I have mentioned that I am slightly allergic to the corporate life. I will try to explain. The money is good in the corporate world, but you feel confined to something. Especially since the mind has no boundaries anything that is binding to the present and intensely so is difficult for me. Being controlled and also having to control others are both uncomfortable for me.
Having to achieve is not difficult for me as long as the targets are for me and set by me. The nearest thing that comes to these is academics, even own business would mean give in to the needs of the customers or be left in the race. For all these reasons I find the corporate life unsuitable for me.
It is not indeed that I dont like or have not taken anything from the corporate world. The objective drivenness of the corporate world is somehting that I like. The disciplined ways are also so.
What I hate is perhaps the state of being confined mentally which drains me. Instread, I like to let my mind loose like a butterfly simetimes savouring, sometimes exploring, sometimes wondering and always moving to the next idea and to the next hypothesis and the confirmation or the rejection and so and so forth and the little surprises of a fresh idea or a recombinaiton of a few older ideas that makes a brainy day.
Public sector
The public sector is a vestigial remnant of the early days since independence when India embraced socialism. The period of our post graduation was the beginning of the decline of the fancy with such remnants with the new economic policy of Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation (LPG for short) of Manmohan Singh who is presently the Prime Minister.
The new scenario was the dream of many like Nani Palkhivala who I remember in a TV interview actually wept at the reality of India chained up in the erstwhile policy of protectionism. I have always wondered what if India embraced a more globalised free enterprise at independence itself. Would it be a superpower? Would there be no poverty and jobs aplenty for everyone? Would the social fabric be different from the present? It is difficult to say. But I have the feeling that I would have been more of a local entrpreneur rather than an employee since the culture of entrepreneurship would have permeated our society. I believe there is a critical minimum for such kind of free enterprise to be widely prevalent. Also the social fabric would have been much more individualistic.
I have started about life at Indian Oil Corporation and veered off. The group of trainees to which I belonged was composed of 14 trainees . Except me everyone was from the Engineering stream. But I never bothered and did keep my eyes and ears open although no extraordinary effort was given. I was indeed happy that at the evaluaiton I had a coupleo f Engineers behind me. My idea about Engineering graduates was completely different from what I had witnessed. First they did not have any curiosity. Second they had no real sense of ethics or the polish of professional course. Perhaps I was expecting too much. I had a notion of the training to be completely transforming like the "Officer and a Gentleman" kind but none of such happened.
Instead it proceeded at the then Hindu rate of growth. Our Executive Director was Mr. A.K. Arora who later became the Director Refineries and somewhere towards the middle of the one year training he convened a meeting of all of us and asked "what is the value addition per unit time"? I got a fancy to it and developed a notoin of the measurement of training in terms of time and also the idea of value addition.
The shuttling between the refinery and the township in the refinery bus, sort of confirmed the kind of people we were to work with. Since the Refinery was commissioned in the early sixties and this being the early nineties most of them were on the verge of retirement. And except very few who were really smart never learned anything new and confessed they were mentally retired. Also the mental retirement had a direct link to the fact that they need not expect any more promotions. The link between reward, performance and behaviour was at the best of tether.
Thinking about working with the dinosaurian legends was horrifying. Besides I was just aquiring the spoken Hindi.
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