India- A tale of ‘success maniacs’

In my previous post on ‘celebrating failure’ I touched upon a bit on embracing failure. Why it’s a natural ingredient for success?

Why we Indians are so scared of failure? The answer lies in our upbringing. When we are growing up, our parents, relatives or our so called well wishers already position in our young minds, if you don’t do well in your life you will be deemed as a failure. Nobody will marry you. You won’t earn enough money to have a respectable position in society. People won’t respect you and so much bull shit.

The result- children don’t spend time experimenting rather lock themselves in a cubicle, mug word by word theory, internalize mathematics formula and apply them into solving theoretical problems. That’s it!!!

These tactics are helpful in their exams as application of theory learned doesn’t feature in the radar of the examiner. He is only interested in knowing how well a student mimics word by word theory as printed in the book. Well, that’s a perfect recipe to churn out toppers who can solve bookish problems but real world problems are hard nut to crack.

When we enter in our colleges, our so called education system allows entry to selected few in prestigious colleges who have secured close to 100% marks by mugging their way through the system.WOW!!!

Those who always had that practical mindset are either blown away by the poisonous words of their closed ones and those lucky ones who survive join the rat race of preparing themselves for easy government jobs or joining big brands after this onslaught.

Students from prestigious universities after graduating either fly their way to foreign universities or those with financially unstable background join private or government firms to support their families.

Our system can create manpower for private firms but this system can’t bolster an environment for entrepreneurial aspirations to fly high. This is the greatest tragedy.

A tragedy that’s probably robbing India its future Google, Facebook or Whatsapp. I know, not everyone can build a million or billion dollar company everyday no matter in any environment you raise these kids. But those selected few who end up making one; provide employment to other thousands of future graduates.

Moreover, a successful business or company instills a belief that it can happen. Their country is capable to build another success story but for belief itself you need examples.

Time has come to reward original thinking at school level. Time has come for private investors and firms to invest in future ideas and minds. You never know a country with billion people churn out few Googles, Microsofts or Facebooks. You just never know!!! But for that to happen at least start.