Jobs and Careers : Explore the New

At one point I remember studying and appearing for my medical entrance examinations (this was of course years ago), largely because my father wanted to become a doctor. Unfortunately, his father could not afford to pay his fees, though back then, it easier to get in and competition was limited and so my father went off and joined government service determined that whenever he had a child, that child would be what he could not be.  I wanted to be a journalist or a radio broadcaster and had even auditioned for the youth channel of All India Radio – yuva vani   and had taken a few baby steps in broadcasting, when my dreams were shattered and I was told in no uncertain terms that I needed to study to be a doctor. Competition then was already tough, though it might not have been so nail biting as it is today.

Today of course competition is a lot tougher, but then job opportunities are more diverse and options more easily accessible than was the case previously. And even then, parents still want their kids to go down the beaten track of going to IIT and then IIM and then then land a so called secure job or become a doctor. Humanities students can choose the other option – clear the UPSC exam and become a Class a government officer. The less intelligent can opt for the Armed Forces (yes, they no longer attract the cream) or join a PSU Bank or company or the Railways. That is the end of the comfort zone for most middle class families.

So it was quite refreshing to see Startups have changed the rules of the game and even more so than call centers which were “in” a decade or two ago.  When we hear of Startups, we nearly always hear the stories of the founders and their rags to riches story and that cannot be the script of everyone. So it was encouraging to read how the taxi aggregators like Ola and Uber have created transformational stories – not just for those who were always taxi drivers but also many corporate executives , engineers and management staff from there, who are giving up their rat race jobs and taking up driving for Uber or Ola; realizing that there is still scope to earn enough of a decent living doing so and more ever enjoying the luxury of working at their own pace and desire without the need to worry of leave , late coming, attendance registers.

Of course, it is not all about driving taxis. The point is that the world has changed a lot in the last decade even and continues to change. There are many career options available today that weren’t there when today’s parents were setting up their own lives. So let us explore these options and not be intimidated by cut off percentages, entrance exams and interviews which are all gatekeepers to the conventional jobs and courses. 

Miley Sur...... Mera Tumhara

I still remember the public service advertisement that Doordarshan once aired (miley sur mera tumhara…) kind. Such advertisements still air of course except that I like many millions don’t want watch Doordarshan any more or listen to All India Radio any more. Most of these advertisements were rather staid and dowdy and there was not much to commend them. Except of course the message itself. In those innocent days, we used to laugh at them and try to take a break when they came on. But I miss them now and miss them horribly. Growing up sneering at those famous “unity in diversity” advertisements and social studies lessons, any time and every time I came across them, I realize what a purpose they served and perhaps silently and unobtrusively, even in the midst of seeming derision, these messages served to knit the heart of the country together.

Perhaps those who listened and imbibed those messages inspite of every thing had managed to keep the country around and united all these years. Those advertisements came to mind again after I heard of Harbhajan Singh being censured by first the Sikhs and then the Hindus for his act of “glorifying” Ravana through his actions on a television dance show recently. It made me stop and think as to how thin the walls of tolerance are in our country today. Of course the morality brigade on Valentine’s day has always been there but preoccupied these days by our following the increasing intolerance towards Muslims and Christians, we have forgotten the chilling fact, that these days it is not enough any more to be a Hindu alone in this supposedly tolerant of other Hindu beliefs, Hindu majority secular country. No – indeed you have to be a particular kind of Hindu.

This is no defense for Harbhajan Singh and Mona Singh and their conduct. Personally I would say that shows like Ek Khiladi Ek Hasina suck any way and ought to be condemned to death for their crassness any how, whether or not the duo purported to be Ravana and Sita jamming on stage. But, Ravana has been glorified before – by Periyar Ramasway of the Dravida Kazakham in anti brahminical protests and who saw Ram as a literary and religious symbol of bigoted racism and saw the tragedy of Ravana and Sita as symbolic of the plight of the millions of Dravidians in India who were stripped off their Dravidian (Tamil) language and victimised by the caste system as Shudras (lower castes) and Panchamas (outcast - untouchables).

Even concluding that Periyar was an unconventional man and an iconoclast, it speaks of the tolerance of the times that he was able to speak and talk and write thus. Besides Periyar, even in the main stream of Hindu thought Ravana was and is eulogized in places and even this year he was honoured and praised in Allahabad as a learned Brahmin following a tradition that reports say go back at last 500 years.

For that matter, you have to be a particular kind of Muslim too to count as one. Zia Ur Rehman, one of the terrorists nabbed from Jamia Nagar and interviewed by India Today. Zia spits at hi father’s conventional piety and says that he (his father) does not know Jihad for Allah and that he would happily plant a bomb in the market where his mother buys her daily provisions because she would get a fast track to jannat that way. Peering into the mind of the young jihadists caught in Delhi is a scary thing, for what you get there is not only a particular brand of religion that they practice but also a brand that refuses to acknowledge that there is any place in the sun for any thing that is not just like them and their way of life. Scary isn’t it?

Miley Sur, Mera Tumhara the advertisement or even the song might be passé, but I guess that the relevancy of the song is probably more today then when it was first composed and sung. For even as I write and you read, almost every thing around us is all set to divide, fragment and fracture that reclusive “unity in diversity” that we once so much took for granted.