Influence and Enable Children to Pursue Their Heart
Damodar Padhi
Former Chief Learning Officer of Tata Consultancy Services, Advisor to individuals, teams and start-ups, Author of the self-help memoir 'The Scrapper's Way: Making It Big in an Unequal World'
“Papa, mere se JEE nahi ho payega. Sorry, I quit. (Papa, I won’t be able to clear JEE. Sorry, I quit),” said a suicide note recovered from a 16-year-old boy in March, this year. This was by then the sixth suicide in the town of Kota in 2024.
The tone of the letter implies that the boy must have expressed his inability or aversion to engineering during prior interactions with his father, who did not pay heed to listen to the heart of his son.
If the interminable Kota Suicide News do not serve as wakeup call for some of the adamant parents, hopefully, another recent news headline would: "38% IITians from the class of 2024 are yet to be placed".
And it is almost the end of the campus placement season!
Unfortunately, most of those 38% would be the ones who lack strong credentials and passion for higher education or pursuing the sequel for a radically different career option, including administrative services.
Imagine, what would be the state of mind of those 38% of job aspirants. And, if such is the fate of students in IITs, what would be the state of affair in thousands of other engineering colleges in the country?
The question I would ask to most parents therefore, is, why?
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How long would they continue to be allured by sensational reporting of “1 Crore Plus” salary packages to IITians? How many, or rather, what percentage of students do indeed receive such astronomical salary package at an entry level? And out of the few who do, how many indeed sustain that salary package? What indeed would be the “job pressure” on them?
Can’t they pay heed to many lead indicators that clearly show the demand-supply gap? (The net headcount increases of all major IT companies that feed bulk of the entry level job for engineers in India is ‘negative’)
Is ‘Engineering’ the only career option?
Just look around; how many jobs done by engineers indeed need to be done by engineers?
Why would they push their unwilling children to engineering then?
Why would they not 'influence and enable' their children to discover their passion and pursue their heart? Is it not expected of 'great parents'?
Chief Technical Officer | Strategic R&D Leader | Digital Simulations Expert | Industrial Automation Specialist | Product Development Stalwart | Business Analytics Professional
5 个月Very true Damodar. People are conditioned to an extent that they believe there are only a few options. A brief look at successful people across different fields suggests a different perspective. Hard work and determination are the key factors in building a successful career and there are multiple ways. If you combine the two with your passion you will succeed in your own path. Best exemplified in “The Scrappers Way” ??
Tropical Infectious Disease and Public Health Expert
5 个月Indeed, it is crucial to continue these conversations to empower the youth and set them free, to dream big and envision grand possibilities for themselves.
Mechanical Integrity Engineer,Rolls-Royce Critical Parts Lifing (CPL) Team, Derby, UK/Ex-GE/Ex-BD
5 个月Very true. Completely agree with you Damodar Sir. Every kid is unique and creative in his/her own way. It's always good to help them as enablers, but it's never good to impose a career on any kid, which would in future lead to a disaster....
Compliance Program Manager at TCS | Golden Guru Awardee at Tata Consultancy Services
6 个月As long as the materialistic pursuit will be at a high pedestal than the creative one by Indian society ; bound to happen.
Developer Relations Engineer
6 个月https://youtu.be/jkN9VdjgDwM?si=pBTQFlubipRqf14W - I made a point of showing my kids this video when they were young. This taught them that expectations from parents could be unreasonable. I also made a point of saying to them (with a thick Indian accent), "You can study whatever you want. You will still end up writing software". My kids are now one civil engineer, one supply chain business grad, one headed to cyber security and one headed to forensic chemistry. And they all know that they will have to write some software.