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?

Comments:
:)
 
Completely agree with you. Our thinking has to change. We have to stop the blame game. Become innovative. ..embrace adaptability. ...be willing to experiment and fail. ..and learn. Only then can we become leaders and lead effectively.
 
A very courageous n outrageous post, indeed! True too. As u said, We do have talent, but we r either too scared, stiffled, silent or succumbed to our situations to come out n do d needful. Glorious were d heroes who fought n got us our independance. Do we have d courage, d unity n d dedication now to fight for our freedom from such totally corrupt social vices plaguing our nation today?
 
You are right. We do not nurture creativity. We train people to by heart one set of answers to one set of questions. Even the great Narayana Murthy hardly speaks in favour of creative talents!

 
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