For all those who work in those Indian IT corporations believing to be the center of all activity and those who stand outside with awe at the mirror floors, glassy walls and “Hi-Tech” buildings:
A spindle shaped lady of forty, spindle shaped, since her middle is enormously huge compared to her extremities, enters a superstore to buy her cheese and beef (it is very much possible that she believes that cheese and beef always came in packets), she enters into a fight with the counter for some unknown injustice inflicted on her by the product. The store owners make a decision to change their inventory control – they make a request to their IT service providers – centered in Bangalore or Chennai or Mumbai and there is a whole bunch of Indian Engineering students – after solving their runge kutta equations, calculating indefinite number of indefinite integrals for calculating Fourier series (not knowing what exactly it means) for four years – now sit in front of computers working on oracle – sql – data mining – database – SAP – for one whole month night and day – to get the inventory on deadline to the US superstore so that the spindle lady is no more annoyed.
I am not exaggerating – the bitter truth – Numerous Von Neumann’s ‘computing machines’ grand grand children are nowadays only used to build better supermarket managers, inventories for manufacturing giants , from Boeing to Gillette to build banking soft wares for the unbelievable number of banks that have today gone bankrupt.(excuse me for not including the you tubing, gaming and movie downloading)
It is right after hurricane hit her city and the superstore is out of stock. There is a truck and three men with a camera and a lady with a mic outside asking our spindle lady how the after effects of hurricane are and she is furious and self pities that her life is horrible because there is no ‘ice’ and she has to stand in a queue to fuel her car.
And all those glassy walled offices with the white collared ‘IT professionals’ are sweating blood to make those superstores, banks, shaving cream and credit card people of the US or Malaysia or Singapore the so called ‘developed’ countries have make more and more marginal profit, in turn cheating their own country men.
In return the engineering student who spent four years in some namesake engineering college with all professors less than 40 yrs old, running around in his bike, watching movies and teasing girls is now called an ‘IT professional’, gets paid 50 to 100 times more than is father did at his age, he gets to buy the costliest cars and build lofty homes and send his kids to the ‘best’ schools. ‘Best’ because the schools teach MS Excel and Java in fifth standard and have a swimming pool and a different uniform everyday of the week.
If this is the story of a IT professional, what of the thousands of call center workers? Two girls think it ‘cool’ because all they have to do is talk in American English so that they can eat pizza spending what can feed a family of four for 5 days, wear ‘branded jeans’ and talk back at their parents since they earn more than them.
No way they have realized branding is selfish gesture – what men used do to their cows with hot iron rod- it is the same branding that is done on our shoes, pants, bags and what nots, and people sport it with pleasure.
If you tell any of those above people they are letting themselves to be cheated, that they are blinded from truth, you would be a 'total bore' who does not ‘enjoy’ life.
Oh these slaves!
6 comments:
A part of the problem lies with the parents and our society as well. Both of them force youngsters to concentrate only on studies, though they are good at arts or sports or other areas. So, parents make these kids join those namesake engg college thinking of this fat salary. Because the kids have gone through this unnecessary pressure to do something which they did not like, they take it out on their parents once they start earning.
Slaves are not born, they are being made!!
Ouch! There is a decent side to the story too - like many IT folks working for social causes, being confident people. Just coz the evil side is stronger doesn't mean there is a good side. And passion may not be analogous to slavery. No?
Am sorry if I hit a few sensitive areas. Am not saying IT people are bad and the industry is outright evil.
Am saying the industry is causing the growth of a materilistic value system.
In a society where the Engineer did not get paid excessively more than a lawyer, architect or general physician, IT popped in all of a sudden and led to the appearance of these 'IT professionals' who are globe trotters, with more money in their pockets than they can spend (Most of them). Tell me honestly, if you dont beleive that IT pays its people more than they are qualified for? Hasnt it led to a needlessly high buying capacity which the consumerist oriented industry is exploiting? Dont you see a wide sector gap? Do your farmer, architect, physician and teacher friends - no way doing a job less qualified than you earn as much as you as an IT person do? You can argue about the employment oppurtunities, upliftment of middle class and the 'globalization' - but you cannot hide or deny the sector oriented growth, the economic gap widening , the poverty, the carbon emissions and the material loving value system it has caused or created.
IT, Investment Banking and a few other professions are going thru the same transition that Law, Teaching, Medicine were going thru sometime ago. Though there is no denying the sector oriented growth, would there be a resolution without a conflict?
What is that tranformation? I missing something there.
You can try to pay the IT guys less, which means a downward trend in economy because the IT companies would either make huge profit out of this or they should start charging their clients less. Both not possible. You could raise the payscale of all other servies/fields which also sounds silly becuase if it were possible it would have happened. Which will mean that the whole of the well payed community will become a 'Huge potential market' for the capitalists of the west. Which means we will again end up with the very rich and and the very poor with a huge gap inbetween. I really dont know what the solution is. But I have feeling which says this wont go on for long.
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