroke of midnight, like Cinderella stripped of her gown and glass slippers, students at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai also lose something that defines their survival: technology itself.

Exactly one year ago, officials at the elite IIT Bombay began restricting the Internet in hostels after fearing high-speed access was impeding socialization, replacing talk with instant messaging, virtual gaming instead of the sweaty, heart-rate-quickening variety. Initially, the “LAN ban”, as it was dubbed, was between 4.30pm and 7pm, and then midnight and 7am. Participation in sports and extracurricular activities had dropped and “when we tried to figure out the cause of this problem, it didn’t take us long to find that these students locked themselves in the confines of their rooms,” Prakash Gopalan, the dean of student affairs at IIT Bombay, said in an interview back then.

The action was greeted with protest and much fear about just how a generation that largely grew up on the Internet would manage.

A year later, a funny thing has happened: it’s working.

While an overnight culture tends to define college life, students report that they are now forced to pick up the phone and call a friend to grab a samosa at the canteen or a beer (off campus, of course). They are discovering physical activities that keep strange hours like them: the squash court open till 2am, for example. And those guys obsessed with Internet games such as Quake, Counter-Strike and Age of Empires must meander towards the chess board and tennis table, open for play 24 hours in the lounge. Even students who download movies and television sitcoms strategize who swipes what off the ‘net’ before midnight—and watch together.

“There’s a noticeable rise in the number of people around,” says Aditya Dharap, 21.

At first, Dharap and his friends decried the ban, pointing to it as part of an overall crackdown on the campus; 80% attendance is now mandatory, the ban on alcohol has been intensified. But then, students realized the institute was not backing down.

“It was getting to the point where we were like, ‘If you need to tell me something, send me an email’,” says Amit Mittal, a management student who wants to start his own business. “The gaming culture is booming, but they are getting people hooked onto computers...and useless programmes.”

Granted, there are annoyances still. Rishi Raj, 21, says every night sees him rushing online at 11.59, scrambling to finish an email or download. But he concedes, “Once you check your emails, the desperation to be on online is pretty much over.”

As we spoke in the lounge of Raj’s hostel No. 7, known as “The Lady of the Lake”, just before 10pm, there were just five people there. “Right now, it’s pretty empty, but people are socializing more after midnight,” he says.

Some other IITs also have modified usage hours in hostels or are considering it; Bombay’s ban is now just midnight to 7am. Gopalan displayed a tad of “I told you so” when I asked for his take. “We were not interested in making a statement with this,” he says. “We were interested in healthier lifestyle.”

But intentional or not, the IIT has made a statement. And its apparently successful experiment is worth relating because Indian youth have not yet gone the way of the Koreans, who actually have camps to help cyberspace addicts kick the habit. Consider that, in Korea, about 20% of the population is under 29. In India, more than half is under the age of 25. Already, in much of middle-class India, it is no exaggeration to say teenagers are glued to their screens in a manner that could be unhealthy or dangerous.

One need not even be a techie to be a victim of this illness. How many times have you been up till 3am, room lit by the glow of the laptop, Googling every search term and school classmate you can think of, following links, scrolling blogs and comments—only to wake up wondering just what the heck happened last night? Our computers have become like “time-pass” peanuts on a train. Only, with Google, there’s no bottom to the bag.

During my visit to IIT Bombay this week, I remained in Hostel No. 7 a few minutes past the curfew of 10 o’clock when women are no longer allowed. Not wanting to break the rules for much longer, I ventured down the road to the computer lab of the School of Management—such labs stay open 24 hours so students always have some access. By midnight, just one woman was there. Outside, I heard the shouts of a play being practised—and then the laughter over the goof-ups.

At 12.48am, as promised, the guys from the hostel sent me a text message: There were now 16 people in the lounge, more than three times the number I had seen a few hours before. They were just “hanging out”, that age-old college pastime. These days, the traditions and foundations that bind us as a society, as a community, might need some prodding to survive.

Good guys of government

The behemoth task before India now is to implement the less tangible aspects of workplace reform: pink slips for non-performance, elimination of redundant jobs, efficiency and innovation and healthy competition

Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita

On the day after the Sixth Pay Commission recommended a 40% hike for government employees, I sat with someone who slammed the increase.

“These babus will just line their pockets more,” she said. “Bribe us more to do less.”

The irony here is that this person also happens to own a business—and I know for a fact that she doesn’t quite declare all the money she makes. Actually, very little.

So, who’s worse?

Really, it doesn’t matter. What is important, though, is that we apply the commission’s assessment and make-over for government against the backdrop of a public allegedly incensed by corruption, inefficiency and mediocrity to steer this sinking ship to safety. Indeed, the vessel is overloaded, so losing some weight might not be a bad thing—but there must be a way to hang onto the gems in the process.

“The 1950s and 1960s had this sense of idealism...patriotism...shared values of service to the nation,” said Rajat Narain, explaining why he entered the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) in 1970. “The IAS appealed because it gave the chance to be at the grass roots, interact with the poorest of the poor.”

And so, when Narain joined up, he was still a believer. But in the mid-1980s, as a member of the Uttar Pradesh (UP) cadre, he could no longer go on. Three reasons, he instantly offers when asked, as if he’s gone through the list so many times.

“First, in a state like UP, the political interference was very high. Then in a more general factor, there were too many constraints and so much red tape. Thirdly, one could barely make the two ends meet.”

When he started in 1970, the monthly salary for an IAS officer was Rs400. Narain chuckles as he says the Imperial Civil Service (yes, that is what it stood for) in 1900 paid the same amount to a top-level officer.

“If one wanted to carry on honestly,” he says, “it was no longer possible.”

So in 1984, he left, joining the senior management of a cement plant and becoming CEO. Years later, he started his own textiles export business and became involved in non-profit and volunteer work.

In many ways, the Sixth Pay Commission’s actions this week attempt to keep the Narains around, to keep the good guys in government. Late as they are, the overtures should be welcomed—and those like that friend of mine might want to consider what role they play in a system gone awry.

Instead, the reaction this week has dangerously distanced an ever-prosperous public from its government. One headline dubbed the pay hikes a “babu bonanza” and began the story with the words: “In a naked exercise of rewarding the bureaucracy at the cost of a nation…”

Naively, simplistically, I cling to a fundamental lesson from civics: Our government is a reflection of us. And the world’s biggest democracy is a farce and failure if politics, not people, is defining it.

The behemoth task before India now is to implement the less tangible aspects of workplace reform: pink slips for non-performance, elimination of redundant jobs, efficiency and innovation and healthy competition. Opening senior positions to non-government employees is a start to better work from the lower rungs, whose climb now seems as dependent on the passage of time as work ethic and output..

In the words of one civil servant I met this week, government offices have become a place “where donkeys and horses are treated the same”.

One night this week, when the pay commission was replaced on the evening news by footage of another child stuck in a well, I headed to a government colony for a ground reality check. I met Suresh as he parked his scooter in the garage under his flat.

In 1991, months before the golden summer that would change everything, Suresh graduated from a National Institute of Technology (NIT) with a master’s degree. His father, a civil servant in Hyderabad, insisted his son follow in his footsteps.

Suresh, who declined to give his last name, now works for the Indian Meteorological Institute, earning Rs35,000 monthly. The new increase will up that to Rs45,000. His peers from NIT? “They earn at least Rs1 lakh a month,” he said. “I, meanwhile, live hand-to-mouth.”

“But everyone says people like you can flock to the private sector,” I said. “Why don’t you?”

“My government sector job doesn’t help me in the private sector job,” he said. “It’s all services and not much scope.”

To me, that makes little sense. The pay commission should have borrowed more from the private sector’s playbook: increase investment in employees. Demand accountability. Some might leave, the good ones would see hope—and hang on.

Suresh says it is too late. He already has started telling his son, age 6, that there is no future in government work. We can prove him wrong.

Searching for India’s Obama

I waited and waited for the new dynamism all the world reported Rahul Gandhi would display

Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita

I’m a sucker for a good speech.

I remember the 2001 day George W. Bush was inaugurated as US president — but I don’t remember what he said. Rather, I remained glued to the departing Bill Clinton’s every word; they practically pushed him into the plane to get him to leave Washington, and even then, he was still talking.

Over the last few months, the art of oration has taken on a new dimension, thanks to an entrant on the US political scene named Barack Obama whose words penetrate the very bone.

I know. Two years ago last month, two years before he’d become the Democratic nominee for president, Obama was the guest speaker at my younger brother’s college graduation. He said, and I quote, even as I cringe at whittling his words to just these gems: “...we live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principal goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained.

“...I hope you don’t listen to this. I hope you choose to broaden, and not contract, your ambit of concern. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, although you do have that obligation. ...It’s because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. And because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential — and become full-grown...the choice is yours. Will the years pass with barely a whisper from your generation? Or will we look back on this time as the moment where you took a stand and changed the world?”

After the ceremony, I hugged my idealistic baby brother and whispered, “I don’t think that consulting job was for you.” I credit Obama’s speech for giving him the guts to quit a year later and join an education non-profit.

Fast forward to last week, when I found myself following Rahul Gandhi on the campaign trail in Amethi, Uttar Pradesh, his home constituency. I waited and waited for the new dynamism all the world reported he would display. His youth and personable style had led some to dub Gandhi the “Indian Barack Obama”.

He wasn’t.

And then came this week, where for two days, we Indians glued ourselves to Lok Sabha television. And what became evident, amid the theatrics and allegations of corruption and bad governance, is that our politicians are terrible communicators. Definitely with each other (Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh being the most obviously harassed and heckled) but, more importantly, with us.

You might say: It’s all a show anyway. It doesn’t matter. They are just enacting a drama for the cameras. Only the poor vote anyway.

Yet, the poor are the ones who most deserve the direction and inspiration that words can offer. In Gandhi’s case last week, he seemed sincere enough but his self-admitted “plain speaking” style feels of the tenor one would use to give directions to the nearest petrol pump. And the people of Amethi— who want their populist politician to give, give, give — could have used some straight yet supportive talk that motivated hem to seize control of their destiny. They have roads, schools, hospitals, they even have industry. How about a modification of US president John F. Kennedy’s famous challenge: Say, “Ask not what Rahul Gandhi can do for Amethi, but what Amethi can do for Amethi”. You get the drift.

And in his speech this week before Parliament, one oddly lauded in the press, Gandhi should have let his voice rise and roar above the din of protesters. He should not have paused for the umpteenth time and looked to the lovably bumbling Speaker Somnath Chatterjee — and then a lunch break — to save him. A raging Rahul, now that would have sent a message.

Notice, for example, that Lalu Prasad drew no such interruptions. I understood little of what he said (and my colleague who sits next to me insists the railway minister cannot be translated). And why did the House remain attentive as Jammu and Kashmir’s Omar Abdullah raced against a clock to swear never again to align with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance?

There is a reason that Toastmasters, the non-profit group that educates on public speaking, claims its mission is “Creating Speakers. Creating Leaders.” In Parliament, as in the corporate board room, the way we present our ideas says much about how we lead.

For this government, there is little time left. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who I once encountered and found to be fabulously charming one-on-one but morose and meek before large gatherings, began to show signs of a shift in speech style, or at least substance, as he lashed out at BJP leader L.K. Advani and advised him to get a new astrologer. Let’s hope Singh really rushes reforms and effects change now, the proverbial walk matching the talk. As for the heir to the party? Since Abdullah doesn’t stand a chance, it’s time to start scouting the Toastmasters.