Prologue

In one of my travels, I got a good company. That gentleman was from Kurichikulam, near Thirunelveli and presently a program manager in Wipro.

We were discussing the plight of Indians abroad – Non Resident Indians (NRI) to Non Required Indians (NRI).

There were series of incidents that rocked me in the last one week and one thing or the other seemed to narrate the same tale.

Such instances, I believe, of synchronicity, that coincidences may have deeper meaning and relevance.

Tale of Small Cities

A person from Kurichikulam, near Thirunelveli, struggled his way up to Program Manager in a leading Software company- scaling up from a Govt.School, then an engineering degree in Govt. College, several job hops owing to company going bust or for better salaries. Back at home, father- a small time tailor and Mom and brothers in support of the trade to see at least one person get his full education. Choices were to wear the same cloth every day or wear a dress that is torn. That was him. Today, he owns a flat in Bangalore and requires to keep the job well maintained for the EMI commitments of Home and Car loans. Wife, a simpleton struggling in Pompous Bangalore managing the children and their ambitions.

Same with me or any of the migrants from a Tier 2/3 cities to Tier 1.

1. Now that, we counted on what we earned and what we saved. Balance sheet never shows a profit. WHY?
2. There is nothing called good health is left in the body. There is a no age left to continue any longer. WHY?
3. Sense of security and level of Commitments are determining the choices. WHY?
4. When there is a possibility of earning 9 crores with 1 Crore investment; It is not possible with INR 900 investment to earn INR 10,000 in a year’s time. WHY?
5. Place of work and Place of origin is different leaving the nativity and the loved ones uncared for. WHY?

In Seventies and Eighties, Indians went abroad – that we called Brain Drain.
In 90s- 2000, Villagers reached Cities – What do we call this?

The people who went abroad, when they returned back had turned supercilious, contemptuous and evermore judgmental. This social arrogance, is this brought about by fistful of foreign currency or social craze for foreign products? I hardly know. But that was retro time. I still remember an episode when a old time professor, whom I respect even as a kid then will retort to any one of those foreign returns he confronts – ok, with those money and exposure what is that are you going to do the society. I guess now, that it must have been jealousy.

Now the people are flocking capital or metro cities – for education, for vocation, for job hunt, for jobs, for a lifestyle……………………..or to be suffered, to be punished, to be distracted, to be permitting or strangled on economic or social contexts. Yet they come back on festivals or some good/bad occasions back home-(lovely home where the childhood was spent dreaming, playing and yet always in the warmth of the parenthood) - supercilious, contemptuous and evermore judgmental. The social arrogance is back with just fistful of 500 INR.

History repeats – But magnitude is changed.

The common thread is “THE OPPORTUNITY”.

As the water reaches to the slope; fly on the food, Flirts to cute girls – where there is Opportunity, there will be crowd. (India is highly populated, you see!)

But with the Crowd hovering on an opportunity – competition sets in; recommendations set in; entry criteria set in; rules set in; regulations controls and eventually the disappointment awaits the Under- served and undeserved.

Under-Served – it is a good coinage of a word and that interests me.
Un-deserved – may be the one of the choices the “Haves” have.

Who are Under – Served?

Under- Served are those who have their own (psychological), parental, social, physiological and above all, emotional challenges that are inherent in accomplishing their basic skills; Under-preparedness that can be attributed more to the external factors than to himself/herself.

If we get back to answer those “WHY” questions that might lead to the solution.

The struggle of life starts with the definition of “What is called an opportunity”?

For somebody a Turners job in Abu Dhabi is an opportunity. For somebody Turner’s training is the Opportunity. For few Sales Manager is the opportunity but for few nothing less than a Senior General Manager is an opportunity. An upcoming election is an opportunity for some and the demise of the candidate and a reelection is an opportunity for some.

Yesterday’s opportunity when achieved, no longer remains an opportunity for you. Opportunity always comes with the expiry date – whether you use it or keep under wraps, opportunity dies.
So when somebody is trying to conclude as what is an opportunity for him/her, he/she is tried with the challenges that are parental, social, physiological and his/her own attitude. Many succumb to make the first breakthrough as the opportunity that they were looking for. A week later their emotional and psychological well being is tormented and continuously harassed until they define again as what is the opportunity for them to be gripped again by growing Stress. Life is an Irony.

Opportunity= Fn ( Skill Sets, Money, Status, Place of work, Security, Propensity to Grow, Free time, Privileges and Freebies, Job Challenges, Supervisor )
(Presented in the order that majorly is the priority)

Skill sets, Status and Money takes precedence to the Place of work and so most of the educated people do not have choice but to migrate to so called big cities and as described earlier, strangely go through the evolution of process as an adult. Few survive, many lose. But survivors are made leading examples for more people to migrate. And the struggle is never ending. How?

This is how.

Lifestyle is to be created immediately to match with the profile. No mistake. But at a cost. Cost is to buy now and pay later than save now and buy later. This is a trap. Invariably falling in this trap also defined by a strong reasoning. RISING PRICES. But the economists say that trap is one of the reasons for rising prices. (More demand and less Supply). This keeps the Human machine to continuously run as if on a tread mill. This kind of run gives you bad health, poor appetite, more supports to sleep and above all more desire to live longer as there are EMIs to pay until 60 years old.

So…

What is the solution?

Opportunity should get equable than concentrated at a place.

Opportunities in learning, training and earning should be well distributed.

If your grandfather/father could be born in a place, where he grew to his potential, bred his family happily, concurred with the society, earned the respect deserved – these mean that he found his opportunities in the same place.

People travel on trains/buses for 2-3 hours. 6 hours gone. Minimum 6 hours of Sleep and personal time. Remaining 12 hours, companies demand 9 hours. 3 hours left to catch up with the children’s education, house hold work and search for a better job, better house, better deals, better…better… better… when turns bitter nobody knows. Once it turns bitter, to save on 2-3 hours of bus travel a neighborhood near the office is taken for rent. This erodes the pocket. Else, they end up in hospitals paying the medical bills as by then there would be pains in all the joints or gasps in lungs.

But for the Generation Next –opportunities are in US, Europe, Gulf, Australia or in New Delhi, Mumbai, Noida, Bangalore, Hyderabad or Chennai.

Education – I have heard people commenting on the educational standards as better in Bangalore than in small towns. Agreed. But the cost of that is INR 100K in Bangalore and INR10K in a small town with the decent syllabus. Is it Dream of India as dreamt by the Leaders of the nation?

A well educated person can never get retained in the homeland as where he was born. Because - lack of opportunities.
Could he be retained, his wealth creation will be better to what he could create in the migrated city. The reason is that there is no need for him to create the space for himself and attune to the lifestyle. If not for great wealth he could inherit the space that his family was occupying – when I say space, it is just not the place to stay.

Opportunity – is the key.

Education is the first door to be opened

Doors of education were closed not long ago. Just in the last 15 years it got closed. New schools with better standards – in varying levels of sophistication that much to meet the affordable ranges in the society need to be available. The sustainability is there for the management if well communicated to the society, well managed within and with quality of the teachers.

Does a big campus do any good to a college student as it were to school children? No. A college with good faculties and thorough attention is required to teach a program on commerce, science, arts or technology. The governing body’s prescriptions that demand mammoth infrastructure to approve an education institution never insists on the quality of the deliverables.

Engineering, Medical colleges mushrooming across – if the needed insight is passed on with the faculties from good background those in upcountry markets as well can do enormously good. The management should run the college to change the prevailing paradigm. The existing students and aspirants should appreciate and support. This is not just promoting the college they are studying but ensuring better lives for themselves.
There must be more land donation from the State governments and Gram Panchayats to go in for more Regional Institutes for technology research and training Partnering with the Public and Private partnership.

The Famous Doon School is in Dehra Dun,Uttrakhand. The illustrious history as started from mid 1930s is one of the story to be inspired of to build a good education environment as on those days the vision, the execution and most of all the hard work behind convincing people to travel to such a place to have education. We too have many hill stations around the Western Ghats or for that matter, why only likes of Rockford? Can’t a good school of international standards be on plains?

For that matter, the Regional and Indian prefixed engineering, management, technology schools should be opening up centers of excellence to carry out research and development out of Tier 2/3 cities.
Major advantage in this era is the independence from Brick and Mortar.

Employment – Second Door to be opened.

When education Diaspora is opened up the employments will also infiltrate.

Employments need to be created. People’s productivity need to be tapped at their respective places. If the qualified stay just at their place of birth, then for the kind of quality delivery won’t the organization come towards it? That is the fundamentals of the thought. There are reasons as why outskirts of Chennai belt were chosen by Ford, Hyundai and Mahindra. That is because of the talent pool created by the Industrial Estates and the TVS group of companies since 60s-70s.

Various vocational training centers if created by the glowing corporates for their respective fields that itself will help the people there trained and by the time trained the talented resources can serve the company. The developmental plans can get diversified to the rural belts.

Agriculture – Third Door to be opened.

Agriculture more than rain requires Capital infusion for technology based farming. Capital infusion required to convince the society that even agriculture is not a bad investment option. The kind of money eroded in the Stock trading in value every two or third year in the last 2 decades would be much lesser than what in Agriculture people might have lost since independence. (No facts or figures to support this claim, but definitely a hypothesis based on the chaos of Stock market madness).

Capital infused to get properly managed with development of proper training, adoption of cooperative farming, latest research inputs, support systems of supervision, pre harvest conditioning, time to market and post harvest treatments and storage. In developed countries, the loans are provided to the farmer to lay a road to ensure easier/quicker time to market of his produce in as much as no interest for a very large tenor. This example is to highlight the importance they give against the importance in India we associate with very agriculture, development or their farmers well being. There is also enumeration of demand done for a town/society. The Production plans for the domestic consumption depend on the demands in the neighboring society.

Conclusion

The businesses that are staged in the Tier 2/3 for the production and consumption are having a strange stage in their business lifecycle. The demographics are facing a vast change that what is been depicted of India in Nandan’s book Imagining India. Somebody with very little education dreams and works hard to move to Gulf for menial jobs and so he ends up after a visit with the small shop or the kinds. Somebody with the graduation or so does innumerable computer courses and writes all possible government sponsored exams and invariably settles for a sales job in which he can never progress as he is the one who turns the first available breakthrough as his opportunity. One who plans and performs gets out of the small town to face tough challenges in the career in a bigger city in a better role. Other set of people who go through the dreams of making after PG ends up searching for a good job in the big city only. Even PG courses he does it in style in bigger cities. The left overs could be school dropouts or those who can never be fitted in a paradigm and they are strays. They can surprise with smart businesses; right marriages can land them in different league; or they rule the land as politicians.

But as for production of goods/services there are none in the society of the age group of 17-40 years.

Then is this a consumer market? The answer is Yes, for that matter whole of India is a consumer market for Globally branded and Asian manufactured goods only. But for now, the people working in bigger cities create the businesses for those there in those bigger cities – for their consumptions, usage and most of the times for their loved ones too.

The families with old age people or very early age throng the streets and roads and they live on leaving a huge dependency on the person earning big sum from a bigger city. So the Tier 2/3 can never propel itself to a bigger league even as a consumer market.

Naturally, the Big cities even become more bigger making the commutation more problematic, disappointing civic obedience, increasing the oil consumption, increasing the pollution, degrading the water levels, increasing the land values, poor creation of wealth leaving almost nothing for the heirs, kids missing the time to sleep and play on the travels, the poor aged parents unable to adjust wait for festivals to come to meet the cherished ones, more accidents as more unregulated overnight journeys, middle men looting the end user by hiking the price of consumables otherwise he would perish and the list is endless.

Today’s society is moving towards – Few and Centralized for the Goodness; Rest of all and Common for Badness. Before this becomes the order of the society we may have to take efforts to change.