When we were informed about the lecture naturally we thought it would
be like one of the many we were forced to attend .These lectures are
like compulsory electives, you don’t have much of a say when it comes to
attending them. As we sat there waiting with the presumption that this
lecture would be as interesting as watching paint dry .Dr. Harish
entered the room and he was introduced and asked to speak … the way
every lecture normally begins .I was already sleepy when he started
speaking. As moments passed I found myself subconsciously paying apt
attention to every word he was speaking. There was something different
about this lecture. It was like we were the disciples of a preacher who
was preaching the ways to do good to mankind.
He started with
humor, he spoke about his experience in the electronics lab in his
1stsemester, he explained how the professor in the lab used to “rag”
him.He used to come to check the circuits 10 minutes before the lab
would end and pull out all the wires saying that they were not connected
tight enough, and when the report was submitted he used to throw it out
of the window and ask where the report had gone, when the student
answered outside he used to say “Follow it”. He referred to his hostel
mess as the “research and development lab” where they were the lab
rats.He then told us about his viva voce in his final year. He said that
it was like the final frontier for any person, meaning, once you have
faced it, you have the confidence that you can do anything in life. The
way you are humiliated by the profs for those 2 hours and 45 minutes,
nothing else can phase you more. All this felt relatable and it made us
feel like we were all seated and our senior was sharing a light moment
with us and like this, he gained everyone’s complete attention without
addressing the topic of social entrepreneurship .He playfully remarked
about the wide choices an IITian has when he graduates- to go for either
an IAS or a MBA or a PhD and nothing else.While humoring us he suddenly
said something that jump started the thought processes which were in
deep slumber till then. He said that we are all pampered products of
subsidy .That rattled my cage a little more, he further explained that
we are studying in such an institution and paying such low fee because
there is a farmer out there who is earning Rs20 a day, our fee is
subsidized because the poor people out there pay taxes.The electricity
you get is priced as such becausea coal miner earns Rs30 per day. He
then asked us what we have done in turn for the people without whom we
would not have been able to afford such an education. He stressed that
our true benefactors lose out everything and more when they invest in
us.
This fact was true but it was also something my heartwas not
ready to accept, the words literally were dragging me out of my comfort
zone. I was having trouble accepting these facts, it felt like a
confrontation was underway between my brain and my heart. I was always
made to believe that now that I was in an IIT I would secure a good suit
and tie job in an MNC with an AC cabin etc. and that by doing so I was
contributing to the growth of the country, and suddenly a person comes
up to me and says that you are not contributing to the growth instead
you are just feeding on it. This was not what I had in mind while
attempting JEE or rather I was made ignorant of this fact. My heart
which was fed tales of woo by the society told me otherwise, it argued
that you are the cream of this country you are the chosen ones and all
other such rubbish that was only taking me further away from the truth
that we have failed this country . Later my head won after being
provided the proper arsenal by Dr. Harish. He said that some of the
employees in his company were middle school dropouts and they performed
the tasks brilliantly whenthe cream of the country( we IITians) often
could not even comprehend the problem. He said that he had stopped
taking IITians as trainees in his company for the very reason that we do
not know how to solve practical problems. And the reason we do not know
how to solve these problems is that we do not know or rather do not
want to know what these problems are. He says that we do not know our
country or its problemsand that we are oblivious to the fact that
thereare such problems even in our modern and developed states. Also we
have introduced a certain hierarchy which we are more than happy to
blindly accept. We think we are better than everybody and our job is to
hand out instructions in the form of plans and PPT’s to the so called
lesser minds who will carry out the manual labor and complete that
which we have virtually created. Dr. Harish made us realize that this
was one of the reasons we do not excel in the real world. He did so by
narrating his experience with two undergraduate teams one from the IIT’s
and the other from Oxford. At first the IITians were given the chance
to create an efficient thresher, after one month of excuses like “Sir,
welder kaam nahi karta hai”, “Sir, ye village mein equipment theek nahi
hai” etc. they failed to complete the task. Then the undergraduates from
oxford were given the same task and they performed brilliantly ,he
reasoned that this was not due to some kind of gap in intellect but
rather it was because the IITians gave paper plans to the welder and
told him to make the thresher, whereas in the other team, the
undergraduates from oxford included the welder in their discussions and
they worked with him instead of asking the him to work under them. He
was a part of their team rather than being some random welder who works
for them earning daily wages. Something which again struck the right
notes in the brain to make us think on the right track. Why have we
forsaken the poor of our country? Why can’t the brightest minds find
solutions to the smallest problems of the country? Is it because deep
down we want them to remain where they are? Are we afraid that the
tables will turn? Or is it that we just don’t care?
After
listening to this lecture it was like being pulled out of the cryo sleep
which I was in till now. It was like being freed from a cage. Like
someone had forced open the cocoon of a butterfly long overdue to spread
its wings and fly. He had surgically cut open the bubble that society
had placed me in to blindfold the truth. He made me realize that now is
the time to do something about it and that we are the ones who ought to
do it. It was a wakeup call to all of us who just thought about white
collar jobs and he made us realize that we, being the so called “
brightest minds of the country” need to step up and pay heed to the call
of needy and poor and to address the real problems of the country. We
need to remember that sleeping through the storm does not delay the
inevitable; similarly turning a blind eye to the problems of the nation
does not mean you won’t be caught in the web someday. It is up to us to
strike the iron when it is hot. The relation between people of this
country and the students is like that between parents and their
children. The parents feed their children, ensure they get good quality
education, live comfortably etc. till the child can support him/herself
then it becomes the duty of the child to look after his/her parents.
He
then stated that India is a paradox in the sense that it is both over
and under developed .He then said “Okay let me ask the bright minds here
to present a solution to the following simple problem. In a village
with no electricity and heavy rains where clothes do not dry up if
washed, come up with a device that can dry the clothes”. He said that
this was the problems in one of the so called developed states of our
nation. We were silent and he smiled. He then moved on to the topic that
he was actually called to talk about social entrepreneurship he said
that the best example was a street vendor. He asked if there was anyone
present in the room who could write a business plan for a street vendor?
None, he again asked if we had ever heard of a street vendor go out of
business? Not once, the bandhs the rallies the calamities do not come
into the profit equation of a street vendor. He explained that a street
vendor has to take Rs 1000 from the money lender at 3 in the morning at
10% interest rate, she then has to decide in which community she will
sell vegetables today, she has to buy vegetables according to what
people in that community consume… this is called market segmentation. At
8 pm she has to then decide which rates to increase and which to
decrease as she doesn’t have the facility to store the vegetables. She
then has to return the money to the money lender at 10 pm and extra Rs50
for the “Thela” another Rs50 as “Hafta” to the police and after all
that she has earned enough to feed her 3 children and send them to
school. After listening to this we were dumbstruck. Never do we look at
the street vendor and say look at that ingenious business plan, never do
we respect them like we respect any other business entrepreneur in the
news, where in fact the street vendor deserves more. The vendor had
managed to earn amount x when she had nothing to begin her venture with.
Meaning if we look at her gain percentage, it amounts to infinity. Some
of the present day entrepreneurs already had an existing capital
investment to back them in the expansion of their business when they
began. They inherited an X00 crore company and managed to make it Y00
crores, by either starting new branches or new businesses. The gain
percentage exists but is finite. An entrepreneur with a fortunate past
is respected more by us than a street vendor with an unfortunate past
and an uncertain future who risks everything he/she has, to gain a
meager income every day, not knowing whether he/she will be able to pay
back the money borrowed from the money lender. This shows how ignorant
we are or rather we like to be about anything and everything around us,
we fail to see that it is the people like the street vendors who hold
the philosophers stone that alchemists have been long searching for.
He
concluded by saying that “You can never design an efficient system
based on Excel Sheet and Power Point!!! You must TRAVEL, TRAVEL and
TRAVEL to learn and get a solution to a problem rather than fitting a
problem to a solution!“
-By Akhil Shukla, UG Second Year
