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Father didn't live to see the cell phone world but he did have a BSNL landline installed late in his house at Gudur.
And according to him the dictum about it was:
"The more the communication, the less the interaction"
Here is a typical story:
An American corporate giant outsourced a major chunk of their software development work to Hyderabad as they found it much cheaper. Over a period of a decade they found that they were paying their Indian workers (resources) twenty times less than what they were paying each of their American counterparts to do the same job. But, in the long run, the productivity of their Hyderabadis was five times more than their countrymen stationed in their American cities.
And they were intrigued.
So they sent out one of their senior managers to visit Hyderabad, stay in a posh hotel for a fortnight, observe and study in depth the secret of the productivity of their Hyderabad arm.
The old lady jetted down here in Business Class and the first thing she jotted down was that the average age of the Hyderabadi worker was half that of their American counterparts pari passu.
And next she found that half the Hyderabadi workers were never found in their glum seats which were unoccupied at any given moment except in emergencies like a post-midnight deadline. Each chap was found standing behind some other chap helping him out in his programming glitches, watching from behind, and sometimes dragging his chair beside the other.
And every half an hour a gang of four or five would be found standing in a corner with their coffee cups, discussing things like cookies and interfaces.
And the managers and team leads were rarely found in their seats...they moved around, navigating across the floor helping guys out and setting fresh targets by the hour.
And the youngsters here were all slim, athletic, energetic, and bubbling with camaraderie.
And she contrasted the work culture here with her semi-obese American counterparts who arrive on the dot at their cubicles and then rarely move out, least of all to another cubicle. If they have anything to say or ask, they prefer to use their intercoms, and when cornered, they would hold formal group meetings in their conference halls.
And get tired and leave their desks right at the stroke of the evening hour.
The lady went back and reported her findings and tried to change the work culture of the Americans to get more interactive informally, and failed...they were scared about their personal ratings and assessments, not to speak of appraisals and hikes....
I could understand it well enough.
IIT KGP, where I taught and graded and doled out recos for 40 years, never had a 'relative grading' system which I am told IIT KNP had. I don't know if that was the reason for the occasional lower grades that KGP got in the so-called ratings of Indian Engineering Colleges, but KGPians who went out into the big bad world did no worse than KNPians in their professions, and must have enjoyed their lives equally well I guess.
There were times when I was in the 4th year lab at KGP and was taking the viva of a student, and the chap didn't know the answer to a question. And I used to ask him to go round the tables of his friends and try and figure it out. That was a learning experience for many, since they all used to descend on me for the right answer occasionally and I didn't have to teach everyone separately.
And I got back more questions than I could myself answer impromptu that made me think them out and publish them with my students...I once had four co-authors.
And in 1986 all the six of a batch of us Assistant Professors applied for Professorships and ALL of us were promoted...
Father would have loved our KGP & Hyderabadi work cultures...
...Posted by Ishani
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