DailyPost 1788
WORKABLE KNOWLEDGE
The other side of Jugaad, the management mantra of the Indians is workable knowledge, which can safely be termed as managing your way through every profession with just about manageable knowledge. A term like Jugaad is still to be coined for workable knowledge in Hindi or any other regional language. The impact of workable knowledge is all around us, from various professions, research, organizations of different types and last but not the least in academia. The ultimate example we find in the COVID-19 scenario in the backdrop of our school board results; even the students are also not sure of the fact whether they deserve the marks they got and worse still what will it fetch for them. Knowledge has crossed its own four walls to become Jugaad Knowledge.
It is too early to forget the CGPA fiasco of CBSE, finally it had to retrace its steps after five years. The scholastic aptitude and continuous assessment are excellent tools, necessarily to be done by the schools, in the process making a mockery of the system. It is the job of school management to make it look good. Though that system was scrapped, COVID-19 provided another great chance to improve upon that great model of Jugaad Knowledge. What is strange is that the nature of seasonal knowledge gathering is supposed to be sufficient to pull you through life. It has not been able and it never will be. It also kills the drive in you and over a period it’s the energy you carry makes a difference.
Do I need to know more? I know everything. These are the regular refrains we hear of in the Indian professional settings. Degrees and certificates are strewn around to prove your knowledge, in reality these documents can barely prove your workable knowledge. Private colleges were made autonomous to usher in the paid higher education model of the US. The paid part could be replicated but not the education part. Ditto for the engineering colleges, the nature of services which we provide in India’s most sought-after IT industry is the result of workable knowledge; body shopping, selling foreign IT products, call centers, managed services and the like. Innovation and product development belong to a different world.
In the government and in governance, workable knowledge has been the order of the day, since the world has moved into a tumult of knowledge, skills and technology transformation. At whatever level you enter in the government, the culture of workable knowledge would welcome you everywhere. That is the knowledge subculture and so people slowly get groomed into it, even if some hundreds of bright men and women would struggle initially, to finally toe the line. The non-application of fast-moving technology also forces you to remain in that rut on a near permanent basis. This impacts every single element of governmental functioning inclusive of image. Workable knowledge has turned out to be the opium of Indian professionals in a variety of areas.
KNOWLEDGE COMPONENT IN OUR PROFESSIONAL LIFE HAS TO BE DEFINED. ITS DYNAMIC TOO.
Sanjay Sahay