Slumdog Millionaire!

India is a country of paradoxes. While she has 7 billionaires in the list of 100 richest people in the world (The highest from any country outside the United States and Germany), one in four Indian actually lives below the poverty line! While there may be over 50 million graduates in the country, we still have the most number of illiterates in the world. We may have given to the world, Gandhi, Budhha and Mother Teresa, but we still fight proxy wars with our neighbours at the borders and incessant battles with rioters inside them. We may be exporting cars, phones, food and arms but still a substantial proportion of country does not have roads, electricity, suffers from hunger and is defenseless against simple diseases. We may have succeeded in becoming the solutions-provider of the world, but in the haste, somewhere we forgot to fix our own problems!

But, just as this is the land of suffering, so it is the world of opportunity. While there are these wide chasms between the haves and the have-nots in the country, the India of today, is a much more rewarding marketplace than it was ever before. 8 of the top 10 billionaires in India have created wealth only in the past 3-4 decades, rising phoenix-like from their crawling existence, rather than inheriting it from their forefathers. Industries like software, telecom, retail, media, entertainment today compete globally. In annual strategic meetings of major corporations, chances are, that slides of India outnumber those of any other country.

As a citizen of this bustling economy, and as a corporate worker in the financial capital of the country, I am exposed to this disparity in my day-to-day existence. As I wake up, and look out of the window - tall, impressive luxurious residences juxtapose with shabby unhygienic shanties. When I drive to work, long, expensive, chauffeur driven cars are camouflaged by ill-dressed, bare-footed children selling hand-made artifacts, as indeed their innocence, cheaply. Man’s behaviour, I presume, is the sum total of his reactions to stimuli around him. As I got subjected to such exposure, I grew extremely sensitive to the privileges of my existence. And this exposure dawned on me a couple of realizations. One, I live in times of explosive growth and fabulous opportunities, and two, the realities of poor environs can not just be wished away.

The intertwining of these two fundamental premises of today’s generation of my country has been exquisitely captured in a recent work of global cinema. Watching Slumdog Millionaire, the much decorated movie of recent times has been a thought-altering experience. There had been a churn of emotions over these years, and the movie acted as a catalyst in bringing them forth and sparking off concrete action from my side. Before I delve deeper, let me briefly outline the story.

The movie tells the story of a young boy, born and bred in deprivation. He struggles for formal education, rather “learning” from lessons of his tough life. Religious riots take away his mother from him, while his subsequent orphaning and poverty make him vulnerable to local crime masters. He frees himself by fleeing, growing up on small time jobs as his brother loses his way to crime. Fate puts him on a pedestal with a chance to win millions in a television chat-show, where he needs to answer a list of questions to wade his way through. The narrative is graphically presented via these questions as he answers all of them correctly to win the booty.
As much as it is a wonderful work of art, the essence of the film and indeed the book (Vikas Swarup’s Q and A – on which the movie is based) is captured by the protagonist’s (Jamaal) journey of life. The story may seem simplistic as a rags to riches one. Yet the finesse with which it is told left a lasting impression on my mind. It brings out certain qualities of the protagonist which are inspiring and worth emulating.

Energy and Attitude
The depiction stands out for the amazing zing that it brings to screen. It brings out the vitality of Indian life. As screenwriter Simon Beaufoy has commented and I quote, “I wanted to get across the sense of this huge amount of fun, laughter, chat and sense of community that is in these slums. What you pick up on is this mass of energy”. When I watch the movie, I realise that such energy is so typical of India and so infectious and uplifting.

I have been more aware of the impact that channelisation of such energy brings to the workplace. We live in a country of chaos, and managing success from such situations gives one the confidence. I remember reading Kanwal Rekhi’s words (highly respected venture capitalist at the Silicon Valley and the first Indian to be on the board of an international company) and he said, “when you learn to trek the tough Indian roads, the journey on fast developed highways is so much smoother”. Though I may not have faced as many hardships as Jamaal does in the film, I realized that growing up in a tough competitive environment in India readies one up for bigger challenges in life.

It is this attitude that I carry moving forward. While there may have been constraints on resources and limitations of exposure in the early part of my life, it actually stands up as a robust platform for worldly success in future. Navigating one’s way through life in a small town (where I come from), getting competitive to reach a respectable institution of learning (where I studied for my MMS) and then working at the major consumer goods companies in the country has hardened me and makes me confident to face the challenges of the next stage in life.

Grit and Unbeatable odds
The protagonist experiences upheavals of immense magnitude. From losing his parents, to life in abject poverty and to being within a gunshot of death, there were multiple occasions to succumb. But he held on, gritting his way through to success.
One takes away this lesson of sustained perseverance to one’s life. The learning for me as I encounter problems at work is that the enormity of work challenges seems to diminish when the determination to succeed is stronger.

The foremost lesson brought home by the story is that no odds are unbeatable. Or is it, that when you refuse to be cowed down, victory is inevitable. As I visit sales teams exhorting them to higher performance, this equation is vivid in my eyes. Victory is but, the absence of acceptance of defeat. A failure is but, another step towards success.

Ethics and Destiny
For a person who lived on the edge of existence, money would have been a big motivator and crime an apparent conduit. It would have been easy to cheat, as he did not have much to lose. Also, his brother in the story could not resist crossing the line. However, the conscious effort on Jamaal’s part to stay ethical despite failures is to be marveled. As I evaluate work decisions, I get enamoured by such traps as well. The rewards are blinding. But when one looks at the long-term trade-offs ethical decisions always make business sense as well. When one is ethical, one inspires trust. When one is trustworthy, there is greater transparency, confidence and smoother transactions. Channel partners and team members are enthused to deliver more.

Another subtle lesson in the movie is the pivotal part of destiny in one’s life. But, the creation of destiny is not providential. Instead, it is a culmination of the cumulative actions and intent of our lives with a sprinkling of luck. When things go wrong, it’s easy to slight and curse fate. But, for me the realization from the story was that one needs to focus on one’s action all the time, and things would take care of themselves. In a way, it was a reminder of the essence from Bhagvad Geeta, the religious scripture I learnt as a child, that one’s actions should be guided by the sense of duty and the right results would be a natural consequence. Too often in my work life earlier, I was impatient for results and may have taken some decisions solely with the result in mind. Rather, as a team leader, I must lay stress on building and executing processes, and subsequently, the results would follow.

Money is Important but Incidental
A corollary to the above, brought about by the end that the movie moves to, is the fact that one needs to be working towards the objective, rather than the money. In this case, it was to, one, reconnect with his brother, and two, to destrangulate his long lost love interest from her morbid state. The game show was just a means to achieve that, and the money earned through the show, though significant, is secondary to the main cause.

As I extrapolate the insight onto my work life, I realize the importance of this imbibed learning. On career decisions, on project evaluations and on deal decisions, while money may remain an important criterion, it must never be the overriding one. One must understand the work culture, environment, bosses and mentoring programmes in a company before applying for a job. There should be connect and a direction to the longer term career objective that the job would provide. Similarly, some projects may be profitable in the short-term but detrimental in the long-term interests of the company. For example, mis-selling an insurance product as a pure savings tool may get the sales team the customer, but in the long run, would tarnish the image of the organization. As a responsible corporate manager, I must stop such practices from flourishing.

Face poverty head-on
As I left the movie theatre fresh after experiencing the masterpiece, a flux of emotions gripped me. As much as I was awed by the technical brilliance of presentation, it was the story and the depiction that moved me. As elaborated above, I wowed at the message of positivity that emanated at the climax. I let the feeling settle itself and churned it many times later to evolve my learning from the classic.

However, there was another feeling that stayed on. The stark reality of poverty, disease and helplessness of millions of young children in the metro cities of India was realistically portrayed in the movie. The images lingered on my psyche for weeks together. This was the life that I had been witnessing by living in Mumbai over the past 5 years. However, from being kind and sensitive, I was turning reticent and indifferent. Slumdog Millionaire stirred up emotions inside me, which made me restless in the weeks to come. It made me pick up the cause and start contributing. I enrolled for the services of volunteering in the city slums.

The journey which was sparked by a film that I watched in February, bridged to a volunteering association in May. As I started spending time with the NGO (ivolunteer.in) on weekends, I realized the magnitude of work and the limited time that I could offer to the cause. Further discussions with the NGO and a lot of introspection later, I decided to contribute a year of my life to the cause. The decision further led to my joining the organization full time in October, 2009.

The next year, for me then, marks the year of giving back to society. I view it as the culmination of the initial phase of my career (9 years thus), after which I want to go back to the corporate world. As I move higher to positions of greater influence, post my MBA in 2011, I am hopeful that I will be able to impact society in a bigger scale, and help my country move faster in her journey towards excellence.