Back in Hyderabad, i met a guy named Smruti Parida, we got talking as we were from the same Junior college in Bhubaneswar (BJB); him being a couple of years senior to me; we became friends travelling in the same company bus from banjara hills to gachibowli, discussing crazy tech ideas over coffee and getting drunk at Club 8 over the weekend, guess i had a great time with him and i respected the person inside him as his soul was that of a true techie, a person with shrewd insights and someone who was great fun talking to.In one of our drinking sesssions in club-8 when deccan chargers was being taken to the cleaners we started discussing about innovation heads up.I said that "Germany had built the rourkela steel plant in 1950s and after 50 years of india producing 50 batches of metallurgical engineers from IITs,NITs and other prestigious colleges, they had to come back in to remodel it, shameful ,but that is just a trailer,we have engineers in every field but our in house expertise in none. Our engineers do most of the innovative work in most of the MNC's but still except a few silver lines like Tata motors etc we summarily don't build anything, we have all this hype as a booming economy because we are like the office of this world, a billion people who would take up any job and work as anything, almost every engineer ends being a coder and every manager ends being a consultant,so how do u expect us to be able to make active contributions in creative fields like manufacturing, research papers,patents, etc when we pick up any job that comes our way, coz if we don't someone else will. He said" It is not the population which is a problem, india has lot of people way too smart way too secure to take their set of risks, in the last 6 years some of the big companies of the tech world could be youtube,facebook, twitter,netvibes,37signals etc.These companies were started by 25 something old americans and then turned into multibillion projects,what have we done as the most educated 20 year olds in this country,maybe our creativity has been killed by 200 years of subordination or maybe it is a little too early , and we are expecting too much." I didn't agree to the last line that he said, come on!! what does creativity have to do with subordination.
Deccan lost to bangalore we were drunk like hell and had a great time, but this point kept distubing me,is creativity connected to ego. This is his blog about that:link
Few months later ,I happened to see Larry Page's commencement address in the University of Michigan .(link)Please watch it if you haven't, it is heart rending and makes u bow down to the the greatness which created google. In a section of the speech he says, My grandfather who was a assembly line worker used to drive my dad around this place and tell him "son this is where you will come down to study, that was the american dream and my father happened to come here and went on to become a professor here". In the next generation Larry happened to go to join Michigan and ended up being a PHD drop out to create google. Hmm , the story of strength and honour, the tale where characters believe in the pursuit rather than the sit and wait of happiness.It is this restlessness to go after one's happiness is what created america,it is this restlessness which is like a trademark of modern india, as some one put it, the life of a modern indian who disagrees to be in a sarkari naukri, who doesnt settle for a "contentment is happiness" formula, who doesn't settle down with best MNC's (if you knew the attrition rate at Microsoft and Google India , you would agree with me), who is a hypocrite as he is caught between his logical mind and a conservative upbringing(watch DEV D, u will get wat am saying) is underlined with just one characteristic: "restlessness", no hopes no dreams but an infinite possibilities.
Thatz modern india.
So yes,subordination affects creativity as it directly affects your ego, it hampers the confidence of those before you those smarter than you and hence yours too.(Vivekananda and Gandhiji were just exceptions). So yes 60 years hence this is the Indian dream , which university i will join, which scholarship i will win, which job i will get, which hottie i will land up, which place i will get to.I am sure there must be so many gradutes who must be looking at an IIM/IIISC/TIFR and telling themselves this is where i want to come and study, like Page's father years ago, there must be so many who would have promised themselves that one day they will end up working for apple.That is the Indian dream, the then american dream.
But there are exceptions to this rule, a 60 year old built the first Electronis voting machine and india had the first e-elections, it is called india's pride world's envy, a bunch of grad students at IIT Chennai built the cheapest ATM machine a bunch of 24 year old IITians came up with Adam the I-pad killer, nothing world shaking but we are getting there, from being third world to dreaming of a good life, to actually getting there, from chasing mirages to becoming a generation of go getters some time in the future.
Thatz the development life cycle of dreams.
