As the train was thudding across the tracks, I heard a vegetarian pony-tailed 50’s something man with curd rice in his hands, talk about how admirably his wife has grown into a Director role in a Public enterprise. His wife epitomized what we call a typical “mami” down south. Clad in a saree long enough to dress a group of children who were playing cricket in the grounds we passed by, she was serving “puliyogarai” & “pickle” to a group of vegetarian erudites. She was as much a part of the group like any other typical stereotype traditional Indian house-wife would. All of them in the group were quite similar in their mannerisms- brash and loose talking, highly educated, traditional in values yet high-flying achievers in the contemporary world.
I was keenly watching 2 little kids with a clear western dialect listen to music through an I-POD. Their parents were engaged in an intense debate on how the lady’s boss never let woman grow. He was empathetically listening to his wife rant away at what might be. She was talking about the need for HR to ensure that Managers do not have too much control over selecting the next line. A pity that he did not get an I-POD to close his ears out; if it already wasn’t.
What is that old saying- “A man can be physically present while mentally elsewhere? And a woman really doesn’t care for she is present and that’s all that matters.”
“Thought stimulates action”….. this chuk-chuk ride made me introspect and dissect the words of the country’s new found “sister from the heartland”. For her, everything boiled down to reservations. Be it on the basis of caste, creed, community, gender or economic status. All that mattered was reservation and that she believed was the simple answer to life’s complicated issues. How can a reservation solve the fact that large corporations fudge balance sheets? How can a reservation solve the fact that India’s fiscal deficit has far crossed the parliament accepted threshold of 2.5%? But, still it all boils down to reservation for the new found “sister from the heartland”. Whether you’re rich or poor, whether you’re an upper or lower caste, whether you’re a man or woman really does not matter when it comes to managing the financials of our country or the people within it. What is needed is empathy towards its peoples cause, awareness and knowledge of how to manage systems and tools necessary to further people’s wishes and a leadership that empowers and directs resources to achieve this goal.
Someone told me a fascinating story of why Bangalore really ticked and why work really got Bangalored….. He said this growth had little to do with the policies of the state or the support provided within (for it was the same everywhere) and more to do with the fact the government did nothing about this growth. I quickly queried this IT achiever on what he meant by that. He went on to accentuate that the best thing that the then government did was to let the IT sector handle things on its own and grow independently, devoid of any unwanted interference from government officials barring a few press conferences to announce initiatives which have since been shelved….
And today, companies within the same IT & ITES sector are introspecting the need for a gender discrimination bill. Audacious of an industry that has enough worries ranging from recession (both dwindling volumes & spiraling costs) and offshore taxation, amongst others, to worry about arriving at a common code of employment with respect to gender discrimination.
However sexist I may sound, to me it’s suddenly making recruiters and the people involved in it, conscious of the curves an interviewee possesses as against the aptitude and attitude they posses. And what’s more? This is also means exposing yourself to a whole suite of reservation needs- ranging from caste, community to regionalism. Remember you have been pushing the Raj Thackeray’s and Vatal Nagaraj’s need for regional reservation away in the behest of maintaining an industry devoid of reservation and focused on rewarding genuine achievements and proven competencies. Being born a man or lady is no achievement and that is nature. You expose yourself to any degree of vulnerability and remember you are opening a pandoras box which has no boundaries.
If people within the industry feel that some quarters are denying people of their rightful opportunities, then they should be taken to task, as is the case with any troughs in performance. Such people need to be trained, equipped and tracked for behavioral changes and HR plays a critical role in facilitating the same. Solution does not lie in preparing a guidelines document which invariably remains in a HR Policies portal or in putting a number to it. Solution lies in the heart of it- If there is discrimination, why is it present? Because people within the system have not been necessarily gauged on how un-biased they are on various counts, before being empowered to decide the future of another individual with whom he has no pre-existing relationship (A father could always consider that at some level he does play a role in defining his daughter’s life. Hence, the clear distinction of pre-existing relationship). The issues faced in our rural areas are much more intrinsic and related to history and how our society was unscrupulously divided on the basis of caste. How can you ever expect someone who has been discriminated against for generations to vote for someone who was a part of it, albeight indirectly. That takes generations of education, empowerment and confidence to erase and re-draw.
Providing people with a higher tax exemption or lower insurance premiums because they were born woman or by running ad campaigns with the best actors have really not helped in reducing female feticide or in increasing social acceptance in select North Indian states. Education and literacy is the only solution and have proved to have a direct impact on social acceptance. India’s most literate state- Kerala with a 1,000+ female to male population is a testimony to this.
Fortunately, our industry is run by the educated. But, why they convert themselves into educated illiterates when they are stuck in a traffic signal in Bangalore or Mumbai is anybody’s guess. This educated lot has withered many a storm by maintaining their independence of thought and pushing towards competency based recruitments as against age-old reservation based systems or manager driven systems filled with bias.
To roll out a reservation system in our industry or to roll-out a 33% reservation system in the parliament would be the worst possible gift we can hand-over to a host of women achievers ranging from Condoleezza Rice to Indra Nooyi, Kiran Majumdar Shaw and a whole generation of middle class Indian woman like my sisters who have most admirably managed work and home without a battling an eye-lid.
These individuals never needed a reservation and grew on the back of their hard work and skills and not on the basis of the gender they were born into. This has inspired a generation of youngsters- both men and women to further their career graphs based on performances and not so much on being at a level within an organization structure because there was no one from that gender present at that level.
I was keenly watching 2 little kids with a clear western dialect listen to music through an I-POD. Their parents were engaged in an intense debate on how the lady’s boss never let woman grow. He was empathetically listening to his wife rant away at what might be. She was talking about the need for HR to ensure that Managers do not have too much control over selecting the next line. A pity that he did not get an I-POD to close his ears out; if it already wasn’t.
What is that old saying- “A man can be physically present while mentally elsewhere? And a woman really doesn’t care for she is present and that’s all that matters.”
“Thought stimulates action”….. this chuk-chuk ride made me introspect and dissect the words of the country’s new found “sister from the heartland”. For her, everything boiled down to reservations. Be it on the basis of caste, creed, community, gender or economic status. All that mattered was reservation and that she believed was the simple answer to life’s complicated issues. How can a reservation solve the fact that large corporations fudge balance sheets? How can a reservation solve the fact that India’s fiscal deficit has far crossed the parliament accepted threshold of 2.5%? But, still it all boils down to reservation for the new found “sister from the heartland”. Whether you’re rich or poor, whether you’re an upper or lower caste, whether you’re a man or woman really does not matter when it comes to managing the financials of our country or the people within it. What is needed is empathy towards its peoples cause, awareness and knowledge of how to manage systems and tools necessary to further people’s wishes and a leadership that empowers and directs resources to achieve this goal.
Someone told me a fascinating story of why Bangalore really ticked and why work really got Bangalored….. He said this growth had little to do with the policies of the state or the support provided within (for it was the same everywhere) and more to do with the fact the government did nothing about this growth. I quickly queried this IT achiever on what he meant by that. He went on to accentuate that the best thing that the then government did was to let the IT sector handle things on its own and grow independently, devoid of any unwanted interference from government officials barring a few press conferences to announce initiatives which have since been shelved….
And today, companies within the same IT & ITES sector are introspecting the need for a gender discrimination bill. Audacious of an industry that has enough worries ranging from recession (both dwindling volumes & spiraling costs) and offshore taxation, amongst others, to worry about arriving at a common code of employment with respect to gender discrimination.
However sexist I may sound, to me it’s suddenly making recruiters and the people involved in it, conscious of the curves an interviewee possesses as against the aptitude and attitude they posses. And what’s more? This is also means exposing yourself to a whole suite of reservation needs- ranging from caste, community to regionalism. Remember you have been pushing the Raj Thackeray’s and Vatal Nagaraj’s need for regional reservation away in the behest of maintaining an industry devoid of reservation and focused on rewarding genuine achievements and proven competencies. Being born a man or lady is no achievement and that is nature. You expose yourself to any degree of vulnerability and remember you are opening a pandoras box which has no boundaries.
If people within the industry feel that some quarters are denying people of their rightful opportunities, then they should be taken to task, as is the case with any troughs in performance. Such people need to be trained, equipped and tracked for behavioral changes and HR plays a critical role in facilitating the same. Solution does not lie in preparing a guidelines document which invariably remains in a HR Policies portal or in putting a number to it. Solution lies in the heart of it- If there is discrimination, why is it present? Because people within the system have not been necessarily gauged on how un-biased they are on various counts, before being empowered to decide the future of another individual with whom he has no pre-existing relationship (A father could always consider that at some level he does play a role in defining his daughter’s life. Hence, the clear distinction of pre-existing relationship). The issues faced in our rural areas are much more intrinsic and related to history and how our society was unscrupulously divided on the basis of caste. How can you ever expect someone who has been discriminated against for generations to vote for someone who was a part of it, albeight indirectly. That takes generations of education, empowerment and confidence to erase and re-draw.
Providing people with a higher tax exemption or lower insurance premiums because they were born woman or by running ad campaigns with the best actors have really not helped in reducing female feticide or in increasing social acceptance in select North Indian states. Education and literacy is the only solution and have proved to have a direct impact on social acceptance. India’s most literate state- Kerala with a 1,000+ female to male population is a testimony to this.
Fortunately, our industry is run by the educated. But, why they convert themselves into educated illiterates when they are stuck in a traffic signal in Bangalore or Mumbai is anybody’s guess. This educated lot has withered many a storm by maintaining their independence of thought and pushing towards competency based recruitments as against age-old reservation based systems or manager driven systems filled with bias.
To roll out a reservation system in our industry or to roll-out a 33% reservation system in the parliament would be the worst possible gift we can hand-over to a host of women achievers ranging from Condoleezza Rice to Indra Nooyi, Kiran Majumdar Shaw and a whole generation of middle class Indian woman like my sisters who have most admirably managed work and home without a battling an eye-lid.
These individuals never needed a reservation and grew on the back of their hard work and skills and not on the basis of the gender they were born into. This has inspired a generation of youngsters- both men and women to further their career graphs based on performances and not so much on being at a level within an organization structure because there was no one from that gender present at that level.
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