Thirty years ago, my friend Vijay confided to me that he was always on a tight budget every month. This, inspite of being the Marketing Manager of a large consumer product company in Mumbai. Why? Because he wanted to send his two boys to the most exclusive (and expensive) school in the city. I was naïve to ask him why he did that. He said that his boys will grow up knowing the children of important people in the city and therefore they will benefit in life, because of the ‘old school tie network! This was a benefit Vijay never had in life. He had gone to a ‘regular’ school in Delhi; and was brought up in a ‘middle class millieu’ with middle class values – and middle class friends. He wanted his sons to break out of this cycle.

And what has happened to his two sons? They graduated from school – with average marks. Both went abroad, as most students from this school do – because their parents can afford it. They did average courses there and got average marks again. One decided to stay on in USA. The other came back to India and started a small service business.

Nothing exciting happened as a result of the parents having to stint to buy them the school tie. Today neither of the boys are in touch with any of their old school friends. So much, for the old school tie network!

Another friend who rose to be a Member of the Railway Board sent his son to a hill station, exclusive boarding school in North East India. The family was frequently being transferred from one place to another and the education of the two children was being regularly interrupted. Hence the decision.

Young Rohit liked the school, and liked the system of teaching – which was different from what he was used to, in Calcutta. But nearly all the students in the school had very rich parents. They were given large allowances (pocket money it was called those days). Rohit’s father was in a Government job – and also not corrupt! Rohit’s allowance was comparatively small. He developed a sense of inferiority. He has carried this scar for most of his life. Even though now,, he is a well known Cardiac Surgeon in the US – and wealthy by US standards.

And then there is the news report of this girl in Mumbai who was perhaps high on drugs and/or alcohol – and crashed her SUV (driving late at night) in the process a few people were killed. She belonged to a rich family in South Mumbai. She went to a fancy school. She also went to USA and did some courses, and returned to work in India. What went wrong? Nature or Nurture? More of one or the other? If more, then, which one? I am still confused!

However in the USA, it is against the law to ask a candidate to disclose the age, the marital status or the religion. The Interviewer can be hauled up in court, for asking any questions in these areas.

It is common for many interviewees to say their hobby is reading or seeing movies or listening to music. However, be prepared for further probing. I remember once Prakash Tandon, when he was Chairman of Levers, India, asked a young management trainee what his hobbies were. He said his hobby was reading. He then asked him what he had reading the last three months. The candidate blandly replied that he reads the Illustrated Weekly and nothing else. Needless to say, the young man did not last very long in Levers. It could be a good guess that he found his next assignment in the Illustrated Weekly or perhaps, the Readers Digest.

When a candidate claimed that he had been moved from Marketing Manager to corporate Business Development Manager to give him more all round exposure he was asked what contribution he had made in the last six months in his new assignment. He had no answer. After fumbling for a while, he said that this was confidential and he therefore could not disclose this information. Had he said this straightaway and with confidence, there would have been credibility. However, his body language and the stutter, gave him away!

If the company is downsizing or closing some departments, or now outsourcing some jobs – you can be a casualty of a larger happening. The best route is to face this squarely and tell the interviewer honestly. Using the ‘looking for greater challenges’ is a played out turn of phrase – which now puts interviewers on guard – rather than encourages them to look favourably at the candidate.

I am a customer of a different mobile phone company Vodafone and have been for the last many years. When there was a double payment made against a bill; and a dispute whether the fault was with the bank or with the phone company, I had to visit the office four times – take a token and wait each time. On the third visit, the young lady seemed to be exasperated about dealing with the same problem and her whole body language was negative. I had to tell her that I am myself exhausted by this whole exercise and it is no pleasure for me to be spending my time, away from my own work – and making the third visit! At least, she is paid to deal with customers and complaints. I am not. Customers like us, help to pay her salary! She then seemed to come to her senses and there was a 180 degree change in attitude!

Inspite of at least six complaints over two years, there has been no improvement in the network. Every time I get a call I have to run out of the door to my garden. Sometimes when two in the family get a call at the same time, there is the risk of collision at the main door. If the phone is placed deep inside the house, we don’t even get the ring of the call. Out of sheer ‘ennui’ I had not changed my supplier.

But then last month I lost my mobile. It was stolen. When I went to buy a new mobile at the ‘Mobile Store’ I bought an attractive Nokia. The Mobile Store told me that I could get a free Airtel prepaid card with the purchase. So I used this card, and when the amount was nearly spent, I went to the Airtel outlet at Chembur Diamond Garden – a ten minute walk from my house. They had a small office and there were crowds inside; and crowds on the pavement waiting to get in – were out in the rain. I took a token and joined the crowd. Finally I got in, explained my purpose, and was given forms to fill and then submit. Four days later, I was again at the end of the long queue; and on the pavement. When I got in after half an hour, I was told I had to get the bank account statement for the last two months, and the certificates attested by the Bank Manager. I did this and returned after three days, again at the end of the queue; and they said that the sim card would be activated within four days, after a company official has done a check on my place of residence. A fortnight later, I went back to follow the same routine and to be told that the ‘official’ could not find my place! – a bungalow in a solus position and ten minutes walk from the Airtel office. I was furious. I asked for my deposit back – Rs.900/- which was the only thing that they did promptly. On my way out I saw a ‘Suggestion Box’ which also said ‘please ask for a suggestion form’. I asked for one. They did not have any. One of the staff offered me a blank sheet so I could write my complaint. I said I wanted the form. Not just a sheet of paper!

I left the office and headed home – thanking the Lord for small mercies. Now my wife and I, at least run out to our own garden. If we had changed the mobile company, we may have had to run for ten minutes to Diamond Garden and we would rather not!

The mobile phone companies spend crores of Rupees in advertising and promotion. Perhaps they do not spend enough on selection, training and motivating. And some of the promotion expenditure goes to waste, because of the kind of experiences, prospects have at the final point of customer contact!

With my new Nokia phone I had problems within the first fortnight, with the battery. The battery would run down very fast. So I went back to the Mobile Store where I had bought the phone. Oh no Sir, we only sell the phones. If there is anything wrong, then you have to go to the Nokia Service Centre. I think there is one near Chembur Station. So here I was, on another run. Sale yes, but any service, no!

Some years ago, on a visit to Hyderabad, I decided to invite some friends to the Banjara Hotel, which extensively advertised a Hyderabadi Food Festival Week. Only Hyderabadi specialities like Biryani, Mirchi Ka Salan, Bagara Baingan etc would be served. It was a very tempting offer. I asked my friends to join me early, at 7.30 p.m. because I expected crowds at the restaurant. We were all there on time. Only two other tables were occupied. The steward was at a table at the far end of the lawns (it was an outdoor restaurant) talking to a pretty young thing. We asked the waiter to call him, so we could place our order. The waiters tried. He said he was coming – and didn’t. At the end of twenty minutes we walked out – disappointed and disgusted. While we waited at the porch for conveyance, we saw that the people at the other tables had also done likewise. They had walked out and decided to eat somewhere else. Imagine all that trouble and expense. And then the failure – at the ultimate point of customer contact. Top management, sitting in their ivory tower, will never know why they failed!

On a visit to Bangalore and a stay at a five star hotel, I found that the wash basin was getting clogged and the shower not working. Neither was the bedside lamp. Since I had arrived at 11 p.m. I decided to complain at the reception only the next morning. I returned in the evening to find that the deficiencies had been set right but the floor was not cleaned and had water and some screws and nuts thrown around. I again complained and it was set right.

The next morning, as I was leaving the key at the reception, the perky receptionist piped up ‘Good morning Mr Vieira. Any more complaints this morning?’ I have never stayed at this hotel again. It was an expensive room – and having a taunt thrown in for good measure was most unbecoming. Again top management will never know, why a customer like me, now stays elsewhere. The damage was done at the final point of customer contact.

Will companies wake up to the need to give the front line, front attention which they deserve? Instead of spending an inordinate amount of time on lofty mission statements; on advertising and promotion strategy; on six sigma and everything else, which is important – but to the neglect of having the right people doing an excellent job at the final point of customer contact.

Some companies surely do this. That is why Walt Disney and South West Airlines are on top of the charts. These are stars that others must follow.

It is like going to a restaurant for lunch without a reservation. You may not get a table. But one should generally know whether it is a good restaurant, the speciality foods, the price range, the area with the good tables. Because ‘fortune favours the prepared mind’.

Therefore, it is good advice that to young person who goes to a walk in interview observes some of these rules.

1. Dress appropriately for the interview.

Clean and well pressed clothes. No loud colours or designs. Shoes shined. Hair in place and clean shaved. Even tie or tie and jacket if called for – though this may be rare for a walk in interview except in sales jobs. And no loud clicking high heels.

2. Carry copies of your CV in a neat folder.

You may need 10 copies “as a bank”. On clear good quality white paper. The sheet should not be multifolded – one fold may be enough, if necessary. A clean unfolded sheet of paper has the same psyche response as to fresh unfolded currency notes.

When handing over your CV, at the beginning of the Walk in interview, after you have sat down (and you have been invited to sit), the Interviewer has a chance to glance through, before beginning a conversation with you.

3. The CV – brief, complete, single page

As a young aspirant, fresh out of school or college, you will not have too much to say because you have no work experience. You don’t have to talk about companies you worked for or what you did there.

So you have an opportunity to be brief – but complete with name, address, telephone no. email, school and college qualifications, extracurricular activities; and your goals in a career.

Use a type font, which is dark, large enough for easy reading, and gives a good visual appearance. A photograph in the top right hand corner – also helps. It jogs the interviewer’s memory when he is reviewing applications later and when he does not remember a single face from among the 56 candidates he interviewed.

4. High lights strengths – Show how you can contribute.

Always first find out what they want done. What is the company looking for? This is most important. Only after this, show how your educational background and natural skills fit into this requirement – and therefore how you can contribute.

My son worked during holidays, selling melamine dinnerware on commission. He was collecting pocket money. When he attended his first interview and told them he had done this, he was immediately hired for a marketing job. Not because of his first class Bachelors. But because of his extra-curricular activities!

Have you played sports; been in social service league, been a member of the debating club, or theatre unit? See how whatever you have done because of aptitude and attitude – fits into what the company is looking for. They are looking for square pegs for square holes.

5. One last word:

Take care of body odour (use a deodorant) and mouth odour (use a mouth wash – but don’t chew gum at the interview, even if it is Orbit!).

These are two little things that can mar an otherwise good walk in interview. Yet no one wants to talk about this!

If it is the boss who is being imitated – then it might initially seem to be flattering to him. After some time it may graduate into a mild or even serious irritation. And much later, it may create anger in the boss, and be a source of jocular conversation for everyone around.

Superiors do not want assistants who have the same skills as they do. In fact, the boss would prefer assistants who have other skills. No one is a know all and skilled at everything. Especially in this age of a wider and wider span of knowledge in any field. They want an assistant who will supplement their own knowledge – and bring other skills to the table. It is thus that great teams are built.

An ideal team requires thinkers, doers and integrators. The thinkers will be few, the integrators fewer still; and the large majority will be doers. Thus there is a distribution of assignments in field selling (doers) in product planning (thinkers) and in total marketing policy (integrators).

If the boss is an integrator, he does not want a whole line up of integrators also, assisting him. He may need some – but he needs thinkers and doers. Any attempt at parallelism by members of the team, would be disastrous.

I was not very comfortable with working with figures, when I was in corporate life. And hence, I relied greatly on Venkat, one of my colleagues who had a Masters in mathematics and statistics; and who had love for and a mastery of math’s. He pored over all the sales and profit figures, analyzed them and produced reports which then could be interpreted easily and speedily by people like me. I did not need a ‘qualitative’ oriented marketing assistant. I needed a ‘quantitative’ oriented person. Any colleague wanting to work on a system of parallelism would not only be of little help – but would probably have been a liability.

The absence of parallelism is seen most clearly in the case of Presidents of the USA. Harry Truman was Vice President when Ted Roosevelt was the President. There could not have been two individuals as different from one another. Truman was a picture of quiet, confidence. Roosevelt was the popular icon. Truman lived in the shadow of Roosevelt and only came into his own when Roosevelt died and Truman had to assume Presidentship of the USA. Only then did people discover that this quiet and unassuming man had a very balanced mind and a steely determination to get things done. In more recent times, we have had the charismatic and brilliant Bill Clinton, partnering a Vice President in Al Gore – again two people as different from each other, as one could possible find.

And yet, there will be some who appreciate attempts at parallelism. These are individuals who have large egos and small minds. They believe that ‘imitation is the best form of flattery’. And they want to be flattered! In this case the organization will be filled with clones of the Chief – and at every lower level the quality of the clones will also be lower. It marks the falling standards in an organization and is one of the fastest and surest ways to die!

Can you imagine anything like this happening in London? Or Singapore? Or Hongkong? A taxi driver would not have got a driving license if he did not know all the routes – and there would be written and practical tests to make sure that he knows. This is besides the road and traffic signs, and driving capabilities. They make sure that a taxi driver provides the service that the customer pays for.

Later, I went to Geneva where I was staying with a friend who is resident there – and I was surprised that he had a spanking and sparkling new kitchen, from the time I had visited earlier. I complemented him. I also added that it must have been a lot of trouble and upset of the household while the work is going on. Not at all, he said. It was all done in 4 days!

He then added that Switzerland is not like India. The Contractors there get a license only after rigorous training and passing exams. They are ‘pros’. They first come and measure, understand your needs. Tell you what they can deliver. Give an estimate of the costs. Then design and fabricate at their own location. Bring the new kitchen and replace the old one – within the shortest possible time. The breaking of the old; the installation of the new; the handing over charge, all in 4 days! And all because, the contractors/carpenters/plumbers/electricians are trained, pass exams and are officially licensed. And they deliver. And licenses in Switzerland “cannot be bought” as perhaps sometimes happens with driving licenses in Mumbai

But finally, what tempted me to write this article, was when I read about the Gondoliers in Venice in an old issue of the Readers Digest. In the last 20 years the number of tourists to Venice has risen spectacularly – to some 12 million a year (against less that 3 million to India). But the number of gondolier licenses has not. There are only 405 licensed gondoliers and 74 substitutes. For the next series of official written and rowing tests, there are 185 applicants for 7 positions. One of the aspirants was a German woman; it will be her third attempt. Therefore, becoming a gondolier in Venice is extremely difficult. One gondolier, Marco, took 150 hours of courses to give a grounding in languages, history and art history. Some gondoliers spend 10 years or more as a substitute – before they can become “independent” gondoliers.

No wonder, when I think back to my own visit to Venice twenty years ago, I did not do a gondolier trip. The reason – A 50 minute ride through only a part of the city costs 62 Euros. An all day customized itinerary will have a cost to be agreed.

All this makes services more expensive. But finally, they also give customers better value for money. They get better services and it is more economical in the long run. The key is training, training and more training to make sure that whatever you do – carpentry, hair grooming or electric engineering – you are a ‘Pro’. You are not just a ‘barefoot’ Carpenter, Consultant or Doctor, as accepted in the country. Only then will India truly grow. Can you be part of that growth?

Yes, “business has gone to hell” – is the refrain heard from executives everywhere. But we cannot sit back and passively accept this state of affairs. We need to do something about it. And the best summary that I have come across is one put forward by Cyrus Vance in his excellent book ‘Manager Today, Executive Tomorrow’. Vance gives 8 basic attitudes. These are :

1. From Birth To Death We Are Alone

There is no one in the entire world who can help us or be with us all the time. Surely one’s parents are there through infancy, childhood and perhaps a part of adulthood. One may have brothers and sisters and friends. They will all be with you some of the time through the course of your life.

And again, in reverse, this will happen with your own wife and children who will be with you part of the time. But the own permanent company you will keep is yourself. Because from birth to death, you are alone – only interspersed with periods of togetherness.

That is why you have to learn to enjoy your own company – to convert the concept of ‘loneliness’ to a concept of ‘aloneness’. Loneliness is negative, depressing, sorrowful, stark. Aloneness is positive, enjoyable, rejuvenating.

There would seem to be a lot of sense in this guideline. It makes you less dependent on other people, on the movies, TV programmes or the video films. It is important to face up to the reality that from birth to death you are alone, and adopt a positive attitude towards this inescapable truth.

2. No One In This Entire World Owes You Anything

This is a very difficult attitude to adopt because we are all brought up to believe that everyone should do things for us. We all have expectations, sometimes very high, and some totally divorced from reality. This is because we do not understand and accept the positive success generating attitude that ‘no one you meet in your entire life owes you anything’.

If anything is given to you, it can be graciously accepted. If it is denied to you, it is pointless being annoyed. There are no rights or favours that are done for you or to you.

Much of the unhappiness in the world today is not because people have less than in the earlier generation. It is because expectations have changed and increased, and when these expectations are not met, people get annoyed and revolt.

3. The Word Progress Means Different Things to Different People.

Most people measure their own progress based on where they stand in relation to those friends who have perhaps gone places and are apparently very successful. So, because my friend who graduated at the same time twenty-five years ago, is now an Assistant Director with World Bank in Washington, I am unhappy. Because another friend of mine is now a Cardiologist in London and practices at Harley Street and stays in a large five bedroom mansion near London, I feel unhappy.

This is because I am measuring my own progress by the achievements of other people. Vance suggests that we measure progress by the objectives we have set ourselves in life, and how far we have achieved these objectives. It’s like the basic rule followed in athletics and racing: ‘Always look forward. Keep your eye on the finishing line. If you look back to see where the others are, you may slip up in that brief moment and lose the race’.

Never mind about what other people are doing or have done. Let them do their own thing, as you are doing yours. Let them follow their own star, while you follow yours. Because progress means different things to different people.

4. In Life Realise That You Are Going to Win Some, Lose Some

Some people get so spoilt as children, where their parents give them everything they ask for from ice cream to clothes and expensive toys, that they cannot face a situation where they can’t get something they want. They do not realise that like in a one-day cricket match, only one side can win.

The really complete person faces up to this with some disappointment, but without the depression bordering on wanting to commit suicide. Because he knows that in life, “you win some, and you lose some. You don’t win all the time”.

5. A Life Without Problems is Impossible

Most of us are looking for the ideal life, where we will encounter total happiness and contentment without any clouds of sorrow. But this is a dream. It never happens. Perhaps it happens in novels, in unrealistic movies, and in short stories. But not in real life.

Life is always a graph of high and low points, of peaks, and valleys. Some may have longer periods of peaks and smaller intervals of valleys. For others it may be the other way round.

But we all have a due share of both, whether we are born rich or poor, intelligent or dull, handsome or ugly, brown or white.

6. No Matter What Others Say, You Never Stop Learning

There will be the pessimists and cynics who keep telling you that the world is a cruel place, that merit really gets you nowhere, that every where it is now a question of how you can buy your way through with either money or influence, or both. That the boss goes by how many favours you have done for him rather than by how well you have done your work.

There are others who will tell you that there is nothing new in the world, that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, that all supposedly new knowledge is ‘old wine in new bottles’. But the world is changing so fast, with technology being updated every day, not just every year, and new concepts being put forward and old theories disproved. It is a fast changing world. At last 70% of the products you buy today, were not available 50 years ago. Unless you keep learning and keep abreast of what is going on, both in your own field as well as in the general environment, you will be outdated and soon obsolete.

7. Change Is Taking Place All The Time and You Must Welcome It

Most people don’t. They prefer the familiar, the standard routine with everything in its place. People don’t like to change their homes to bigger houses and better surroundings because of the fear of the unfamiliar. It is only the positively oriented who welcome change and enjoy it.

They do not wait for everyone else to change, and then join them. They are amongst the first, ‘the change agents’. They realise that ‘the only permanent feature of life is change’.

Change also involves learning or relearning, which is resented by most people. But the change agent does not resent it inspite of the trouble. It may involve, because he understands and accepts that he must welcome change.

8. You Must Choose Optimism Instead of Pessimism.

It is so easy these days to be pessimistic. The examination papers are leaked out and sold, there is cheating at the exams, you can’t get admission into professional colleges even with 90% marks, jobs are only obtained by influence, fast progress in one’s career needs a god-father, the country is going to pieces, there is corruption everywhere, the old sense of ethical values has totally vanished, the price of necessities is spiralling.

All this is enough to depress any normal human being. But it can’t be allowed to happen. As Henry Thoreau said, “Men were born to succeed, not to fail”. The person with positive attitudes looks at the bright side of things and moves forward. He looks for ways and means to bring about changes and improve the environment. Instead of being totally influenced by others, he makes an effort to influence others. All the time he asks himself ‘what can I do about it?’

What put me into this reverie was Ries’s statement that ‘in the dairy, cream rises to the top. In daily life, it’s generally not true. It’s mostly milk at the top of the corporate bottle. Intelligence is a two-edged sword. Too little and you can’t cope with the corporate paperwork; writing memos, travel arrangements. Too much and you are out of touch with reality. You suffer from the absentminded professor syndrome.

Top executives come from the middle of the IQ curve. As the college president said to the faculty. Be nice to your A students because they will come back and be your colleagues, but be exceptionally nice to your B and C students because they will come back and give us a new auditorium and a new science building’.

Top executives may come from the middle of the IQ curve. Peter McColough, former Chairman of Xerox, made the same point about his Harvard School class of 1949. ‘The record of accomplishment corresponds negatively with the standing of the class’. The top people did not do that well. The one-third in the middle did. The guys who got the highest marks tended to be in the middle in accomplishment.

Why is this? Why does success in the classroom generally not correlate with success in a profession? The smarter people are, the more they depend on themselves. After all, they know everything. They depend only on themselves to get ahead. Less intelligent people are more likely to look for others to help them up the ladder, and to look, for opportunities and grab them.

I never wrote articles earlier. All I wrote as a working executive was memos, minutes and reports. Then a student at a management college where I taught Marketing married a journalist. She spoke to her husband about me, because he was desperately looking around for someone to write a regular column on Marketing for Business World. He asked me. I said I would try. That was 15 years ago. I have been writing a column every month ever since – and some more. I had grabbed an opportunity, and not just said ‘No. I’ve never done it before’.

And opportunities do not just arise in the environment. They are not presented to us by others, as the earlier incidents show. They can be inherent in us. They can be accidents that we may take to be calamities but that we can turn into opportunities. A young singer with a fine soprano voice was assigned to perform The End of a Perfect Day for admiring relatives. When his adolescent voice cracked and broke at the family gathering, he discovered he had the ability to make people laugh. The singer-cum-comedian was Bob Hope!

The goal-oriented person would have said, ‘I am not going to let this incident stop me from becoming a professional singer’. The hard work-oriented person would have said, ‘I have to practice more.’ But successful people take advantage of accidents. They see an opportunity in a calamity and grab it.

And I wonder whether there is any emphasis on ‘Contribution’. For the salary being paid, what will the young person expect to contribute, to the company and its clients, and to the community that it serves. Does the question of ‘contribution ever cross the mind of the young person? And if it does not, is it that we have somehow failed in instilling this value, during the school and college career? Who are the role models in India, as successful in their career – but at the same time also great contributors to the community and the country? I would focus on just 3 who have influenced this whole vast country of 1.2 billion people. There are many, many others, who have had regional impact and this also is a great contribution.

One significant contributor is Dr. Varghese Kurian, the founder of Kaira District Milk Cooperative Society in Gujarat. Almost single handedly, this dairy technologist from kerala, went into alien soil in Gujarat and in a few decades became the author of the ‘white revolution’. India, which was importing milk powder earlier – and was a milk deficit country, was converted into a milk surplus country, with ‘Operation Flood’. Amul became a household name. And Amul had milk to spare – to enable it to venture into branded butter, cheese, curds and chocolates. Dr. V. Kurian not only had a successful career. But he helped to change the country. He will always be remembered!

Another significant contributor was Dr. M. S. Swaminathan – the eminent agricultural scientist. Yes, he pursued a career in agriculture – but he went beyond. He created the green revolution in India, the same way as Kurian, created the white revolution. New methods of cultivation were taken to far parts of the country, to make sure that yields were now multifold, than what were earlier. India no longer needed to import grain. In fact, India could export foodgrains – thanks to the contribution of Dr. M. S. Swaminathan. He helped to change the country. He will always be remembered.

And one other significant contributor, but now so well known, is Bindeshwar Pathak – the engineer from the PWD of the Bihar Government, who developed a new sewage system which used very little water and where the sewage could be used to generate gas. He did not get much support for his innovative development. So he quit the service and with encouragement and loans from friends, he started SSS.

In a short time, SSS toilets spread round the country. SSS provided an alternative to the degrading physical carrying of night soil.

People engaged in this activity earlier, were provided with more dignified jobs as monitors at SSS toilets. Bathing and use of toilets was free for women and children. Men were charged a small fee. The toilets were kept clean by the monitors. The gas from SSS toilets in patna helps to provide electricity to the Patna General Hospital. Inspite of the free admissions, SSS still made a profit.

There is no sanitation system in much of India. Over 50% of the population in cities like Mumbai, live in slums on pavements and have no regular toilet facilities. Pathak saw this crying need. He also saw that the government and Municipalities were not providing a solution. So he developed a unique solution. So unique that he is now an UN expert taken round the world to advise authorities in Africa and South America.

One day he will be recognized as a significant contributor to the community in India. Someone who took up a problem everyone else shied from – and found an effective and economical solution!

Kurian, Swaminathan, Pathak had careers. They worked for money. But they looked at how they could make a contribution! It was not just the ‘highest salary’. It was a balance of money (what do I get) and contribution (what do I give)?

And then comes recruitment time, and students from even IIT and IIM, find that there are no takers. Or at least, not as many as in earlier years. And the salaries offered are 50% of those offered only two years ago. The world economic melt down is having its impact. And it is disappointing and frustrating. It gives you a sense of helplessness. You have succeeded, when the world has failed. You have done your best, but the environment around you has changed. And against that background, you cannot stand out as a success. It shows you that success is ‘contextual’.

Even worse, is what happened to my son. During the summer at management college he was seconded to a large IT company. They were so happy with him that they made him promise that we will come back after graduation and join them. They offered an attractive package. They also prevailed upon him not to appear for any campus interviews. ‘His campus interview was already over’, they said, half in jest. He had been already selected!

It was one month before he was to join, after a two month vacation after graduation, that they informed him that the Company was hit by the recession and they are in fact, asking people to go. They would pay him 3 months compensation – but they cannot give him a job. He was there – now, jobless. Too late for quick alternatives. He had not appeared for any campus interviews. Now he was in a general pool of unemployed and no where to go! He was jobless for three months, before he got an acceptable assignment – which was not the best. It was something better than nothing. But this experience made him tough. His later victories, were perhaps due to such earlier defeats.

This came out so clearly at the T20 cricket match I watched on 5 October 09 in Hyderabad, between India and Australia. Here was Sachin Tendulkar crossing the 17,000 runs mark and setting a new record. He was playing his best innings. He scored 175 runs when India needed 351 runs to win. Single handedly he contributed half the required score. He also nurtured some of his partners at the crease like Raina. But at the end of the day, India lost by just 4 runs! Sachin had given an outstanding personal performance. He had supported and mentored in two outstanding partnerships.

He had succeeded. But the India team failed. Was Sachin a failure or was he a success?

For all of us there will be times of defeat and times of victory. We all understand this. But it is more complex when we have personal defeat in a group victory, or even more depressing, personal victory like Sachin’s in a group defeat.

It can happen in any career. In government; in corporate life; and in a sports team. Or even Bollywood, it can happen with an outstanding actor performance, and the film’s failure. There can be victory in defeat, and defeat in victory. Understanding this early in life, will make us ‘tough’ to face a world full of uncertainties.