Thursday, July 03, 2014
India’s got talent
Love the program which displays
talents of Indians and especially of kids. Then as an afterthought, the
question arose, do we really have talent? Is this talent displayed, what India
is only looking for? Yes it is good from an entertainment perspective, but what
about talent beyond entertainment. The whole concept of the show ‘India’s got
talent’ is a borrowed format, which means we don’t even have an original talent
format to showcase talents. Same goes with Indian Idol and many other reality
shows.
The point is why we are not
searching for talent for ‘nation development’. We have the US now snooping on
us, and we claim to be the IT talent source for the world. Where is the talent
to counter this? We pride in Indian origin people becoming CEO’s of
multinational companies globally. Where are the Indians from India scaling
these heights? To the extent Indian companies in India are hiring foreign
nationals to head their enterprise. Something is missing and it is definitely
not lack of talent, but avenues to nurture and build them. Our IT talent is
restricted to being ‘sweat shops’ for International companies, but no avenue to
nurture and build a Microsoft or an Apple. Our local produce gets packaged and
sold back to us by International brands like KFC and McDonalds. How many Indian
chains can we pride of any Industry, globally?
We lack political talent and this
is a ‘no brainer’, and this is no reference to only Rahul Gandhi’s brains, but
genuinely how many are competent? The ones in power are planning to curtailing
freedom of speech, where any challenging articles on the government or
politicians on social media can have a person booked under the IT act. At the
same time recently, we have politicians who terrorize people with consequences
of rape. We have whistleblowers killed. Questions under RTI, will have the
names of the people seeking it displayed at Municipal offices, further
frightening the common man from exercising his rights. If a picture of a
politician is displayed in bad light, the person who did it may not see the
light of the next day. Not that politics in India needed or had much of talent,
but we lack courage to make a change. Many don’t even vote, and especially from
the urban areas, so called the ‘educated’.
We lack spiritual talent, as all
religions teach us what is good and bad, but don’t teach us to have the courage
to challenge the ugliness in society. Religions have become more of ritual
obligation of appeasing Gods and making us blind to everything around.
Religious leaders (if there are any) look towards the government for quotas and
other benefits, when some of the religious institutions have funds that can
fund not just their community, but even fund social causes. On the contrary
more religious structures are built, and some on public spaces, and there is a
public outrage if they have to be removed for improving infrastructure.
Religion if it cannot have a ‘social impact’ is not religion, and the talent
towards ‘social religion’ is lacking. Religion has become such an obstacle that
we cannot have a ‘uniform civil code’. If we pride to be a secular country why
can’t religion not be restricted to personal domains of practice in the
religious houses of worship? Why has it to be a source to dictate morality,
law, or for that matter anything, which is in the space of governance.
All our alleged talents being
churned out from reputed Technical and Management Institutes are just being
trained for slavery in job markets. Very few make it as entrepreneurs, and the
irony is most of the entrepreneurs arise from not much of education and poverty.
There is no talent for taking risks or talent of courage. Everything is driven
towards success and not driven to allow people to fail and experiment. Thus the
lack of innovativeness. There are few who can lead, and everyone only wants to
manage. So we have Managers and not much of leaders.
Does India have the courage for
talent?
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