Deadly “pressure-to-perform” claims another life

A 25 year old with technical and business degrees from IIT and IIM, the top Indian colleges and working for McKinsey, the world’s best consulting company. Everyone would say what an amazing guy. The mental pressure around the two statements is in itself unimaginable.

It is generally accepted that at least 3 years of work experience is required to take up an advanced or Master’s degree and in the case of an advanced business degree more experience is preferred. Academic institutions should assess the work experience and the candidate’s exposure and knowledge of the business side of things before granting admission for business degrees. The guy came straight out of IIT at 22 years and landed at IIM. What exposure does someone at 22 have of business and the ones who have will definitely not take up a business degree, not at 22 for sure. Out of IIM and straight into McKinsey. It is nothing less than maniacal.

It is clearly not just the work pressure that drove him to take his life. The deadly “pressure-to-perform” comes from downstream a long way back. Suicides among students preparing for entrance exam to get into the IITs and among students studying at IITs have been rising alarmingly over the years. That is 5 years of academic mental stress with the added stress of cracking the CAT exam to get into the IIMs and then 2 years of even more academic stress during the MBA program. When he joined for work, he had already spent 7 years of his life in the pressure cooker of intense academic stress.

Work pressure and micromanagement are common in most companies now but would depend largely on the ones managing the projects. Companies like McKinsey hire the best graduates from the top colleges and then the pressure to perform and the toxicity in the work culture is thrust upon them. Now the question everyone would have asked is, why didn’t he just quit and move on rather than drown himself in the mire? Because of social and peer pressure. Can’t someone who has gone through the grind of JEE, IIT, CAT and IIM absorb work pressure and continue performing at his peak? No one would have understood, not even his family. The problem with peak performance is, no one can stay at the peak forever and down the peak could become a free fall very easily and quickly. He was way too young to manage work pressure, push back micromanagement and survive office politics and toxicity.

It took me 10 years and enough exposure of working with international clients to understand how a MBA can add value to my profile and MBA from an international college would be the best to prop up my international work experience. With age and experience comes maturity and the ability to work smarter and manage all kinds of stress. Consulting is no easy job and consulting with McKinsey means working with the top companies in the world. It is impossible for anyone to live in sustained mental stress for a long time and the younger one is the more vulnerable they are to capitulating sooner.

From the time I heard the Dire Straits classic “Private Investigations”, a narrative of the daily life of the not so scrupulous private investigators, two lines have stuck with me.

“What have you got, at the end of the day

What have you got, to take away”

What we will all eventually take with us is knowledge and experiences and not the names of academic institutions where we studied, the names of companies where we worked and the expectations of people around us. Our well being is something only we understand the best. The stress and suicides created by pressure to perform will stop when we realize these simple facts.

The woes of Byju’s

Just as everyone thought the layoffs winter can’t get any more frigid and worse, looks like Byju is going to be laid off from Byju’s.

Every Edtech company has three components 1) Education 2) Technology 3) Business and management. That Byju Raveenran is an accomplished tutor is a well known fact. That his classes and method of teaching had immense potential to go online was also there which was why Byju’s grew exponentially in a short span of time and attracted the attention of global investors. So problem areas are not education and technology. Byju’s current woes are all on the business and management side.

There are several well known cases of VCs asking founders to focus on product development and appointing CEOs and hiring executives to run the business. Now that VCs are seeking to oust Byju Raveendran, it is puzzling as he had no prior experience in running a company then why did the VCs allow him to be the CEO and bring in his wife and brother to run the business. Byju’s situation was not at all complicated. Raveendran had to focus on education and the company needed a technology head with the potential to grow into CTO who could build a technical team from scratch. The VCs could have had easily set up the executive and management teams. Raveendran and his family members are not just the problem, the entire executive and management teams need to be dismantled and built from scratch.

I have heard several instances of Byju’s sales team being aggressively persuasive with the parents of children and making the parents feel like they are doing a crime by not giving their children Byju’s online classes. Raveendran seems to have clearly forgotten his own USP that made Byju’s touch the skies. It was the quality of his classes and word of mouth. Companies like Apple and Bose rely on the quality of their products to attract and retain their customers. Raveendran simply had to follow the golden rule. So what changed him?

Market valuation of a company is usually done based on the numbers on its financial statements and its business potential in the market segment it is catering to. Investors would ideally look at the past 3 years of financial performance for assessment. What they look at is profit margins, but with a catch. Ideally they would want to see increasing revenue and decreasing cost or expenses but even if the revenue remains flat for a couple of years they want to see decreasing cost because it shows efficient money management. This does not seem to be the case with investors and investments anymore. Market valuation can be conservative or inflated based on many factors. In the case of Byju’s it had huge potential with its online app, then covid struck and we literally started living on the internet. Byju’s valuation became like an endless pit because its business potential exploded into touching the entire population of the country. When investments started flowing in like water Raveendran spent millions on acquiring other edtech companies and running promotion ads with Lionel Messie and Shahrukh Khan and sponsoring events, notably sports events. The beleagured company’s valuation is now down by 95% from its heydays in 2022 which goes to show how inflated valuation can end up destroying companies (https://m.economictimes.com/tech/startups/macquarie-slashes-byjus-valuation-by-98-after-julius-baer-protest/articleshow/108165302.cms).

Terming startups that are loss churning machines year after year as unicorns is I believe the biggest crime investors and VCs are doing. Budding entrepreneurs all want their startups to get investments and become unicorns regardless of how poor their financial performance is because they know they can have swanky lifestyle, hire and fire employees when their business strategies fail miserably and can get away with everything even if their companies go bust.

Raveendran’s knowledge and teaching acumen were his heart and soul and investments pouring in acted as injecting venom into both. This is what happens in every case where we get more money than we really need. Education is more like the traditional barter system, we give money in exchange for knowledge. When we make education into a business, everything related to business takes hold, such as competition in the market, having to invest first to get returns, invest more for higher returns, commercialization and giving up on the core values of education.

Raveendran is accusing the investors of trying to oust him as the CEO of Byju’s and from the board of directors along with his wife and brother. He is also peeved now that investors have blocked access to money he has raised to pay salaries to his staff (https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indias-byjus-cant-access-rights-issue-funds-pay-staff-2024-03-02/). He needs to understand that investors are only looking to recoup their investments for which he has to either pay off all their money or step down and let them run the company. He doesn’t have a third option no matter whatever he tries.

VCs can do well by not being confrontational and convincing Raveendran to give up the executive positions and shift his focus back to education for the sake of his company and his future. If he gets ousted, the reality will hit home hard when he starts a new life without Byju’s especially if the investors decide to retain the name of the company.

Heat pollution and Earthquakes – Why the world needs to have broader conversations about climate change

According to NASA website, “Global warming is the long-term heating of Earth’s surface observed since the pre-industrial period (between 1850 and 1900) due to human activities, primarily fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere.”

NASA’s definition of global warming is misleading for a very specific reason. It is placing the primary responsibility of global warming on fossil fuel burning. While it is true that releasing trapped carbon in fossils back into the atmosphere has led to the greenhouse effect and increase in Earth’s surface temperature, global warming has to be understood from a much larger perspective.

From the smallest microorganisms to the blue whales, every living being generates and emits heat from its body. We consume food, break it down for providing us energy and release that energy as heat into our surroundings when we do our activities. In order to understand Earth’s surface temperature, we have to first select areas in all geographic locations, measure heat generated by every organism except humans in those areas and extrapolate the results to find out the total heat generated by all animals except humans over a specific period of time. There is a good reason to exclude humans from this exercise.

Except the animals that live in packs, all other animals try to keep distance from their own kind and from other animals except during breeding time. Being territorial about food is one reason and the other reason is, as population density increases, heat released from their bodies become amplified. Understanding body heat is easy. In a room cooled by A/c, the room will be moderately cold when there are more number of people and as more people leave the room the remaining people will start feeling colder. Also, greater population density results in faster spreading of diseases. Predator-prey relationships and diseases are two major ways how nature enforces population control on animals. So measuring the population of each animal and the amount of heat released from the body of each animal would give a good account of how much heat animals contribute towards Earth’s surface temperature. This is another reason why population control in nature is important because population control will ensure heat released from the body of animals will not significantly add to Earth’s surface temperature.

We have not only broken all laws of nature we have done lot more things that are mind boggling and incomprehensible. Earth is 70% water and 30% land of which 10-15% land is habitable. 8 billion and growing human population is jostling to live in this small percentage of land. Our perpetually increasing population density is amplifying all our body heat and to add to this, any disease could manifest into an epidemic and pandemic in no time. But it is not just our body heat that is contributing to Earth’s surface temperature. Every single creation of ours, from the smallest light bulbs to mobile phones to the largest aircrafts and rockets are burning fuel and generating heat. We are not just polluting Earth with heat generated from carbon emission, we are also creating heat from sound, light, breeding different types of cattle and poultry for our dietary needs and many more types of pollution and every type of pollution is generating copious amounts of heat all of which adds to Earth’s surface temperature. Simply put, the most significant and largest pollutant we are creating is heat.

To add to all of this, we are cutting down trees and destroying forests. Trees absorb harmful rays from the Sun and when they are gone, those harmful rays also end up heating Earth. So there are two ways in which Earth is getting heated now. Earth is getting bombarded by more harmful rays from the Sun and by the increase in Earth’s surface temperature and we are contributing significantly in both.

When we speak about climate change we have to take all of these into account. In our rich history, there is a great example of climate change if our population decreased suddenly and consequently, forest grows back. The Spanish Inquisition in the Americas in the 16th century eradicated 90% of the local population due to wars, famines and epidemics and forests grew back in the millions of hectares of human settlement areas. Research points to a global temperature drop in the 17th century which adversely affected Europe resulting in famine and epidemics and this is being correlated with what had happened in the Americas a century earlier.

All conversations about climate change largely revolve around carbon emission and the need for carbon neutrality. This is not just a very narrow way of looking at global warming but also a misleading one as well. Our exploding population and everything we are creating are all adding to global warming. Population control is no longer the solution. If human species has to survive, human depopulation is the only way. Most of us will have to die for some of us to survive. Otherwise, receding forests and increasing human population will increase Earth’s temperature to a point where Earth will become uninhabitable. But, long before it goes that bad, something else will happen. There is a natural disaster that will happen if Earth gets heated up like it is getting now – Earthquakes. Oceans when heated up will cause underwater earthquakes resulting in tsunami. There are ancient tribes that believe the world has been destroyed completely 3 times in the past and the 4th one is imminent which will be caused by cataclysmic earthquakes.

We need broader conversations about climate change caused by all the heat created by us and the consequences leading to global awareness programs with the clear message that Earth is already overloaded with us and can take no more of us. Without this, all conversations are useless.

Moonlighting – Necessity born out of poor governance and toxic corporate culture

Rishad Premji, son of Wipro founder chairman Azim Premji recently commented that moonlighting or working in multiple jobs simultaneously is unethical and amounts to cheating. Question to ask here is, why do employees in India moonlight? There are several reasons:-
1) The most important one – monetary needs driven by inflation, taxes, medical needs, supporting aged parents and children, paying loans and a ton of other reasons and salary increments companies give that do not even remotely match the ever increasing needs brought on by the above mentioned factors.
2) Dissatisfaction in their current full time jobs because of poor management and bad managers, poor salaries and salary hikes and work that is monotonous, nothing to learn from and devoid of challenges.
3) Taboo imposed by hiring managers and recruiters who look down upon employees who switch jobs frequently.
4) For younger professionals looking to grow, moonlighting gives them the opportunity to learn more quickly and compete better in the job market.

Rishad Premji can say what he wants from his position of inheritance and privilege. Company owners, CEOs and other top executives who take paychecks that are 100 to 1000 times of the peanuts doled out to regular employees will not have the need to moonlight. Only if he is in the shoes of someone who is moonlighting will he truly understand why employees do one full time job, come home exhausted and compromise on their health, well being and family time to work more.

Tax collectors in Delhi were colluding with businesses to help them cheat on their taxes. In 2015, the new Delhi state government started providing tax collectors with bikes to travel, paid their fuel bills and gave them laptops, mobiles and incentives on tax collection. Revenue generated from tax collection jumped exponentially in a year’s time because tax collectors felt guilty about cheating the government that was taking so much care of them. This is a great example for companies who are complaining about moonlighting employees to learn from and start taking care of their employees so that they don’t feel the need to moonlight.

Exposing the blatant misuse of inspirational quotes

Inspirational quotes are being increasingly short sold and aspiring professionals are getting misguided by the interpretations of the self proclaimed experts, motivational speakers and career coaches. Below are two I have come across.

Confucius said choose a job we would love doing and not to make our passion our profession which clearly do not mean the same. We do jobs for money which helps us to meet our physical needs. Doing what we are passionate about leads to our mental and emotional fulfilment. Because we have to barter more of our time to earn more money we are fooling ourselves by finding mental and emotional fulfilment in the objects we buy for our physical needs. Monetizing our passion is never a good idea because passion releases our mind from the stress of meeting our physical needs and money suppresses our emotional quotient which means we stop getting emotional fulfilment from our passion. Moreover money creates competition and that is where value for money trumps our emotional needs.

Someone told me about a motivational speaker who tells his audience “work like a dog live like a king”. For one, animals do not “work” like us. The only time they work is for food and there is a better word for it. Hunt. If work like a dog means tire ourselves out to complete exhaustion then there is no time and nothing left in us to live like a king. Commonsense and human anatomy goes out of the window. Its hilarious. Constantin Brancusi said work like a slave, command like a king which means when we work, work hard and when we become a leader be a strong one. Also, command like a king is not the same as live like a king.

English is a quirky language so it is being shamelessly arm twisted and maligned by some among us for their own benefits with scant regard for the negative impact they are creating on the people who look up to them.

Does our jobs match our personality?

This is the analysis about the jobs we do and our personality I have searched for many years. The classifications Jordan Peterson has made are quite simple but the underlying factors are extremely complex. From the business/corporate perspective, entrepreneurial/creative types have a synonym. Innovators. The problem with innovation though is, it can only be a continual and not a continuous process. So there will be time periods between innovation when management becomes crucial. The best example is Apple and its products. Every time Apple releases a new version of its products into the market, the focus shifts towards maximizing sales. What he says about innovative people starting a company and then the company getting swamped with manager type people is absolutely correct and there is a reason for it. Any innovation ultimately leads to revenue generation (or cost saving) which happens through projects for which managers are required for project and people management. Then there will be finance management, facility management, etc. Problem arises when the company’s focus shifts entirely towards revenue and profits. This is why Apple has a pipeline for new versions of its products and Bose apparently spends 60% of its profits on R & D. These are conscious attempts to maintain innovation at the heart of these companies.

The difference between entrepreneurial/creative and managerial types have blurred in recent times because of the advent of startup culture and venture capital funding. Entrepreneurial/creative people have always been risk takers but investments were hard to find in the past. Now, with investments readily available, it has become possible for even managerial type people to become entrepreneurs. Moreover people with managerial background get hired or elevated into top executive posts because companies focus largely on revenue and profit generation. The corporate mindset of not changing what is working fine led to the demise of companies like Kodak. Companies getting filled with managerial type people is the reason why there is always a gap between any form of innovation (that includes corporate restructuring and changes in business strategy) & management which needs to be addressed through change management processes.

What he doesn’t talk about though is at the individual level, whether individuals are doing jobs that match their personality. In the past, every profession was important in a community so a blacksmith’s son was raised to become a blacksmith. Now, education, job, social status, even marriage is associated with money. So very few people get the opportunity to evaluate themselves and choose their professions. The academic ecosystem smothers our creative side and prepares us to become good employees in the corporate world but not good leaders. Working for a few years in a particular role in a company is not a yardstick to become eligible for promotions but that is the culture companies follow. So corporate employees are majorly neither entrepreneurial/creative nor managerial types and this is why their careers stagnate and another important reason why companies stop being innovative.

Corporate employees are largely under the illusion that spending time equally in the office and at home is what leads to work-life balance. Our lives are so intricately interconnected that it is impossible to separate our professional and personal lives and here also the common denominator is money. We have to go to office to work to earn money with which we meet the needs and commitments of our personal lives. Doing what truly interests us and we are passionate about is the key to finding the balance between our professional and personal lives. The other important aspect is to have an engagement, activity or hobby that provides us gratification in our personal lives and the confidence we gain from it will spill over and improve our professional lives.

Drishyam 2 review : Education and social status should not hinder assessment of people

Making sequels for any movie is tough and especially more for crime thrillers. Unless the script was prepared for 2 parts like the Uma Thurman blockbuster Kill Bill, getting the flow of the story from the first movie to its sequel is extremely difficult. Even in the case of The Matrix trilogy, the struggle to take the story forward from The Matrix through its sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions was very apparent. But Mollywood movie director Jeethu Joseph has done a memorable job with Drishyam 2, the sequel of his highly successful and acclaimed movie Drishyam.

The plot of Drishyam 2 is built on the fact that no crime is perfect and there could be a witness to every crime. To recap, Drishyam narrated the travails of Georgekutty who runs local cable TV service in a small town in Kerala and lives with his wife and two girl children. He is an orphan, school dropout and had found his feet on his own in a tough world. He is obsessed with movies and unknowingly picks up plentiful of cues from crime movies which becomes his mighty weapons when he has to hide a murder and protect his family from the world and keep them out of reach of the long arms of the police system breathing down their necks.

Jeethu had left the door open for a sequel with the climax of Drishyam and what is impressive is, after 6 years of making Drishyam, he has seamlessly picked up from its climax to get the sequel rolling. Drishyam had meandered a bit in the beginning as the stage had to be set before getting into the crux of the story but with Drishyam 2 Jeethu seems to have put in every effort to make the audience feel that even though 6 years have passed the continuity to the story is perfect to the inch from the beginning. Jeethu has a unique knack of making successful police stories and crime thrillers and he has ensured that new characters and new situations blend in perfectly with the original story background of Drishyam.

There will be plenty of reviews about the movie so what I want to write here is about Georgekutty’s character and I believe it is a masterpiece. Orphan, school dropout, married, running a small business. Many people who have watched Drishyam and Drishyam 2 may have found it hard to believe and digest that an uneducated insignificant man could be smart enough to take on the police on his own and outwit them twice.

Christians in Kerala, especially from the southern parts are extremely smart in doing business and figuring out their lives irrespective of their educational qualifications. Georgekutty’s addiction to crime movies and picking up so many cues from them underlines the fact that if he had a different upbringing, he could have become a successful detective, crime investigator and even be part of the police or an investigation agency. This is where our education system is failing our society. Education when done right helps in creating critical thinking ability in us which helps us in asking questions and not becoming gullible to accepting anything blindly. But the same education system does nothing to create real world problem solving skills in us. This yawning gap exists in every job sector where problem solving skills are of primary importance and so much in demand but most educated and qualified people do not have them.

Georgekutty’s character reminds me of Frank Abagnale on whose life the highly successful movie Catch Me If You Can was made. Frank became a well known conman even before his 19th birthday and never got caught by the law. Finally, the system bowed down to him and FBI enlisted his help for nabbing check forgers. In Drishyam 2 the police is seen making several good assumptions and simultaneous moves to make Georgekutty reveal the location where he has hidden a dead body, completely oblivious of the fact that he has always known that the police will constantly be on his heels and will never stop till they find the dead body. More than the police observing him he has been observing the police all the time. Staying so much ahead of the police helps him make some ingenious plans because he knows fully well that he cannot hide a crime or a dead body forever. The education system fails even the police here. They keep following standard investigation procedures and even though Georgekutty outwitted them soundly in Drishyam, they keep assuming that he was lucky and he won’t be lucky every time. Their higher education and social status comes in the way of seeing through and accepting the fact that Georgekutty, though uneducated is wily, smart and far more intelligent than them.

The police does not seem to have the ability to think out-of-the box either. Recreating the crime scene or crime situation is the key to solving a crime. Although they know Georgekutty may not have hidden the body far from his house, they fail to look back in time to find out what was the situation on the ground 6 years back. From the way Georgekutty is living confidently and the fact that construction of the new police station was underway when he hid the body, the police could have connected the dots and arrived at the suspicion that he could have hidden the body right under their feet. Georgekutty knew he was taking a grave risk by hiding the body in the police station and he knew there could be a witness or someone in the police could connect the dots at some point in time which is why he started making plans to save his family right away.

So could someone of Georgekutty’s stature have done all this? He understands crime like the back of his hand from watching movies, he knows how to make friends with people and influence them completely oblivious to them and he knows to exploit a porous and corrupt system. Sizing up the opponent or failing to do it is the sure shot recipe to success or failure as both Georgekutty and the police finds out. Do such people exist in real life? There are all kinds of people in the world and we have no clue what each one’s skills and abilities are. Only when life forces us into corners and we start fighting back does the world get to see who we really are. There is a Georgekutty in all of us, in one way or the other.

Renowned Mollywood actor Mohanlal reprises the role of Georgekutty and completely owns it. Drishyam had an ensemble cast and all the important characters have been retained along with the addition of new ones in the sequel. Both Drishyam and Drishyam 2 are intense movies like most crime thrillers and it is easy to get distracted among so many characters. Georgekutty is the pivot to both movies so understanding his character and watching from his perspective is the key to appreciating them.

The COVID pandemic is unraveling India’s freefall in every possible ways

People in India who have known me well for some time may have noted that I gradually stopped writing about politics after 2019 elections. I have never voted in my life that is how interested I have been in politics and my trust in India’s electoral system. In 2013, a photo started circulating of a supposed bus station in Ahmedabad glorifying the Gujarat Model of development which got called out as fake in a day or two. It sent alarm bells ringing through my head because only a few days back my dad was telling me that India now needs a strong leader like Modi. There was no need to use the photo of a bus station in China and try to pass it off as a bus station in Gujarat if the Gujarat Model of development was true by any measure. That is when I started taking interest in politics and started writing about it. I wrote for 5 years trying to expose all the misinformation and propaganda and hoping that it would help people make a better choices during 2019 elections. I stuck to writing in spite of being ridiculed by my school and college classmates and ex-colleagues and facing a good amount of abuses on social media. But we chose to continue to stay blinded and fooled.

All I have cared about is governance and administration largely because I have worked on projects in my jobs and I know how critical management and governance are for the success of every project. Those who are in positions of responsibility and who can influence people can do all the theatrics they want and flirt with propaganda after governance and administration. But ironically, if they focus on governance and administration they would have no time for theatrics and propaganda and all they want to do is to keep distracting and misleading people.

Everything that happened in the last 7 years has converged to the situation created by the pandemic now. India’s economy never really recovered from the devastation caused by the demonetization fiasco in 2016. The pandemic is merely an infected mole on a tumor. What the pandemic has unraveled is the depth of ignorance that exists in our society. There was a report of a political leader claiming that pouring lemon juice into our nostrils will help to protect us from COVID infection and a school teacher who had no other health issues died after trying it. People are getting infected with black fungus after they believed in the misinformation that lying in cow dung and cow urine can protect them from COVID virus. The below comments are just the icing on the “cake”.

India is in dire need of education before vaccination. The virus of ignorance is far more deadly than all the viruses in nature. But education is also complicated in India. Many of the Indians I know who vouched for the Gujarat Model are educated and are living abroad in the some of most developed countries of the world. Almost all of them are maintaining stoic silence now. Education is supposed to create the ability of critical thinking in us. Education helps us to use our rationale and logic and ask questions. But education in India is linked to jobs which in turn is linked to money and social status. An education system that does nothing for the growth of critical thinking is useless and waste of time. The country is learning many hard lessons now and I hope all the miseries people are suffering now will lead to the rise of a stronger and wiser version of India.

Reservations for equal access to education and jobs is destroying Indian society

 

India’s education sector has always had serious issues. From poorly maintained to dilapidated government schools and exorbitantly expensive private schools, good education is still a luxury for many, especially in the rural areas. But pushing for education for all blindly has only ended up creating more problems.

India has had a robust societal structure for thousands of years. Society was broadly divided into 4 categories based on profession – 1) Scholars 2) Warriors 3) Traders and 4) All other Professionals. Every profession was integral to maintaining the balance and needs of the society. This was why it was essential that each profession be handed over to the next generation along with the vast array of knowledge accumulated over the years. In times of wars, people from other categories also used to join the warriors. This is shown beautifully in the movie 300 where the Greek army is shown as a group of soldiers banded together from all professions whereas Spartan soldiers knew nothing else to do other than to fight.

According to ancient Indian texts, till the end of the Dwapar Yug or 3rd Age, there were only scholars and sages who used to advise kings and give knowledge to people. Then society changed drastically with the advent of Kali Yug or 4th Age and the beginning of idol worship. Heroes became Gods and started getting worshipped in temples. Scholars attached their knowledge to Gods, gave it divinity and declared themselves superior to all other categories. They usurped knowledge by creating Gods out of everyone who had superior knowledge and skills. Warriors Ram & Krishna, Vishwakarma, an architect and Dhanwantari who had the knowledge of medicines and treating diseases were all made Gods. The scholars started serving only in temples thereby creating a new profession. With knowledge in their grasp, they started looking down on the dark skinned professionals who used to do all the manual labour. This is how India’s caste system was born and the society got divided into 1) Brahmins 2) Kshatriyas 3) Vaishyas and 4) Shudras. Through the centuries, each caste got further divided into numerous sub castes making Indian society how it is today.

Knowledge of the Gods Brahmins possessed were denied to other castes. Shudras were the ones who were most affected as they were denied access to all knowledge and languished under caste based oppression. When the British introduced their form of education in India and built schools, the upper caste usurped even those and denied education to the lower caste people. It was to compensate for all the oppression they suffered for centuries that caste based reservation was made part of the Constitution for their upliftment.

But caste based oppression and humiliation continues to this day. Caste based reservation has not served to erase the caste based divide in the society. People of the lower castes have chased educational courses aspiring for professions traditionally being done by the upper caste people. They seem to be in the false belief that achieving academic and economic equality with upper class people will erase caste based inequality.

In India, anyone who is good in science and math in school is a potential candidate to become an engineer or a doctor now. The mad race to engineering and medical courses repeats every year. I am an engineer partly because of this reason. The demand for engineering and medical courses are so high that numerous private colleges have sprung up to accommodate candidates who do not qualify the entrance exams for getting admitted in government colleges. Is it because the demand for engineers and doctors is so high in India? On the contrary, both are languishing and engineers are even taking up the jobs of clerks. Then why such madness? Because Vishwakarma and Dhanwantari are Gods of engineering and medicine respectively and upper castes have traditionally had their hegemony over jobs in these fields. People of the lower castes are simply chasing the life of the upper caste devoid of comprehension and logic.

Caste based discrimination reported and exposed recently in Cisco in the US shows how this curse tags along with Hindus wherever they go and how prophetic were the words of Bhim Rao Ambedkar, one of the architects of Indian Constitution. Reservations in education and public sector jobs have only served to increase the animosity of upper castes towards the lower ones because different rules for different castes has made the field of competition uneven.

To compound the woes, people from rural areas are leaving behind agriculture and their traditional occupation and flocking to cities in search of education, blue and white collar jobs and the fancy urban life. The problem with this came to the fore when COVID-19 struck the crowded cities, state governments were unable to provide even food for the migrants during lock down period, they started returning to their homes by whatever means of transport and many died on the way due to exhaustion, starvation and accidents. This is a systemic rather than a governance and administration problem.

Reservations and access to education and jobs to all is not going to solve what is ailing India’s society. When I was in the Netherlands I have overheard people talking proudly about family members who are bus drivers. In India, bus drivers are looked down upon and even more when it comes to bus cleaners. Why? Because these jobs are usually done by people from the lower castes and if these jobs are done by upper caste people then they are academically poor. India’s problem is with lack of equal respectability for all jobs and occupations. Discrimination is 3 fold now, based on caste, education and economic status. A sewage cleaner’s job is as important in society as that of any other professional, but he will always be discriminated based on these 3 factors and will be associated with all the filth of the sewage. A goldsmith might be rich but will still be sneered upon behind his back based on his caste and education.

While I am happy to read and hear about children of people doing the lowly jobs performing well in school exams, it saddens me to hear them say they want to become engineers and doctors and scientists. They are the few who have access to higher education and can go back and improve the working conditions of the jobs of their parents. When I read about a group of engineers who had created a robot to clean sewage in my home state, what I first searched for was whether anyone in the team came from the background of sewage cleaners. A sewage cleaner’s son or daughter coming up with such a creation would have been the perfect situation.

With access to advance technology, anything is possible now. Someone whose father or ancestors were blacksmiths can get educated and still become a blacksmith with cutting edge techniques and machines. People of lower castes should just forget about respectability and equality for now, focus on getting education and reviving and improving the occupations of their ancestors. Respect will come when a blacksmith starts selling his skills and products through mobile apps. A truck driver’s daughter should use her education to improve the design of trucks and making truck driving more comfortable. Erasing caste based discriminatory mindset will take time but restoring equal respect for all professionals in society will be the stepping stone and will happen only when the next generations start making informed choices.