Immediate Impressions of an R2I

Immediate Impressions of an R2I who is now doing R2USA

Here is an article that one of my acquaintance wrote immediately after returning back to India. He wanted to publish this in The Hindu, but that never happened. However, he readily agreed to post it in my blog.

Here comes the article verbatim, without my color commentary...

You cannot Change the system or the people, things are going to be the same no matter what you do!!!

Couple of months prior to me deciding to return back to INDIA from US, I had a chat with my manager. My manager at the US firm had already been dealing with IT people from INDIA since our company had started outsourcing part of IT jobs to INDIA. During the course of the conversation, it just came out of my mouth that once I go back to INDIA, I will have to tune myself to the way business is being carried out over their. My manager told me, “Don’t change yourself or the way you do things, try to change and better the system, since you know the pros and cons of both the systems”.

I returned back to INDIA and took up a job here at Chennai, and in the last five months since I have been here, I can recollect at least 10 times when people have told me – “You cannot Change the system or the people, things are going to be the same no matter what you do!!!” I am refusing to give up because I feel that if one puts up an honest attempt to change the way things are being done, he/she might ultimately succeed. Couple of incidents comes to my mind. Two of my uncles met with car accidents in my home town Kochi, in both the cases the truck drivers were at fault. The truck drivers involved in both the accidents pretty much told my uncles that they do not have any insurance nor is he going to give any compensation for the damages caused. He literally challenged us to register a case and fight it out on the court, knowing well that with the kind of legal system we have in INDIA, it is much likely that the case will get dragged for the next five to seven years. Cops who came to scene shared the same opinion of the truck drivers. I know that these are not isolated incidents and lot of us might have already dealt with similar situations in the past. I believe that, if we make a change in the legal procedures and make it compulsory for all drivers to have at least liability insurance and strictly keep a tab on drivers not having them, issues like this can be avoided. Liability insurance would ease the pain of the end user and let insurance companies handle the situation. Another thing which comes to my mind is our attitude towards keeping the public premises clean. In the US, people are conscious about throwing litter at public places. They look for dust bins and at least make an attempt to keep public places keen. Here there are people spitting in public places, throwing litter all over the streets as if they don’t care about the surroundings. All it takes is one little step forward, to locate a waste bin near you. I believe these are things which one could do to help our country improve and to make our country a better place to live.

But, for all this to happen every one of us should make an honest attempt in whatever way to correct the system as and when we see some room for improvement. The purpose of this article is by not to criticize a system or to tell that one system is better than other. There are good and bad aspects in any system you take. It’s up to each one of us to make a conscious effort to better the system by taking the good qualities of other systems.

ps: This article written about 7 months back and this gentleman has now decided to returning back to US. He agreed to respond to my questions on that subject. So, if you have questions to him on why he is going back to US, please to put them in the comment section and email me by this Sunday.