The problem of Plenty

The problem of Plenty


Once I had a opportunity to meet the HOD of electrical department at the Indian institute of technology. He was the most revered and dynamic professor I have met until today in my life(Everyone of us in our life have one like him). I asked him why was the lecturer community in the country a crippled one. Always a lecturer in an engineering college is someone who failed to succeed in every level of his career and finally ended up becoming a lecturer out of desperation?

He had a beautiful explanation to it. He said that my observation was very correct when it comes to the numerous self financing colleges all over the country, but not to institutes like IIT’s. He had two interesting conclusions to this.

1) A professor at IIT or any other top ranked university in the world is respected because of his continuous reach to update his knowledge and almost synchronously share with his student community. Alongside he inspires each one of his students to innovate. This explanation of his was to support the student community and prod at the teaching community at various colleges who don’t aim to enrich their knowledge.

2) On the contrary the second reasoning of his was to say that the enumerable educational institutions that have opened up in this country have encouraged everyone who is jobless to turn to a lecturer.

I wanted to draw a line of parallelism (the two reasoning’s) to the IT industry. If the institutions where driven by lecturers, the IT industry was driven by Managers.

As this industry has started to grow in size, the quality of the input in the form of both entry level employees and managers is declining. The managers are rarely inspiring in their attitude. And the heights, every employee feels his manager does not deserve the position. There is always a stint of envy that looms over the mind of the subordinate over his manager.

On the contrary rarely can we find a case where a student feels envied of his lecturer’s position and fame. The student always admires his knowledge. There is a feeling of immense gratitude and respect that flows when the student thinks of his revered lecturer. But the same is not reflected in the manager – employee relationship.

I think this is one issue that needs to be thrown enough light on and researched. In many Indian IT companies this problem is imminent. Do we want the admired Indian IT companies to become like those numerous engineering colleges in our country?

This is what I call in India- The problem of plenty….