Extended Family

The following news item is published today in Economic Times, India. It could be an eye opener for the young professionals/would-be-professionals. The increasingly neglected value based family system has tremendous power which we are forgetting in our material pursuit. The news item tells the rest.

AMBITIOUS, YOUNG & SUDDENLY CLUELESS

Laid-Off BPO Generation Wilts Under Depression, Anxiety

Writankar Mukherjee KOLKATA


WHEN Rahul Kher landed his first job as a foot soldier in the then unassailable Indian IT brigade some two years ago, he thought he’d made it. The 22-year-old engineering graduate from Kolkata promptly moved to Bangalore, took up his job, and started planning ahead. It was 2006, banks were chasing successful youngsters like Rahul with easy housing loans, and he bought his first asset — a twobedroom apartment in South Bangalore. In August 2008, at the age of 24, Rahul married his childhood sweetheart Ishita, who moved in with him and got her first job in a bank. Things couldn’t have been better. Both Rahul’s and Ishita’s parents, in their 50s, were still employed, and the DINK (double income-no kids) couple began in right earnest to build up its dream home.
Ishita put all her savings — Rs 60,000 — into a 42-inch plasma TV that hung on the their living room wall. Rahul didn’t blink twice before taking another bank loan — to buy a new Alto.
And then their world came crashing down.
The top-rung IT company that Rahul worked for saw its clients — mostly mid-sized US banks — vanish as a series of bankruptcies began to hit Wall Street. A due diligence was in order to identify “non-critical” functions that could be downsized. Youngsters draw strength from family
ON November 10, 2008, Rahul got a call from the HR department. He, along with 20 others, had just been laid off. Two weeks later, Ishita lost her job.
In the couple of weeks that they remained in Bangalore, Rahul and Ishita sold off their apartment, the Alto went to a friend, and the plasma TV landed in the secondhand market for Rs 27,000. The couple moved back to the extended family in Kolkata.
Today, Rahul, 24 is a shattered man, under psychiatric help for depression at his family home where he now lives with Ishita.
Ambitious, young, and suddenly clueless, Rahul represents the underbelly of India’s famed BPO generation which only saw growth but now finds itself suddenly defenceless in a slowing economy.
“These young professionals were getting used to enjoying a comfortable life and a sense of freedom. The slowdown has hit them very hard,” says Dr Jairanjan Ram, consultant psychiatrist at Apollo Gleneagles Hospital in Kolkata, who is treating Kher.
And then there are those who had just a few months at the crest of the wave. Like Richa Sharma, 25, a masters in computer application from Pune, who got her first job at a prominent IT firm in June 2008, only to be put on the bench in October, and laid off in December.
Today, recovering from a nervous breakdown, Richa may take three more months to be her normal bubbly self, says her father Sudhir Sharma, a pensioner.
Leading hospitals across the country are reporting a wave of patients like Rahul and Richa, in their 20s, suffering from anxiety, depression and sleeplessness, all induced by a declining job market in a slowing economy. India’s economic growth is expected to slip to around 7% this year from an average of 9%-plus growth seen in the preceding three years.
“In the past three months, there has been a 25% jump in the number of such patients and the most common complaints are depression and anxiety,” says Dr Murali Raj, head of department of psychiatry at Bangalore’s Manipal Hospital. The city is synonymous with India’s IT boom and is home to some of the country’s biggest IT firms.
Hospitals in Mumbai also register a lot of women patients, suffering from depression. “Many of these girls are now postponing their marriages. The economic boom had created women’s empowerment in the job market, and with the slowdown, this is beginning to disappear,” says Dr Parul Tank, consultant psychiatrist at Wockhardt Hospital in Mumbai.
In Delhi, doctors at Escorts Hospital say they get about 7 to 8 patients a day with symptoms of depression induced by the economy. Says Escorts’ clinical psychologist, Dr Srividya Rajaram: “Their main concerns revolve around tiding over the career uncertainties. Several of my corporate clientele also suffers from depression and many confess they are going easy on their lifestyle. Some even want expert advice on how best to cope with such economy-induced lifestyle changes.”
KPMG’s head of human capital practice, Ganesh Shermon, affirms Dr Rajaram’s view but feels that Indian youngsters are still better off than their global counterparts. “The extended family system we have here and the social milieu help in such occasions,” he says.
Rahul, Ishita and Richa will agree.
After all, as the job market went into a sudden huddle, it was their families that came to their rescue.
“To me, it all (the job phase) feels like something that happened somewhere else to some one. And I have to thank my family for helping me land on my feet,” says Ishita.
“I am just waiting for Richa to be herself again. I will reason with her to choose a more stable career like teaching,” says Sudhir Sharma, Richa’s father.