DailyPost 2041
TALENTED DOER AND …
The underpinnings of democracy is based on talent, can be read as meritocracy, the talent which delivers, which means he is the doer and as an icing on the cake, the individual is independent. This was what democracy was intended to be at the individual level. Have we taken this trajectory and made it our own? Or did we lose it somewhere on the way? Or even worse, we never gave it a thought after having enunciated it. Whatever may be its genesis, today we are the throes of a crisis of talent, connected or unconnected with the lack of real doers, and most shabby of it all the missing independent mindset. The battle of showcasing has not taken us anywhere and as we move further, we will keep sliding down much faster.
With going into the capacity of our country at talent creation and also in creating a meritocratic academic and professional ecosystem, the understanding, perception, utility and potential of talent, is merrily bonsaied. Talent with the add ons of brilliance and intelligence, is at its best in the academic career is to get good marks, and beyond getting a good job. A good job means only a good package, and has nothing to do with the content, growth, expertise and certainly not fulfilment. This is the single most dent into the correlation which talent has with achievement, where even sky is not the limit. Killing the capability to take risk in the students endowed with the talent is the biggest achievement of our educational ecosystem.
If talent cannot risk, then who will take it. Talent is a weird game in this country, you are expected to keep narrating your medal winning spree of your academic career for the rest of your life, as if the day-to-day achievements does not matter. The medal, reward and certificate stories keep going on for all your professional life, to prove the worth of non-doer or at the very best, some regular accomplishments of the job. Taking of the ordinary to the pedestal has been the singular achievement of the Indian nation. Is doer a category in this nation? Or reaching a position is itself an achievement, may it be being elected or becoming a minister or clearing the civil services exam. The rest of the game in either managing, manipulating or camouflaging. If the doer was DNA of the nation, then why we don’t have numerous renowned experts in every area, we don’t even have in political democracy, practitioners even after being in thick of things for over three decades.
If this was not enough for making the success of the game called National Jeopardy, then the subjugation of independence of thought and action, of the talented and the doer, means the nemesis of the nation. The mediocrity of everything is our national fate. How can it make you a superpower, only people in the talentless power game can make that deadly prophecy. From the quality of an article in an academic institution, to the fate of the cutting-edge technologies explains it all. There cannot be an evergreen forest in a rain starved area. We are trying to create a superstructure for which the infrastructure does not exist. The human resource of a nation is its biggest resource, but unfortunately, the democratic dividend is not just simple numbers game.
THE DIRECT AND FRUITFUL CONNECT BETWEEN TALENT, DELIVERY (BECOMING A DOER) WITH INDEPENDENT THOUGHT HAS BEEN BROKEN FOR GOOD.
Sanjay Sahay