During the course of my induction at IIT Kharagpur there was
a session by entrepreneurship cell and during that session Prof Dhurbes Biswas gave a presentation, which was more a motivational speech rather
presentation. During that he shared an incident with us, a very common incident...
He said, once a friend of his asked, “ hey Biswas I want to be an entrepreneur
but I don’t have any plans, I have thought a lot about it but can’t find
anything on which I could work, give me some ideas”. Well interesting part was answer of Prof
Biswas!!
Prof. Biswas replied, “You must be kidding me, go outside
the puri gate of IIT campus and thousands of opportunities are waiting for you,
every problem is an opportunity to work on and problems are abundant outside
campus.”
Second point he raised was the mission of IIT Kharagpur ,
“Dedicated to the service of nation”. He has a question to all IITians, ex, present
and future, “Have you served the nation or will you serve the nation”?
Now let’s not be myopic, let’s consider every Indian. What I
have come across is that there are lots of people waiting to serve the society
…and I am pretty sure they will keep on waiting. Some are waiting to earn a lot of money which they will spend on
welfare of society, Some are waiting for opportunities, Some are waiting to
clear civil services so that as administrators
they can serve society, some are searching problems, some are asking
when is the right time…and list goes on. I don’t doubt their will to serve but
they are simply not sure how and when to do it?
Well I am not going to answer those questions as I find
myself totally incapable of preaching that, let’s leave that to our religious
gurus. What I am going to do is share three true stories with you. Three
stories which I have come across at different point of time in various
newspaper and I am pretty sure these will answer some of your questions.
Story 1.
It’s an story of an
IITian. He used to study in IIT Kanpur. He was doing his B Tech and special
thing about him was that He was a 10 pointer (Gosh..10 pointer in IIT...
Superman…heading to 1 crore package job J).
Interesting part is that he was a through simple guy, always used to wear kurta
and payjama. Simple talks and simple living. A very humble person. Now do you
know what he did during his placement season?
He opted out of placements
and joined an NGO!! His package when I read article was a meager 25
thousand rupees a month. And his less capable classmates were earning thousands
of dollars in Uncle Sam’s Country.
Moral of the story: I don’t know, it’s for you to decide.
But one thing is for sure even NGOs and organizations serving society also need
good students and intelligent people. The IITian being discussed used his
intelligence to serve people and make an NGO effective. As far as I know still
he wears Kurta payjama and lives a very minimalist life.
Story 2.
To narrate this story I need a little bit of context
setting. If you are Indian you must have seen Rickshaw wallah and if you are
not Daughter/Son of a millionaire then you must have boarded one. Do you know
from where these rickshaw wallah get their rickshaw? Well, some fortunate ones
have their own but mostly rent it for 30-40 or 50 rupees a day (Well it depends
upon market). Now just imagine, for
years he has to keep on paying these 40 or 50 odd rupees to owners of rickshaw
and these poor rickshaw wallah will never be able to save enough to buy one.
This is a vicious circle.
Now this is a story of man from Uttar Pradesh who changed
the lives of these rickshaw wallah. He started giving loans to these rickshaw
wallahs to buy their own rickshaw. And rickshaw wallah had to pay a daily installment
of Rs 20/-. And in 10 months of time rickshaw belonged to them. They were owners of rickshaw and even for 10
months they had pay half the amount which they were supposed to pay to rickshaw
owners from whom they used to take rickshaws on rent. Now with their own rickshaw
they can better take care of themselves and their families.
Moral of the story: It’s so obvious sir that even a single
word to tell moral would be wastage of words and your time.
Story 3.
This a story of a village and a teacher who lives
there. The village is Ganesh Pura of
Maharashtra. Now what teacher did is that he asked whole village to paint the
walls of their houses pink. And he arranged for Rs 20000/-. Villager gave ten
thousand and rest ten thousand was contributed by teacher himself. Using this
money he got all the pink walls filled with lessons of children curriculum, new
development in science, thoughts of great people etc. Now Study is not a burden
for children in Ganesh Pura as they study all the time even while playing. Even
elders are updated with recent development in society.
Moral of the story: You are smart enough to infer but one
thing we must say that if we have teachers like the one mentioned above in all
the villages of India then 100% literacy rate would be easily achieved.
Now I hope if you really want to serve the society then most
of your questions have been answered. If you are still wondering then maybe I
will share some more stories with you next time. But friends there is no right
time to serve as now is the time. Even a small contribution can make a huge
difference to lives of many. It’s not magnitude of money but magnitude of your
will power which will make difference. Even if you can’t find a new way then
just try to emulate what others have been doing. There is no harm in copying if
it is for a noble cause. Yes we are busy with writing codes for likes of Infys,
mining excels for likes of Mckinsey but still we have enough time to make a
change. Even if we go by neutral figures then we have 2 capable people in India
for a poor one. And 2 people can easily
change the life of one. If we start acting now then I guess we will not have
problems in India!!
