They say that the best journeys are the journeys that bring you home. And then there is 'home sweet home'. And yet the work environment in Calcutta left a bad taste in my mouth.
I am proud to be a Bengali (the residents of Calcutta). After all, despite the poverty and untidiness and many other problem, in India the noble laurates, oscar winners (until the recent Rahman spectacular) and several intellectual men and women were/are from the city. But , sadly, now the state of the state of West Bengal is abysmal. We (Bengalis) crib about the state and still like to think that we are better than the rest of India. But, sadly enough, the reality is something different. The world has moved on...Calcutta has not. I am not trying to bash the city, which formed my basic foundation. The fact remains, whatever the city does, it makes a huge publicity stunt of the work or acheivements. The number of IT (Information Technology) offices and campus are a small fraction of those in Bangalore or Mumbai. The mere prospect of the establishment of the Nano motor (more famously known as the world's cheapest car) raised such a celebration that it seemed that the world can't get bigger and better. All these point to one thing: we love making a mountain of a mole (Empty vessels sound more?).
I had been wondering what it is that makes Calcutta not so industry-friendly. From being the capital of India till the early decades of the 20th century to being reduced a shadow of its glory days, there really has to be something wrong somewhere. Well, I did not have to scratch my head for long. It is the unions, the strikes (bandhs), the laziness of the people which top the list. The cultural shock that I faced is people's attitude towards work. I wonder how people can be so ignorant about their work. When I go to repair my DVD player, the mechanic charges me money, without even repairing it. And on top of it, he creates more problems in it. One Sunday the taxi unions call a strike the following day; the reason being that the drop in the global petrol price should be reflected in the price of the petrol in the local market (in India petrol prices are regulated by the government). Have they ever thought that so many thousands of people will have to suffer and so many crores of business will be lost. Not a word, I bet. The list is endless. And I wonder how a community or state can ever think of progressing if this is the attitude that its residents. have.
There is an absolute collapse of the work culture. They say that as long as you dont feel feel the heat, you can sleep well. When during the Durga Puja (the main festival of the Bengalis that continues for four days) I saw the employee turn out in offices in big IT MNCs (like IBM, TATA Consultancy Services, Wipro, Cognizant Technologies etc) barely reaching 10% for entire 1 week -- F-I-V-E working days -- I was left spell-bound. At least in the MNCs I expected some discipline and punctuality. And , believe me, no one had the least thought for the business going going haywire. People just did not work in that week. Be it bank, offices...you name it. The scenario was no different during the last week of the year. Amazing place!! It really leaves me in a work-cultural shock.
But, perhaps, I should have reliased that such a thing was coming. Morning shows the day. I will end my piece with the morning which showed me the day or the months that was to follow during my stay in the city of calcutta. After my MBA, I landed Calcutta in the first week of September. I landed in the Howrah railway station (which is the main railway station to enter calcutta). It was morning 4 am. Typical to the other Indian cities, the newspapermen were busy suffling and arranging the daily newspapers to distribute them to houses, shops and stalls. And the big headline that was displayed 'majestically' on the front page of all the newspapers was something like this ' NANO CAR MANUFACTURING UNIT WORTH 1700 CRORE (INDIAN RUPEES) CALLED OFF FROM WEST BENGAL'. The reason was a land dispute between the company, the state governemnt and the opposition. I would not like to go into a debate or adda, another very dear time-pass entertainment of the Bengalis. Be it sacking of the Indian cricket team team, the decision taken by George Bush in a certain X country, the impact of the recession, almost every bengali person has an opinion on it, which he is ready to defend in some of the most heated discussions for hours together. Needless to say, at the end of the hours of discussion and exchange of views people hardly move from where they were when the discussion began.
The withdrawl of the car was , undoubtedly, a major blow to the state's industrial prospect. But,it re-assured the fact that for whatever reason, the city of Calcutta and industries/work-culture can never go hand in hand. More than the project, it reflected the attitude of the people towards work.
Calcutta is not serious about business and hence, rightly, business is not serious about Calcutta either.
I did not enJOY working a moment in The City of Joy (as Calcutta is commonly known as).
