After nearly two months of orientation training at Rourkela, our cohort moved to Bhilai. By now, the batchmates had become more of a familiar and friendlier bunch. In the new location where the second leg of our orientation training would happen, we had our choices of partners to share the twin rooms.
Most of us opted to stay with roommates from our regional background, possibly because of similarities in food habits and cultural orientation. Such classificatory preference to selectively form our sub-group of close associates is common in universities and working hostels across India.
Our batch of trainees was predominantly male. The handful of girls were mostly from the elite circles of our metro cities. Most of them had sharp and expressive self-confidence.
To be fair, some of our batchmates had an air of superiority and exclusiveness that came with their lineage of entitlement and connections at high places. The urban vs mofussil division and divergence of tastes and preferences were quite visible in our batch.
This trend was more pronounced among the participants from Lutyens’ Delhi, undoubtedly the elitist pocket borough of the country. Campus stories from Lady Shriram, Miranda House and St. Stephens, arguably the three most prestigious colleges of the capital resonated in the air like the smell of drinks that refused to vanish in the early morning hours of the day after! “ Attitude!!”.
The composition and nuances of our batch reflected the urban bias in the selection and appointment to positions of power and prospects. Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and the elitist boroughs of Patna and Lucknow accounted for most of our batchmates. Mumbai, then Bombay, was in a different class with corporate career being the clear favourite of the aspirational youth.
The preference for civil services as the primary choice of the boys and girls from the upwardly mobile middle class across the country was obvious. Most of my batchmates especially from the North were seen, as soon as class sessions were over, getting immersed in guides and notes for the UPSC exams, which they carried like a newlywed bride carrying her jewel box from her parental home.
Those from the big cities missed their eating out, shopping and get-togethers and they compensated for it by seeking association with seniors in the township with whom they could tag along to the club and private dinners as guests.
Cross-cultural socialization is at once a challenge and an opportunity in a diverse and complex society like India.
The changeover from Rourkela to Bhilai involved a shift in the scale and variety of exposure for me and my teammates. Our perception, sensitivities, appreciation and integration often go through a graded and gradual expansion even as we move from one work location and social context to another. When I look back at my career spanning multiple locations in India and abroad, I can feel the change that I went through in aspirations, social behaviour and cultural adaptation over the years.
Learning is truly a lifelong process and a substantial chunk of our transformation in career and life takes place past the academic years. What internalizing of lessons from experience can teach us is much beyond books and academia. Experiential learning is the best and most dependable teacher that all of us can look up to. The career years are the period that moulds our persona, preferences and social behaviour much more than the world of formal learning.
Bhilai Steel Plant and its township were a true reflection of the diversity and complexity of the larger Indian society. Being one of the pioneer industrial townships of post-independence India, people from all over the country flocked to the region in search of employment and livelihood. The people who moved in formed their circles of comfort and built their mini-communities within the larger community. The intricate network of communities within communities presents an interesting mosaic of social dynamics in places like Bhilai. As India moved up the social maturity curve, the social coalescence and cross-cultural bondages and tensions grew in complexity.
Bhilai had a sizeable Malayali community. So too, most Steel Townships had a large Bengali population. Nothing happened without a reason. I was told that Bengalis being the first movers in government and PSU establishments in the East and Central parts of India, the people in positions of power brought in their dependents, acquaintances and country cousins to fill in the innumerable openings, especially in the green field projects.
Keralites have been among the most mobile of the Indian workforce for generations. Literacy, lack of homegrown employment opportunities and proneness to seek out newer pastures have made Malayalis ubiquitous employees in far corners of India and even abroad.
The folklore about too many Malayalis in Bhiali was that MKK Nair, a powerful Civil Servant from Kerala on deputation to Bhilai Steel Plant as the Chief Administrative Officer helped out a lot of the migrant Malayalis looking out for jobs to gravitate to the plant and get employed. The story went that public announcements over loudspeakers placed at the local rail station at Durg enticed Keralites in search of jobs to embark there and move to Bhilai where massive recruitment drives were on at the beginning of the Steel Plant establishment! The Malayalis and Bengalis indulged in vociferous and colourful social and cultural activities in their adopted land too. Thus ‘Kali Bari’s, Bengal Mishti Shops, Nairji’s Mess, Malayali Samajam and Arya Vaidya Sala all became an integral part of the pulsating industrial settlement. Of course, there were active and growing Tamil, Telugu and other communities too in Bhilai and Punjabi and North Indian people as well.
My early years in Bhilai made my outlook truly national and pan-Indian. So much so that I felt uncomfortable when someone asked which part of India I belonged to! I belonged to the whole of India. “I am an Indian first and last”, I told myself repeatedly. And I took to conversational Hindi like a fish to water.
By the time our batch landed in Bhilai, we were already conditioned and self-curated with rudimentary refinement and basic professionalism. We were no longer the raw inductees we were when we had arrived for the first leg of orientation, baffled as we were then by the scale of everything we saw.
The seasoned seniors in the township switched on their antennae sharp and clear to assess and mark out prospective grooms and brides among us for their siblings and near ones. For a few days, we were all treated as though we were a fresh stock of readymade garments that arrived at a hinterland shop from the metro city suppliers afar.
We were getting invites for tea and dinner from the scouters of prospective alliances. Everyone seemed extremely welcoming and over-considered our assumed needs for settling down in the new settings. Some of us would ultimately opt for and settle down in Bhilai. We had a couple of months to go for the final placements but the eagerness of the township veterans for sizing up and baiting the ‘chosen ones’' among us for their offspring was getting too obvious.
There was also another dynamic taking shape among our cohort members. The lookout for a preferred partner for courting and long-term relationships was also getting intense with each passing day. Needless to say, with just a few girls in the batch it was more of a musical chair moment for those of us who were bent upon exploring the matrimonial path with clarity and foresight!
Professionally, we started scouting for best-fit functional specialisations to opt for posting at the end of the training. Those days there were no aptitude assessment tests and career counselling available to guide us in our all-important choice of jobs and functions. The career choices were limited – Sales, Materials, Administration and Personnel, Finance and IT. The field of IT was too nascent and in fact, it was then known as Electronic Data Processing (EDP). All that was visible to us were the giant-sized mainframe computers and the rattling of card-punching and line-printers. My first impressions of Computers as a serious career option were sketchy and sceptical. Scanty awareness, high uncertainty and the mechanical, production-like environment of data processing operations made us wonder whether, at all, it would emerge as a career alternative or could meet with a premature extinction.
We belonged to the non-technical stream of Graduate Trainees and so the production and engineering departments were outside our scope. Those days, commercial functions like purchasing, sales and contracts management had a high degree of discretionary decision-making. With processes being sketchy and with rank nepotism and political and bureaucratic interferences high, there was a perception that young people getting into sensitive front-line decision-making layers would be under temptations and manipulative arm-twisting of superiors. All these complex considerations weighed in our minds while evaluating our career path alternatives.
As people of my generation did in those days, many of us left the career stream decisions to our elders. Just the same way, most youngsters left serious life choices like marriage, jobs and courses to pursue to the supposed wisdom of parents and elders. What a great change has taken place in our society over the years!
Today, in my native State of Kerala, more and more youngsters take ownership and responsibility to make key life choices like marriage, jobs and studies. India is evolving but to varying degrees. Still, there are vast swathes of my motherland where one doesn’t get to take a call on one’s important life decisions. Hegemony, traditions, social hierarchy and above all caste and pecuniary considerations still determine matrimonial choices!
When the final placement came, I was surprised to have been picked up by a very respected and highly rated functional head to join his team. YG Chouksey, my first Boss, was a unique personality and a great mentor. The functional specialisation was called ‘Organisation and Methods’. We can loosely call the specialisation as a precursor to modern-day Organizational Consulting. Though perplexed by the scanty knowledge of the details of what and where I was walking into, in retrospect I consider it as a god-given opportunity for continuous learning, wider interactions and cultivating a holistic and strategic perspective of management that my first career offered.
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