Switching Task

I wished to continue with the fun spirit of earlier post or wait for a sunny day that would have brightened the spirit (switch to last segment to see why I say this). Wished to tell in the same non-serious tone that the worst I feared as outcome of 'Mission Independence' (Link) had happened; after cooking food and eating the same for one week. I gained one kilogram of weight. Yes, there used to be wrong estimate on quantity of rice. But, more important reason had been, couldn't throw away any food even if it was in excess and swallowed the same. Can do that easily when someone else puts her effort in cooking, to set aside excess food-stuff when I am full. Which part of our brain plays the trick, fools us ... develops attachment for own doings even when it is beyond proportion defying all logic?

We three colleagues were on our way to Kolkata. How to handle work pressure, various expectations was one of the topic in our journey. The wonderful teacher-student relationship, the respect IIT teachers command from students are largely due to devotion the students see among teachers, the amount of effort, the hours they put in, the multitudes of responsibilities they handle.

IITs started with an aim of providing right manpower to industries in post-independence era. UG teaching was the focus. The brand it created asks not to disown this family jewel. But the world has moved on. UG engineering teaching is taken care of by many. The focus is getting shifted to PG students (Masters and PhD guidance other than their coursework). But we do not have postdocs in our research lab.s. Thus, the canvas of the role of a teacher is huge (UG to PhD, taking care of academic and psychological needs of students from 18 year old to 30 year old in a walled campus). It encompasses interaction within and outside classroom, assignments, answer-script checking and other evaluations, minor and major projects ...

Getting funded projects and servicing them as per timeline and to the satisfaction of sponsors through project staffs coming from Tier-2 engineering colleges is a challenge. IIT faculty are supposed to serve various national level responsibilities by conducting various training programs for others, setting question papers of various kinds, serving various committees, evaluating and guiding funded projects conducted by others, establishing lab.s, setting curriculum etc.

There are review work for thesis, journal, conference articles, patent documents. There are recommendations to be given to current as well as ex-students applying to various places. There are research collaboration at national and international level and one needs to interact with collaborators, visit their places, host them.  There are large no. of administrative responsibilities at Dept., Institute level and beyond. Some faculty members contribute by writing text/research books for which they have commitment to publishers and need to adhere to publication timeline. For IPs filed, one needs to explore commercialization opportunities.

Besides, in a rapidly changing technology space one needs to study oneself to keep one updated as regard to UG/PG courses being taught, the research work carried out by leading universities / lab.s / industry in his area of interest and the broad area.

Finally, they have a family to take care. They have passion for extra-curricular and society at large. They cannot take their health for granted. And they have 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week like everybody else :-)

How to switch from one task to another? Remember, you are handling youth, the best and brightest of the country, and the nation banks on them. One cannot be casual in one's approach. An insincere job will be hugely costly for the nation. Standing by each other, encouraging / motivating each other, sharing the vision and experience, building team spirit, excellence in work environment and the highly sought after freedom, friendly and supportive atmosphere are behind whatever little that could be done to face these challenges.

Thanks to all. The first and foremost is of course our excellent student community. No amount of praise is enough. If there is any aberration, it has more to do with inability to set a new goal once they enter IIT. Cracking IIT-JEE was dream from childhood. What next? Faculty, Parents, Alumni, Senior students, all need to work together to help the young 18 year old set the next goal, the next dream, and how to achieve it; switching to a new role and task. Next, parents / guardians have great respect for IIT system which helps. But there is more scope for them to engage with faculty advisor and monitor progress from 1st semester itself. Call it parent-teacher meeting akin to schools, call it any other thing - but they are important stake holders and are in a position to influence. We can sow dreams in them too, how much their ward can do and they can inspire / motivate in turn. The faculty and non-faculty colleagues are excellent. If someone does not feel the pressure, it is because of them. There is always a helping hand. People who are part of the support system who are drawn from neighbourhood - shopkeepers, maids, service staffs from electrical maintenance to sanitary have such a pleasing personality; it makes our job easier. No amount of 'Thanks' is sufficient for family members. They understand, appreciate our responsibilities. Rarely you will hear, "You have time to take care of others but your own kid."

On individual plane, I find that the lessons on Pratyhara and Dharana from study circles are helpful. An excellent article of Vivekananda can be found here (Link). The article is useful for everyone who wants mastery over mind and its various tricks.

For quite sometime I wanted to write something on changing social structure, family values ... desire for personal space, better things in life ... losing grip over of patience, tolerance .... the idea of 'self before everything else' ... till sometime back separated parents fought each other over custody of child, the other day the newspaper reported a case where none of the parents wants custody of the child as they separate (Link1, Link2)... it started with nuclear family concept which kept uncles, aunt out; then ageing father / mother were kept out; then husband wife stopped seeing each other, and now off-springs are obstacles to have 'good times' in life  ... it appears that, the younger a person, the more is the ease and pace to disown a relationship and disregard advice / suggestion / feedback, the ego is higher ... it is so sad, it is so painful in the land where 'sacrifice' and 'service' were the twin pillars which held the society together ... need to ask, what we are getting educated at, are we not ignoring those family jewels ... can we call ourselves educated ... Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there .... The training by which the current and expression of will is brought under control and become fruitful is called education ... says Vivekananda. 



My elder sister says that there were always challenges. But tolerance level was higher to tide over a crisis phase which is cyclic in nature. Now we have become more fragile. The relationships are casualty. We have breadth, but we lack in depth. We have knowledge, we lack wisdom. We are after Preya (pleasure driven) and not Shreya (welfare driven). We look for maximizing today, we do not care for investing in tomorrow. We care for matter, we do not care for spirit.

May we develop the strength of character which stands the trials of life, the test of time. May we all be blessed to overcome challenges being humane in our approach. May we be at peace with ourselves and society around.

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.