Thursday, June 3, 2010

5 minutes

Do you agree that the future of a country depends on its youth and children?
Thus, it is our duty to educate them, to lead them, to inspire them to do great things. To invent new things & to innovate.

Given our present state of affairs, do you think we are doing justice to them?

If you think of brand names from India, the first things that may come to a normal engineer's minds are software giants Infy and Wipro. However, we fail to acknowledge the fact that the pioneer of engineering and aviation and industry in India were the Tatas. Back then, under the British rule, the Tatas created a platform helping today's youth to lead a comfortable life and we don't even know that!
Tatas have not only created jobs for engineers and clerks alike, they have also opened premiere educational institutions like IISc, TIFR etc to help the youth get a chance to be exposed to world class education.
It is the Tatas and Birlas that have made India what it is today.

We openly criticised Ratan Tata for coming up with a 1-lakh car as we feared it would increase traffic as cars would become affordable for even 'normal' people! But, we had no problem with VW opening a big factory in Pune. We have no problem with VW selling the Beetle in India for 20+ Lakhs, when it is sold in Germany for about 6-7 lakhs!
We fail to recognise the intent Mr. Tata had in making the 1-lakh car. He couldn't stand a normal Indian family of 3 or 4 riding on a scooter in the rain, tribbles n fourbles as we call it. Think of the safety of this family! Tata simply wanted to give them a chance to travel safely, at the least cost possible. This is innovation. We simply fail to recognise this intent.
We are worried that our cities will get clogged with more cars. Well thats true. Just take a moment to look at the types of vehicles in any traffic signal. More than 60% will be private cars owned by software professionals, and the worst part is that they would be driving alone. And it is this very "professional" who complaints about the unruly traffic forgetting the fact that he is occupying half the road with his newly bought Innova, Scorpio, Fiesta, SX4 etc., which he bought simply because he could afford the luxury.

Outrageous.

India produces almost 5 lakh engineers every year as compared to Europe's 1lakh and a similar small number in America.

And the best jobs we can offer these fresh and probably brilliant minds is in Infosys n Wipro where they are made to provide cheap labour to mainly foreign clients.
Our focus has to move from services to product development. we can of course provide services, but that shouldn't be our main stay, the so called "core competency".

And it is upto us to give direction to our youth.

- write up for my 5 minute talk tomo to get feedback on effective presentation skills.

2 comments:

Chetan said...

Ok,, I agree buddy, but tell me how can you inspire the youth and the kids not to join Infy or Wipro?? How can u inspire them not to join to the place which pays them the highest salary at the current scenario?? Beetle costs 8 to 9 lakhs, Its the 120% tax which is applied on the cost, which is borne by the consumer by the Indian gov.

Somaiah said...

While I agree that we can choose a direction, we also need to agree that India's present status as a low-cost-good-technology hub is also due to a wise decision made by our oldies..!

Also, the hitch about services v/s products is quite superficial (ofcourse, after we surpass all the valid arguments, which are anyway non-conclusive :D) It is something like when we sit on a sea-saw, the other side goes up, and seeing it going up, we want to go to that side and sit....!!