A brisk walk into our history expounds facts whose traits are still found in our current work culture. Hitherto, we saw an era where the title “King” had all powers in a kingdom. All the people were to obey the orders of King and working people had no choice but to abide by his rules, even if they were to disagree.

Zamindar system then setup ordinary people to work for landlords. Again the people had to obey his/her orders and honor his/her title. It’s a big transformation in India from dynasties to British Rule to Corporate world. But even today some of the old traits continue to show up in today’s corporate work culture in India.

Superior-Subordinate Relationship

It’s still a norm we see in India where subordinates abide superiors. “Boss is always right” still holds good. Subordinates follow his/her decision without any objection even if they do not want to. It’s a give-in attitude most of the time. There is no right or wrong behavior here. We Indians by nature do not like to be in bad books of anyone, and we are being nurtured in the family that teaches us to respect our elders. Most of the times seniority takes precedence over talent (or merit).

Who vs. What

Superiors usually do not check what issue has been escalated to them instead look for who escalated an issue. Title, status does matter in Indian management. A subordinate challenging a superior is taken as insolence or hurting the ego of the superior instead of being open to new thoughts.

“Growth” – A Mistaken Word

This is perhaps the most widely mistaken word in work environment. Growth is calculated in terms of promotions and title but not in knowledge and experience. Every individual is worried of his/her promotion and tries to compare his/her position and title with peers they are aware of. Promotions appease job contentment. If there is no progression in one’s career, he/she is considered as non-performing individual. We need to be mindful that professionals like Doctors and Lawyers do not have promotions. But they are still highly respectable professionals in the society.

Work Takes Precedence Over Family

It’s the other way round about family here. Not that we don’t love family and don’t like to spend time, but market competition warrants individual to slog for more than normal hours. Fear of being considered as non-performer, if they are not being slogged. Also it was the expectation set by predecessors during “unemployment era” to woo the employers and that trend (and expectation) continued for years thereafter.

Never Say “No”

Saying “No” is considered as impolite behavior. Most of the times a straight no is masked (or camouflaged) with long statements that might confuse the client and make him feel we are beating around the bushes. It’s again just the cultural difference that we don’t want to be seen as impolite by not saying No.

As you can see we have acquired some of the behavioral traits from our history and some from our culture. Time would tell us if we continue to behave this way or if we would change.

Image Credit: KM Photography

Popularity: 39%

“Yet again the communal clashes in the city has left the streets  burning with the flames of hatred killing thousands of people all over “.

This is Naina Sahay reporting live from Mumbai, Kal Tak. 

Naina was a young, flamboyant journalist who had earned herself a lot of accolades for her brave reporting and blunt comments that supported the truth. Her parents passed away when she was barely the age of 12 in an accident leaving behind a lot of responsibilities and a younger brother to take care of.

As she grew up she started working at a very young age in order to give her brother the best of life she could. She gave him love of a mother, father as well as sister. And in the process earned a living through whatever jobs she could lay her hands on. Naina got introduced to the field of journalism through a friend and since then there was no looking back. 

Naina just kept on climbing the success ladder to earn herself a life she truly deserved. From scratch, today she owns a good house, car and everything. But what Naina truly cared for was Armaan, her younger brother. She could never live without him. A slight fever and the girl who could report under waist deep water during Mumbai floods would go paranoid.

A small wound on Armaan would make her go berserk  and a drop of tear from Armaan’s eyes would just make Naina depressed. Probably that’s the reason why Naina was unmarried because she could not live without her brother and would want to give him her undivided attention.

But then one incident shattered her life.

In the year 1993 communal riots broke out in Mumbai .People were behind each other’s lives. Dead bodies were lying on the roads. Injured unattended and bloody and gory sight’s everywhere. People were scared to get out of their houses yet Naina risked her life to deliver news to people.  So many times the bullets must have just missed her but even through such tensed situation she would remain calm and help the injured on the streets. While doing her duty her finger constantly clicked Armaan’s number at the interval of every half an hour to ensure his safety.  

Suddenly one day Naina heard a cry of help. On drawing closer to the sound she realized there was a man badly injured and was probably taking his last breadth. The man in a hushed voice called Naina closer. Naina hesitantly went closer. The man revealed a sensational news that would rock the nation and he also had photo evidence to back his story. Naina was shocked at the evidence. Before Naina could ask him any questions the man closed his eyes forever.

The man said that the current Chief Minister was involved in the clashes of Hindu and Muslim communities and he had started communal rights in order to degrade his political rivalry. Naina had a very important evidence and also the power to stop the future bombings that were planned to kill the leader of the opposition party which would leave the entire city burning and spoil the situation even more.

Naina hurried to her house and kept the photograph with Armaan. She went to her Head Office to make arrangement for her breaking news. But what Naina wasn’t aware of was the man who followed her to her house.

While Naina was in the office preparing for the prime event the man entered her house. Armaan heard the noise and went in the front room. The man attacked Armaan, Armaan resisted and tried to fight back but the man just removed a gun and shot down six bullets into Armaan. Armaan’s knees gave away, he fell down and instantly his life was snatched by the cruelty of the world. The man ransacked the entire house and found the photograph and ran away with it.

Naina with her boss returned to her house. Her feet trembled, beads of sweat trickled down her forehead, she collapsed the darkness was’nt only for the moment but for the rest of her life.  Seeing the pool of blood which Armaan was in, disturbed the mental state of Naina.

The news was’nt deliverd but the death of Armaan resulted in the suicide of the courageous self of what Naina used to be. Yet again the politics of our country silenced the truth. She lost her mental balance, she lost her voice and what was left was a silent suicide which was never recorded..

Statistics have shown thousands of people suicide due to different reasons but have we ever thought of the loss of individuality that people suffer at the hands of our ignorance…It is high time we follow the philosophy of LIVE AND LET LIVE… It is high time we understand that we are not divided on the basis of religion, caste, creed or sex but we all belong to a much higher sect that is Humanity.

We all have 2 eyes 2 hands 1 nose 2 feet, so why the heck are we fighting for our so called differences. Let’s all join in this human chain of understanding and love so that we make India, a better place to live in.

Popularity: 31%

Worldwide, computers communicate in native languages, at least figuratively. The Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Europeans and the Russians have long had their own local language applications running on supported or native operating systems for many years now.

Albeit a late entrant, looks like we are catching up. C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) launched the latest version of our desi (GNU) linux edition BOSS version 3.0 codename Tejas. This version features GNOME 2.20 ,KDE 3.5 with Kernel 2.6.22-3-486. Developed by the NRCFOSS (National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software) team, BOSS stands for Bharat Operating Systems Solutions.

The 3D desktop screen look neat and retains the ease and convenience of a GUI. This edition features a full Graphical mode installer and simplified menus. Office productivity will be provided by BharatheeyaaOO, which is a desi version of OpenOffice.org 2.0.1. There is a bulk document converter for added convenience. PDF reader, instant messaging , Firefox 3.0, firewall, samba, ftp et all are standard.

Multimedia support is good with support for video playback, removable media, TV tuner and plug and play devices. Connectivity includes wired and wireless networks and Bluetooth.

Currently BOSS GNU/Linux Desktop is available in almost all the Indian Languages such as Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Bodo, Urdu, Kashmiri, Maithili, Konkani and Manipuri.

So finally it does look like Information Technology will reach even the majority of our non-English countrymen. Share your experience with this edition! You can download the linux distro from http://bosslinux.in/downloads .

Popularity: 30%