Islands of Excellence, and being an Engineer

Recently when I was reading the book “Banker to the Poor” by Muhammad Yunus, the famous Bangladeshi professor, banker, economist and Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2006, I came across this text which I have quoted verbatim below. You can buy the book at Flipkart or Amazon.

“Everyday I drove through the village of Jobra which stood between the highway and the campus. I saw barren fields next to the campus. I asked my colleague Professor Latifee the reason for not cultivating this land for a winter crop. He made some guesses for he knew the village well. I proposed that both of us go to the village and talk to the people. We did and soon found the answer.

There was no water for irrigation.

I thought we should do something about it. It was a shame to let the land around the university campus remain barren. If a university is a repository of the world’s knowledge, then some of this knowledge must spill over into the neighborhood and demonstrate that it is indeed useful knowledge. A university should not be an island where academics attain higher and higher levels of knowledge without sharing any of this knowledge with its neighbors.”

And how accurately he has observed. He was a professor in one of the best universities in Bangladesh, and he could not understand the poverty and helpness of the villages right next to the campus. His remark that if a university is a repository of world’s knowledge, it should spill to the nearby areas to demonstrate that it is useful. What a simple and insightful thought!! What is the use of our education and all institutions we have created if it can’t help the people who need it the most?

Are we doing justice to our profession?

Are we doing justice to our profession?

I am an engineer, and I have a similar network, with many people in my address book being engineers, managers, with high levels of education and skills. Living in Bangalore, it seems every other person works in a big IT company. With so much wisdom, knowledge and skills all around me, isn’t it ironical that grave problems still exist in the same society and neighborhood where we live. Shouldn’t our treasure of knowledge spill over in finding solutions to the problems all around us. Or is it that our skills can help big multinationals create new products and improve existing ones for clients mostly sitting abroad but we can’t use our skills to help our brothers and sisters, many of whom don’t even have the basic amenities to live a decent life.

Or have we created little islands of excellence all around us and we don’t bother to see the poor and the miserable condition they live in. They might live next to our doorsteps, but it is amazing how we have learned to ignore them, and similarly, how they have learned to ignore us. We travel on the same roads, live in the same neighborhood, but the similarities end here. Our homes are spacious and have the best amenities, while somewhere nearby you will also find their congested neighborhood with small houses with very basic amenities. Our children go to the best schools and ride bicycles (with gears) while their go to government schools, play barefoot on the roads with old cycle tyres. Wah Re India..

Now there must be something I am missing here. Because this can’t be right. This can’t be the state of one of the fastest growing economies in the world. If our engineers are known for their skills all over the world, why can’t they solve the problems which are nearest to them? Wikipedia define Engineers as “They work to develop economic and safe solutions to practical problems, by applying mathematics, scientific knowledge and ingenuity while considering technical constraints.” We call ourselves engineers very proudly, but if we see our daily lives, do we really think that what we do is in sync with the above definition? Even if the answer is yes, then why are we ignoring our own problems and solving problems of the rest of the world? Are we not doing a great injustice to our profession? Are we not insulting the word “Engineer” by calling ourselves so?

I would love for all to leave comments below, but I would like to request one thing from all readers. Don’t leave your comment immediately if you are frustrated, angry or offended by what I have written. I am not blaming anyone, I am just wondering at the situation. Think about it for a minute or two, go over your daily lives and see if your skills can be of any help to people around you, and then leave a comment. I would love to hear what you have to say.

P.S. – Banker to the Poor is one of my favorite books.

My weekly tweets archive for the week ending 2011-05-16

  • “The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.” – W.M. Lewis #
  • “Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” – Henry David Thoreau #
  • The Paradoxical Commandments http://fb.me/wLcC6Vbd #
  • “Will you look back on life and say, “I wish I had,” or “I’m glad I did”?” – Zig Ziglar #
  • How can volunteering help you? http://fb.me/HsEtqjay #
  • The one traffic light in the world that was red for 34 years, just turned green in Bengal! #
  • Good people are found in every corner of the earth, but unfortunately the earth has no corners. #
  • Not seen something better than this http://fb.me/xWbObXza #
  • Inspirational Quotes by George Bernard Shaw http://fb.me/yXRkG3s9 #
  • “You see things; you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?” #
  • Shane Kieth Warne.. one of a kind!! http://fb.me/sKbrHE0q #
  • An article I wrote in Jan this year 🙂 http://fb.me/YYZ5scW9 #
  • Introducing PickaFight.. Ping me if you want to contribute with my latest initiative!! http://fb.me/wf80mFiU #
  • People need to stop looking for life on other planets when they can’t even get one on the planet they’re ALREADY #
  • Waiting for the test matches to start to see some real cricket!! http://fb.me/L9tf8rMb #

Volunteering, What It Can Do For You?

Volunteering has a meaningful impact on your community. It contributes to the overall social and economic health of the community, as people are engaged positively into contributing for disadvantaged sections of society. It could range from visiting the sick, planting a tree or advocating for human rights. But apart from the benefits to the society, we most often miss the benefits it can have for the person who is volunteering. Here are some ways how volunteering can benefit you –

Learn new Skills
Volunteering can help us learn more skills and makes us aware of our hidden skills. We can help organize a fundraising event, do an awareness event, or teach students in a school. By doing this we can improve our goal setting, planning or budgeting skills. It also helps us to improve our decision making skills and contribute to personal change by affecting our beliefs about day to day behavior of people. If you always had a hobby and you wanted to know if you should pursue it, you can volunteer with your skills to see for yourself whether you enjoy doing it or not, or where you stand in that skill. For example, taking initiatives like ‘No Waste‘ and ‘Dandi March‘ has certainly made a huge difference to my people management and leadership skills.

Volunteer for Yourself

Volunteer for Yourself

Sense of Fulfillment
When we volunteer, we give our time and skills generously by choice. There is no anxiety and stress as we have made the decision all by ourself. Therefore, volunteering gives us the highest level of accomplishment and a sense of fulfillment. Whenever I have helped others, I have always felt joy and I think it is the same with all human beings. Even after working on something physically stressful while volunteering, people always feel stress-free, relaxed and more alive after doing it. And irrespective of the outcome, the knowledge of contributing to a good cause is always rewarding.

Wider Perspective
In our busy day to day lives, volunteering can help us create some stability in our lives. The confidence and experience gained from volunteering can be helpful in seeing workplace issues in a different perspective. We discover new traits of our personality and can reach for new levels of performance at the workplace too. For me, meeting people from different age groups and different professions has given me the ability to put my world in perspective with so much other stuff happening which I was totally unaware of earlier. It has also helped me improve my social and interpersonal skills. Volunteering can help anybody get out of the ‘rat race’ and create a balance in their lives.

Connecting with others
When you volunteer, you will meet new people from different walks and segments of the society. These contacts can be valuable in establishing business contacts or for seeking employment in the future. Meeting people and making new friends increase the feeling of relatedness with the community, and is rewarding intrinsically. People and societies depend on each other for survival but commercialism and consumerism have seen people getting more and more individualistic. What better way to connect and give something back to your community than volunteering.

Nobody can do everything, but everyone can do something

Nobody can do everything, but everyone can do something

“A candle loses nothing by lighting another” is a popular quote by James Keller. We can not give something (out of free will) without getting something in return. When we give our time and skills to another, it is like lighting a candle. We don’t lose anything, but gain more light (knowledge). Volunteering always leaves us richer in spirit, happiness, skills and takes away your problems, stress and anxiety. If you have not spend time volunteering till now, do so. It is certainly one of the things you must experience sooner than later. For volunteering opportunities, see this initiative (Pick A Fight) I am taking with a few of my friends.

Shane Warne – A Maverick and a Magician

There are not many leg spinners in world cricket today. Neither were there 20 years ago, until Shane Warne (along with Anil Kumble) brought it into fashion again. Leg-spin is not only about skill, it is like an art, and like all work of artists, watching him bowl is always a treat to watch. When he begins to ‘walk‘ his short run up, it is marked by the ball being tossed from the right hand to the left by those artful wrists. With eyes and mind focussed on the plan, the ball is released from his hands towards a batsman who is confused about the flight, the dip, the speed, and the amount of turn the ball will take after pitching.

In the face agression, but very well controlled

In the face agression, but very well controlled

Two decades before he came onto the international scene, fast bowlers have ruled world cricket like never before. Despite the fact that executing and mastering leg-spin is extremely difficult, he came up trumps and made his own bewildering English and South African batsmen with a puzzle which they will never solve. His humiliation of Mike Gatting and many other batsmen by his enormous turn, masterful googlies and surprising flippers made for a wonderful sight for cricket lovers who were tired of seeing West Indian bowlers destroying batting lineups. South African Daryl Cullinan was believed to have sought the help of a therapist to overcome Warne’s psychological hold over his batting.

Gideon Haigh, the Australian journalist, said of Warne upon his retirement: “It was said of Augustus that he found Rome brick and left it marble: the same is true of Warne and spin bowling.” Though known mostly for his 708 wickets in Test cricket, he was highly effective in ODIs too, with his twin man of the match awards in the semi-final and final matches being instrumental in handing Australia the World Cup in 1999. He was something with the bat too, having the highest number of runs without a century with two 90+ scores under his belt. He was also a successful slip fielder, and stands seventh in the list of most catches.

Like all this was not enough, he signed up for Rajasthan Royals in the IPL in 2008 after retiring from one dayers in 2003 and test matches in 2007. As captain of perhaps the most weak side in the tournament, he turned a group of nobodies into a formidable team and led them to an unprecedented victory in the first version of IPL. Many remarked him as the wiliest captain Australia never had. His overs were always a fun to watch rather than just individual balls because of the way he planned and plotted the dismissal of his preys. It was the same spirit and guile he showed as a captain when he led Rajasthan Royals to IPL victory.

On and off the pitch, his life can be compared to a typical bollywood masala movie. His story is a tale of women, bookmakers, diet pills, then more women, but certainly headlines all along the way. Coming to cricket, he was one of the five players ranked by Wisden as the greatest cricketers of the 20th century. In 1993, he took 72 victims, and in 2005 took a massive 96 wickets coming after a one year ban. His control over the degree of spin, and his flippers, sliders and zooters made the life of many a batsman miserable. He was also invited to see Sir Donald Bradman along with Sachin Tendulkar.

A colorful life, but full of controversies

A colorful life, but full of controversies

If ever there was a Bradman of bowling, it has to be him. He has always been my favorite cricketer, right on the top with Sachin Tendulkar. His presence on the cricket field is itself magical and the whole stadium and the commentators are totally entertained by his tactics. With the bowl in his hand, anything can happen. He can turn a match around with a few overs, with the 1999 World Cup semi-final being the best example. He is as arrogant as any Australian, yet humble enough to acknowledge that he had nightmares of Sachin Tendulkar hitting him for sixes.

No one has had a more colorful career than him, full of achievements as a magician and mischiefs as a maverick. He retired from one dayers in 2003, tests in 2007 and now he has announced T20 retirement in 2011. Looks like all well-timed decisions. I have watched IPL for the last few years and supported Rajasthan Royals only because he was playing. IPL will miss him. I will miss him. Cricket has certainly been left poorer by his departure.

Introducing Pick A Fight

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it” – Helen Keller

Today, we are living in a world full of joy and sorrows. While, at one end, we are making new progress with every passing day with breakthroughs in science and technology, we are still struggling from grave problems like poverty, corruption, child abuse, etc. All of us are fighting our own battle. A fight for survival, to earn more money, to ensure a better future for our family, and so on. Many individuals and organizations are also fighting for the greater good and issues which affect all of us as a society.

Pick a fight, Make a difference

Pick a fight, Make a difference

Pick a Fight is a platform to connect those who are fighting for a cause and looking for help with people who are willing to help. A fight could be an NGO fighting for women empowerment, a company working towards green drives like sapling planting, an individual taking an initiative in his locality, apartment, etc or a group of people (RWA, friends) who have come together to fight for some cause.

If you want to help and stand for a cause, Pick a Fight is the place to be. We aspire to have all the information of different fights people are fighting for.  It will be the one stop destination to seek help and offer help. Help could be in the form of giving your time to volunteer, giving away resources like old clothes or books, or donating money towards a cause.

Pick a Fight is the brainchild of Anupama Sharma, a software professional working in Bangalore. Here is what she has to say, in her own words –

“I had just come back from a wonderful day at an orphanage and was narrating the event to a friend when he exclaimed that he would have loved to be a part of it. He asked me the address of the orphanage and was surprised to find out that he had been living close to the orphanage all these years and did not even knew about it. That is when it occurred to me that there are ample people who want to help and many others who need help, and I saw that as an opportunity to connect them. Very soon two of my friends joined me, and I am sure many more will join in the coming days. Our objective is to create a new culture of giving and helping through PickaFight.”

I will be helping her to make Pick a Fight a success and inculcate a new culture of giving and helping. If you want to be a part of it or contribute in any way, contact Anupama at anupama@pickafight.in, Ketan at ketan@pickafight.in or myself at sumit@pickafight.in

You can find Pick A Fight on Facebook and Twitter. Like / Follow these pages to stay updated about our activities. Our website is all set for a launch on 15 May.