India's New Era Corporates: Pressurized Employees and Failing Customer Care !

Ever since India's economy shifted its gears for fast forward economic growth under learned political leaders and economic advisors like Shri Man Mohan Singh and Shri Montek Singh Ahluwalia, India has seen the birth and growth of hundreds of new era corporates. All these began to happen in the Nineteen Nineties. These companies began to provide employment opportunities to millions of young Indians, a thing which never happened before in India in such measures during its existence in the previous forty years after it became a republic.

One of the major shift that took place in this new economic culture was the importance of service sector over primary manufacturing or production sector.

Services like computer software development, banking, financial services, Telecom Services, Tourism Services, Medical Services, Transport Services, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services, etc which predominantly depended on Information Technology (IT) for existence and growth soon surpassed the core industries in the production sector.

The hardcore technology for initiating this growth came from the developed world where companies like Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Siemens, Motorola, etc got the opportunity to create a scenario in which their products have become inseparable items for sustaining economic growth.

Potentials for growth in education, employment and incomes for the individuals got enhanced many fold from the previous decades.

However, the unprecedented importance on services without ensuring balancing growth in other sectors of production and infrastructure is apparently causing inconsistencies in human existence and livelihood.

Human life struggles have enhanced many fold.

Job security which the previous generations enjoyed is becoming something of history the young generations cannot think of.

Growth and profitability of companies have become inconsistent and always in an unsteady state situation.

Governmental rules and regulations on businesses keep changing every now and then.

Business enterprises in the services sector get incorporated quickly and get vanished also quickly.

They are becoming to be known as dot com businesses which are in reality bursting commerce entities!

When the engine of an automobile develops some trouble, the driver loses his cool. He keeps pressing the brake and accelarator pedals erratically making the vehicle move as if gone mad.

Who is at fault, the driver or the vehicle ? It becomes difficult for the onlookers to judge.

The economies in many countries in the world in the post liberalization era are facing situations some thing like this.

Who are at fault? The corporates ? The Managements ? The governments ? The employees ? The customers?

No one is sure.

Employees get the pressure. They are a confused lot confronted with ever changing rules , systems and demands.

The more the confusion, the more the time they have to spend at their offices. It is becoming more and more difficult to satisfy the customers of their simple problems. Apparently, the employees do not have anything in their hands to provide some remedies of their own. If the systems are not provided with the remedies, they simply cannot help. Even if it appears simple if viewed with some common sense.

Then there are external experts and consultants and solution providers who promise to reduce their problems with their magic solutions.

They approach with magic words like ERP, Six Sigma, ISO and so many such jargons making every one in more complicated situations than that existed before ! These are also service provider companies who boast of knowing everything to simplify business processes for all stake holders. Regrettably, in practice their employees also seem tense under non achievable work pressures and with no confidence of overcoming the problems.

It seems every one is engaged in tying knots every where and trying to untie knots all at the same time! Without really knowing what to tie and untie !

I keep watching the young employees of the new era corporates of my country.

I am just wondering what would be the situation a few decades later if we keep going like this ?

Is it necessary that for the sake of generating 'economic activities' and generation of employment we keep doing anything which is termed as a service ? Is it necessary that we keep charging and taxing all such services?

Is it fair for the governments to leave every thing to the market forces ? Is it not the responsibility of the governments to ensure that the businesses that are run in the country are capable of running and sustaining on a long term basis? Is it not necessary for the governments to think of the welfare of employees of the companies? Are they not citizens of the country?

Is it fair on the governments to create a situation wherein the promoters of the company are forced to manage capital to start ventures and pay to the government hefty licence fees amounting to years of  expected profits that the companies are likely to make in the future? Is it fair that such companies are allowed to wind up or or face bankruptcy  if a situation of that sort arise in the future which essentially makes their employees jobless and shareholders tense of worries about the future?

If these are not the responsibilities of the governments then why do we need governments ?

The employees are the major earning citizens of the nation who supports the nation and for whom the nation exists!

We need earning citizens. But not pressurized citizens !
I was just thinking.

Time for every one to think !

[Other blogs related to corporate governance :

1. The Poor Indian Bosses !  

2. How to Kill a Successful Organization ?

3. Engineering Services Department - the Trump Card

4. The More Learned You are, the More You Respect Others !  

5. Ruling or Serving : What do we Seek ?

Why do I write blogs ?

In this advanced age of computers and the internet, millions people especially those who are born in the computer age, write their thoughts on what is now known as 'blog sites' in the internet parlour, an acronym derived from the two words,  web and logs.

In my childhood days computers were just beginning to make an impact in this world. When I was an engineering student way back in the early seventies of the last century, we had to do a lot of engineering calculations. In those days we had no other options other than to use printed logarithmic tables to do tedious calculations involving multiplications, divisions and power functions. This method was very cumbersome and boring.

To ease our calculation efforts later on those days we were allowed to use a cute instrument in the form a measuring scale with the sliding scale fitted inside called the 'slide rule' to find the results of lengthy calculations involving multiplications, divisions and roots. This precision sliding mechanical device used to get imported from Germany and was expensive too in India- the cost being half a month's salary of my middle class dad who worked as a high school teacher. Besides, the results it produced were only approximations and not the exact numerical!

Imagine our great joy and surprise when this electronic gadget called the pocket digital calculator got invented and was brought to our college to the first time by some fortunate colleague whose parents had access in the foreign markets. It had red light LEDs and it gave out all those calculation results accurately just at the press of a small button! In fact we were seeing this wonderful light emitting diodes for the first time!

The electronic revolution began and invaded quite fast that within a few months these cute gadgets were in the hands of most of us. Though it used to cost a fortune, the cost was comparable to the slide rule. In no time the slide rule manufacturing companies located in Germany might have closed down or ventured into other business opportunities!

Then during my higher studies, I had the opportunity to work with the big size computers of the 2nd generation and the third generation such as the IBM 370, DEC 2050 etc. There were a few centralized computer centres set up in national level educational and research institutions in India at that time costing millions of rupees. I considered it a great opportunity  to get privately associated with a computer hardware engineer who came to install and commission the 4th generation DEC computer in the computer centre built up at University of Roorkee in those years where I was a PG student of chemical engineering. 

I remember secretly admiring my hardware computer engineer friend for his vast knowledge in the wonder area of computers. At the same time I remember him telling me about his admiration of me having knowledge in the field of chemical technology on which he had little idea! That was an incident making me realize the importance of having mutual respect between each and every individual. Because every other person knows some thing that I do not know!

Now back to the subject. Why do I blog?

Why did I write the above ? Is it that I want to become famous which other wise I cannot have achieved? But what shall I be going to achieve by simply becoming known to some strangers here and there?

Here a story which I used to hear when I was a kid comes to my mind. 

It is about a poor wood cutter. This poor chap was not able to afford rice and  most often he and his family had to eat rice bran which was available as a cheap cattle feed. But at the same time this cheap rice bran with a little mixing with coconut flakes and cheaply available country made molasses could transform itself as a tasty and rich food for him. The only problem was that this food was labelled as a cattle feed by those who could afford eating rice always!

So this poor chap was always cursing his situation which he considered as pathetic as compared to those rich fellows around him who survived on rice making him to rely upon rice bran that the rich fellows discarded as cattle-feed.

But quite by chance, on an occasion when he was called for some manual work in the local king's palace, he was taken aback by the accidental site of the king eating the same rice bran food that was supposedly food for the cows and people like him.  It was a shocking sight for him- the king relishing on this cattle feed ! Then the king saw him. The king warned him of dire consequences if ever he told this incident to any one ! Obviously, the king too feared the negative publicity that such an incident could create!

Our poor wood cutter was now in a dilemma. 

He wanted to tell his wife and his children about what he had seen. He wanted to tell all about it. That the king too ate the same cheap food that they were eating !

But if he did that perhaps the king would punish him. The little knowledge that this fellow had in his mind boiled. He had to tell every one. But there was no opportunity for that.

Then one day while he was alone in the deep forest for cutting bamboo poles, this fellow released the secret that was contained in his little brain for all these days by shouting with all his might to the bamboo forest : 

" Oh! the king too ate cattle feed !'

The story further continues with what happened later. A bamboo piece from the same forest became part of a musical instrument  and the wood cutter became scared of the music that came out of it. The music appeared to him as resembling what he yelled out secretly in the forest!

Perhaps that could be the reason. I have many such secret thoughts in my mind which I fear telling the folks around me. They could ridicule me or reprimand me for telling things that they do not like to hear in public . I might get the ire of the present day kings!

But I have to vent out the thoughts that fill my mind and I have no safe place to vent it out other than this bamboo forest of the 21st century- the vast  internet bamboo forest of the blog sites !

You now know the secret behind my writing these blogs.