The Candle Burns At Both Ends?

(Just to get the context right. This blog was written in January, 2009 but is being published now.)

Two news items particularly caught my attention last week- ‘IIT student commits suicide as he fails to get placement’ and ‘Former IAS officer and Time hero Gautam Goswami dies’. Immediately, I knew the week is going to be a bit gloomy for me. It saddened me to see two of the country’s brightest talents leaving this world in such an unfortunate and tragic manner.

The IIT student (G Suman) had completed his M. Tech. from IIT Kanpur but failed to get placed. To me this event was tragic not only because it was a sad loss of such a talented life; but also because it brought out in open, very starkly, the anomaly that our society is witnessing. Sure we do have lots of sectors opening up, throwing up new job opportunities; but an economy and a society that can not find a job for a post graduate from a premier technology institute has a lot of soul searching to do. So, here we have, a (well paying) job for a commerce graduate who has done a certification course in SAP or any such IT course; but we fail to find a job for a post graduate from IIT. Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against a commerce graduate, or anybody getting placed after doing his SAP certification; but its absolutely lamentable when we can not guarantee employable opportunities for people pursuing studies which are academically more pure and disciplined, if I may say so. I mean, you can boast about your MBA degree (even though you might have got it from an institute which is on the third and fourth floors of a shopping complex); but if you have done a M.Sc. from the state university, having a sprawling campus, you would be a non entity.

The educationists and the planners have their task cut out. One can expect that in future one would witness emergence of new streams - like we have witnessed the emergence of bio-technology or Information Technology - only and only if we have sound foundation in pure sciences. If the system is skewed so much so that the youth today simply jumps to the employable streams (by taking up certification courses, or non-descript Business Management courses, etc.) - with the economy in general and employment set up in particular unintentionally encouraging such trend - the long term may spell trouble for us. Whatever happened to the interest and inclination quotient? Where is the matching of skills with careers? Though the economy has churned out employment for a lot of us; it has made commodities out of us in the process.

Increasingly there is less and less number of people genuinely interested in taking up Civil services as a career, for that matter. And this brings my focus to the second news item - that of death of IAS officer Gautam Goswami. His life story - a mix of high academic achievement, professional competence, hero worshipping on one hand, and serious allegations of corruption and malpractices on the other – is also symptomatic of the deeper rot in our society. Gautam had excellent academic credentials (MBBS, MD-gold medalist); but he chose civil services as a career over medicine. He was awarded the prestigious Time magazine’s “Young Asian Achiever Award” for his efforts in flood relief in Bihar in 2004. However, later he was accused of malpractice and siphoning off crorers of rupees in the same flood relief program. He was suspended from the services but later reinstated on health grounds. Gautam died of pancreatic cancer this week.

This was a tragically sad end of a life full of talent and potential. I don’t know whether the accusations hurled at him were true or not. And like umpteen other political scams in this great-great democracy, no one would ever know what the real truth was. In this case however, the truth, whichever way it is, is saddening and lamentable. Because, if Gautam was indeed involved in the scam, the administrative system and the whole political setup indeed, needs to answer a lot – as to how and why did a brilliant, committed and fearless IAS officer go astray. And if he was innocent of the allegations made against him, the whole nation should hang its head in shame. Once again, the country has not only lost a bright officer to the vagaries and malice of our political system, but the concerned officer had to pay a heavy price for it as well.

The message sent out to the youth today is loud and clear. Don’t burn your candles at both ends. Worse still, don’t burn your candle at all. Just borrow the sheen from some incandescent bulb burning nearby