Today’s editorial titled “Buffalo’s gain, Bangalore’s loss” in the new Indian Express (7 May 2009) took me down memory lane. Read on..
When I moved out of US in 1992, it was because of some early recessionary trends that I found quite disturbing. The trends were based on a few perceptions that I had picked during my stay. One was that of my grandfather who was vehemently against Indians underselling themselves in the US job markets. The second was my experience as a research scholar. Though I eventually got a full assistantship, my first one was a shared one (I don’t remember whether it was a half TA or 1/3rd TA). I silently worried – is this not underselling? Subsequently, thereafter, I worked hard to earn my full assistantship so that I could finish my doctoral research in four years (with the fourth being the most productive in terms of papers). This year also got me a job prospect with GE Kentucky sending me air tickets to finalize a possible job offer. However, before I could proceed, there was a hiring freeze. The GE official was profusely apologetic in requesting me to return the air tickets - which I did immediately. I heaved a sigh of relief because of two reasons – the first one related to my concern for Americans being sidelined in their own country and the second, my own low hassle tolerance limit in going through the immigration formalities for staying in USA on a work permit (which might have tempted me to go for a green card). I badly wanted to return to India. The first reason, however, was more significant. More so because I had seen the emotional conflict faced by some quite tolerant American graduate students during campus recruitments (where Indian students on study visas were taking away the jobs meant for Americans). Corporate America was not showing any concern for these job losses.
Postscript: Some may want to know – How does a person with such a low hassle tolerance limit continue to handle the hassles in a state like Orissa? A state which loves to ignore its own talent for outsiders?
I don’t have the answers yet. Perhaps a meet with the incumbent chief minister will unravel the answers (his late father was my late grandfather’s acquaintance and the above experience was possible because of their respective powerful personalities). Like any other common man of the day, it is not easy to meet the chief minister - more so when our political ideologies are so different [BJD taking a left turn definitely can’t have the same ideologies as that of a BJP supporter (i.e., moderate though progressive right-of-center and not the extreme right)....Please see the footnote inserted on 26 Aug 2009]. However, the only thing apparently common is transparency – but then TRANSPARENCY is a relative term. [Read my blog on Transparency in the Private Sector & How transparent is Transparency International India]
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NB (26 Aug 2009): The recent happenings in BJP are rather quite disturbing. They must be open to dissent and agree to disagree. Accepting constructive criticisms is healthy in a democracy.
