Bewafa Government Jobs

If there was a place in the dusty and worn out office that no one really cared about, because it had no real accountability as the supervisor wasn't too concerned about how the job went and if the job also had a clause wherein the firing of the individual occupying the dusty, worn out seat was really difficult, would you take that job?

I would !

I mean, it's not that the description is exactly the same. The chair isn't that dusty and the supervisor isn't that chilled, but then there is a certain lure to a governmental job. I have come to a conclusion that more than the leisurely aspects of the job, more than the surity of it's monotony, what draws people to it are the defects of our own society in India.

THe ancient word "Varna" literally meant colour and it was used to segregate the population in a heriditary and heirarchial structure of job stratification and generally in social sense too. Simply speaking, those with whiter colour were deemed to be of a higher birth and deserving of a fairer life and well, the vice versa too.

British, due to their latitudinal advantages appeared on the scene as the whiter than thou rulers, who with the additional advantage of having better munitions were able to overcome Indians and thus were placed de facto at the top of the Social hierarchy. The craze for government jobs started as  a method to cosy up to the 'fairer than thou' Britishers, as was the craze to emulate their customs.

Decades after they left, the static Indian society still functions on the same parameters of according respect. A government servant still functions according to the principles of 'Benign dictatorship' and has the respect that was once given to the Brahmin, then to the Mughal, then to the British and now finally to the Babu... the ruler of the destiny of the people of the subcontinent, who with the flourish of his pen can become the "Bharat Bhagya Vidhata" or the Lord of the destiny of the people. Even if that is not so, that's how the perception goes.

Is it such a bad thing to hanker after the posh jobs that enumerate not so much work? OR that promise a lot of promise to reform and help the people?
Who Knows ?! it's a personal decision after all, but for fun and just for fun, lets take some statistics, the funniest fun thingies around.

IN a way, in a very vigorously obvious way, the streets of Delhi are filled with the unemployed youth, who could've been ( given their educational qualifiications and intellectual bent of mind) been employed profitably. These youths, drawn from various sectors of education descend on the capital to prepare for their exams, some for several years altogether. Apart from the handsome returns to the landlords of the area, no obvious benefit in terms of economic gain is being generated by them.

A narrow minded approach to the way that they want to live their lives has lead to a situation that the entrepreneurial energies have been sublimated into a compulsive recession into the world of books, the vastness of the syllabi of the exams and finally the ram headed egoism that forces each one of them to stay year after year after years.

In the final postconclusionist study of the entire system of examination for the government posts, it might be useful to keep in mind the lives, the time spent and the alternatives to the current system of giving lenient preparation times for the 'prestigious' exams. IF a cutoff date of 25 had been there, with a limited 3 attempts at the exam, what we would have is a lot more saving of time and energy of the youth that otherwise run out of career options at the end of the line of this exam mania.

If a million people give this exam every year and they prepare for it even  for an average of two and a half years, then the man hours that have been spent unfruitfully, given the low passing rate are astounding. They are more than the total energies spent by some other nations taken as a whole !

Societal pressures, societal norms and soeicatal respect are the criterion for the attraction for this job. Maybe, the job has centralised too much power. An institutionalised mechanism needs to be put in place that curbs the power of the individual, for we are no longer in the post partition phase that required an iron handed rule, what we need today is administration, which can be better provided by an accountable, more people friendly service and not the high and mighty post Brahmins/Moghuls/British Babus. 

Triangle upon triangle.

Why is that the things that you want to do in life don't pay and those that do, suck?

I read somewhere that the western civilisation sees time linearly and the eastern one perceives it as circular. That may explain why everything in my life seems to go on in circles. The same sort of lessons are proffered time and again, in different forms. It's as if the entire lifecycle is about trying to evolve as the human version of the Pokemon, by fighting the same types of battles again and again till you rise above it all.

When I was in school, I had a choice to make between taking subjects that didn't seem to align with what I liked, but did seem to align with what supposedly could give me a good career. Of course I took the road that would pay me more later on, without really being what I liked. It was a small act of selling soul, that I didn't realise I was doing at that time. But most people don't realise it anyways, at least at that moment.

Now, at a much later stage, the same dilemma has come to haunt me, in a different form, in a different way. And I find that the cycle of making this choice would keep on repeating itself, till I make that right choice. But what is 'that' choice?

Writing, Adventure-learning, social work - that's the three sides of the  triangle that I want to spend my life in. If I had to make another such triangle, then Family, Body building, spirituality would comprise another triangle. Superimposing these triangles would give me that something, some sort of a sturucture to the otherwise meaninglessness, of the random coincidence of the world forming itself out of the big bang.

The circular argument can be defeated only with the clarity that I have had in the past few years. I have realised that the hardest thing that you can do is to labour at something in which you have absolutely no interest. When does work have meaning, when does working hard seem like a good thing to do?

Simple. When you work in the direction of your life goals or the things that mean the most to you. What means most to you isn't certainly going to be sloggging in a bank, sadly. And yet, the one job that fits the best with what I want in my life (goals of  triangle upon triangle ) hasn't really shown itself clearly.

On the positive side, I do know what I don't want. Let's see where we go from here!

Soul of my fingers.

Movies are the function of our imagination. They prey on the fears, hopes and dreams that people have in general and transmute them into the divine orgy of cinematic cocktail, that fully articulates what has hitherto only been a thought in the minds of it's creators. 

Grains to truth, based some part on the reality that we experience are there t lure us into that world. The movie kingsman for example preys on eh deep seated fear that the masses have in them, of being overrun by the corporate honchos with ever expanding machinery to control them and subtly influence their opinions in the direction that they desire. The story is that a rich media baron gives away free mobile connections, with the purpose of playing with the brains of his customers, to turn them upon each other, to kill each other. 

This way only those who've been given protective chips would survive and therefore further the satanic plot of the movie. Of course the hero saves the world and gets his princess. But we are not here to review pop movies, rather our purpose is more refined. Our purpose is to seek parallels from that fictional world to the real world and create a sense of needless insecurity in the minds of the small community of readers that spend their time searching just for that. Nah, I'm just joking. 

Mukesh Ambani, the Oligarchic mogul of Indian industrial sector wants now to expand his tentacle ( sorry tentacles) into the media business as well. He has a novel way of gaining connections, which is to virtually give away free sim cards which give unlimited bandwidth and phenomenal speeds to it's customers and yes, all of this is free of charge. 

The tiny little speck of dust in the shining plan to give free connectivity and connections to millions of poor people seems to be that of the methodology of enrolling in this plan, which is by giving your fingerprint and the id number of the government biometric card all at once. This seems to me, like giving someone ( who isn't necessarily the most honest person in the history of Indian business since Harshad Mehta was ousted) the entire set of keys and the entire set of locks of your personal information. 

Indians as a rule do not value privacy too much. That's sad for them, say when people barge into the bathroom where they are taking a shower, or squat with them to poop ( all of which is done in the open, oftentimes on high speed railway tracks ( to make the whole process faster I believe) ) . So then, when you have surrendered virtually the privacy of your most intimate moment, then a few fingerprints and the few scans of eyes and so on don't seem to matter that much, do they? 

I have cleverly stayed out of the plan, and even though my mobile connection was made to rival only the dial up networks of 90's, I still won't trade my soul ( or that of my fingers) for some fancy prancy high speed, unlimited data network, for I know that when the time comes, when the Ambanis activate some sort of an evil secret mechanism to steal that data and use it for some nefarious purpose, I would not be a part of the evil grand plan. ( Partly because the slow internet speed makes the entire remaining up to date thingie very challenging)

Black, White and Pink; Three Sides of a Coin

 

Soon a new industry is going to prop up in India. This would be the most successful subcomponent of Make in India programme and can employe thousands upon thousands of workers for the welfare of the corrupt millions who had been stashing black money in form of 500 and 1000 rupee notes. The industry would be centred upon laundering these notes and giving the ‘valueless’ pieces of paper some legal value.

Decidedly, some of these notes would be kept, if only for posterity to preserve and to collect, but the fact remains that not many Indians have that kind of luxury. Maybe, a lot of Indians don’t even have those notes to worry their heads about and that, is not necessarily a good thing.

The strange dichotomy of our country is that while one set of people are worried about the truckloads of cash that could soon become valueless, the vast majority had never had the access to that kind of cash in their lives. Just imagine, if the poor had been able to earn that black money and had invested it in education, housing, purchasing; we would definitely have been a few notches up in Human Development index, in the per capita rankings, education ranking, health rankings.

True, the sudden ban would wipe out the black wealth of several individuals and it is also true that social equity would increase as a result of the ban, but I wonder what would happen to the black wealth? Black money would remain unused with the over fed rich while the masses starve.

Importantly, we have to realise that those bits of paper, soon going to be valueless, too had some value and were generated via hard work and use of intelligence of those who had them. Even though the means of earning it were not entirely lawful, the purging would decrease the wealth of the nation, the wealth it could never use.

Almost There

It would be instructive to look at the nations which had followed the same sort of trajectory as our country and faltered. Argentina had at the height of it’s demographic boom been billed as the next super power of the world. The problem was that wealth was distributed unequally in the country and the institutions of the country were biased and corrupt, so they never could develop modern industries or invest into education, R&D, health during their growth spurt. Vast export of natural resources allowed it to develop rapidly and in the 1920’s it even matched Britain, but since then, it has been in a consistent decline.

The post colonial Argentina continued having the same type of institutions that the Spanish colonists built there, only now they were manned by Argentinian elite The critical thing missing was sufficient empowerment and plurality. Domingo Pèron, their leader who took power in 1946 destroyed the democratic ethos of the country, placed his own men in the institutions like the Supreme court and achieved unchecked power, to ostensibly reform the country.

 His move to gain unbridled power wiped the basic motivation that citizens of a country had to continue investing and growing, for now there was no safety that their wealth would be protected, that their hard work would allow them to become rich or whether they would get justice against the rich and mighty. Critically, the elite who had been happy to grab all that power only remained rich compared to their own impoverished countrymen as all of them sunk together. 

The Third Side of The Coin

Even if the black wealth of the corrupt Indians is completely wiped out by the circulation of Pink, blue, yellow Gandhi notes, the core point is that the institutions of our country are not geared towards helping citizens achieve a ‘clean’ growth. The election cycle for example, demands huge amount of freebies, party expenditure etc. which is later fulfilled by the extraction of the same money from the businesses later. This corrupts the investigation agencies, for they cannot persecute their own bosses and allows criminal politicians to come into power and why would criminals reform the judicial system? To get persecuted? No, instead you earn more by remaining in power and not promoting honest officials. This is how a negative cycle is formed and sustained.

Black economy seen through this prism is merely the ‘jugaad’ of the people to circumvent the inefficiencies of the government by pumping in the money. This would continue till certain basic changes are made. From political reforms, Judicial reforms, police reforms to the administrative reforms, we have reports like the ARC report and in depth analysis available about what all needs to be done in all of these sectors, what we need is the will of the leaders to actualise them. 

Root Changes

The Hawala networks are still intact, the money earned by illegally selling liquor in prohibition states will go on inspite of all of official crackdowns, the real estate sector would continue to deal in black till the circle rates are fixed and secure property rights backed by satellite date given to the owner. The problem is like that of the Indo-Pak rivalry. Till a concrete political solution is arrived upon, the Pakistanis would continue to send across terrorists and we would continue to reply via surgical strikes.

Prime Minister Modi has definitely shown courage in his surgical strike against black money but the moot question is, whether he’d be able to reform the institutions that led to the problem in the first place. Peace with Pakistan would be a far better option than another surgical strike and weeding out the inefficiencies and corruption would be tackle the generation of black money. This might be a long and arduous process, requiring some real 56 inch chest and a political renaissance.

Whether India fulfils its tryst with destiny or it remains one of the also rans is a question for the posterity to decide. For now, let’s enjoy the crisp pink and green notes that would remain ‘whitish’ for some time at least.