Daily Post 1476
IS SUPERFICIALITY OUR NEMESIS?
The cavalier manner in which people take public responsibilities in this country can send a send chill down the spine of any professional. Learning on the job is a thought process worthy be being spread and used but does it actually work? Has it worked for exceptionally complex job requirements? And can everybody learn this way? The standard understanding is that you learn things connected to your core domain pretty easily. That is how the standard horizontal extension of knowledge happens. Now we come to crux of the matter, do you have a core domain and next the logical corollary is, if yes, are you positioned in that domain.
Superficiality, our endemic curses is our DNA. We find everything doable till the time we do it and when get hit by shrapnel’s on way, we retreat and camouflage. The work remains unattended and we give a feeling that it has been mightily accomplished. This is deceit or in euphemism be called as professional camouflage. This is much worse than not doing it. The curse of superficiality is that the people who actually mean business take a long time to decide whether you know your work and secondly, whether you have the capability to deliver. This smokescreen gets created because of your perfected art of professional camouflage. Crucial time is lost in the process. The damage done is irreversible. Look all around you and you see life filled with such people, who clutter our mental space, the deliverable anyway remaining permanently unknown.
Pictures, citations, awards, seminars, and of late social media blitzkrieg has been their national habitat. If all of these were done in physical terms and sustained and built on it, India would certainly have been a superpower by now. Another character of these Superficiality Artists is that they can apportion any work done by anybody under them and affix their name to it. It seems they are always carrying their signature, name and official stamp to affix whatever comes their way. You see endless academic doyens affixing their names to every academic paper written under them. This can be termed as the worst form of plagiarism you can imagine of. PR, networking, lobbying, getting into high powered committees and dropping unconnected positional coordinates are their forte.
From political executives to bureaucrats to academia to the scientists fraternity, you find them everywhere. Do you have the cutting edge knowledge? A must today. Even if you do, is it enough? No way. Until and unless you don’t have demonstrated capability of delivering, you don’t stand a chance. Public domain is not meant for experimentation or primary learning. Leave aside delivering, you might not even able be to recruit an able team for your task. We have missed the woods for the trees, broadly in every area of our existence. Superficiality and non-delivery are two sides of the same coin. Instant gratification is at its core, which is a well settled philosophy of life in this country, and that things can magically happen with connection, power and money. Doing it the right and difficult way, is a waste and mostly unlikely to happen.
SUPERFICIALITY HAS THE POTENTIAL TO KILL A NATION.
Sanjay Sahay