Recently someone from Africa sent me a page from the homework given to students of grade V with the teachers's comment. The student, who according to me was a bright one wrote the opposite of Original as China! Looking at this page my thoughts centered around the role of Indian corporates in their investment in training. Following are the pointers to ponder over.
Transparency International - a global watchdog body on corruption has ranked India at the 85th position competing with Burkina Faso. While enough has been written about corruption in police forces and government not much has been said about the corruption prevailing in the industry. It has generally been the experience that while industries become sick the industrialists managing the industry prosper. The writer has first-hand experience of how the garment exporting houses in the country exploit the labour by not paying their legitimate dues and hoodwinking global watchdog bodies with complete ease. No doubt the labour officers are active partners in crime. I also know how the software for clocking attendance is tweaked to show lesser overtime by these exporters. None of these worthy business people have any respect for skills or training. Hire and fire is the rule of the day. Expecting these crooks to contribute to the sector skills council is the ultimate joke. Just take any large export house dealing with apparel. I can bet that the owner's son who is a full-time play boy is the deputy MD and his two daughters must be heading HR and Merchandising.
The so-called CSR contribution is another area of hoodwinking. I know of a large group diverting their funds to their subsidiary companies which then are ploughed back. Some do lip service by painting the walls of the schools or gifting outdated computers and making a big advertisement about that.
In such an unprofessional setup the HR department has the most pathetic job of pampering to the whims and facies of the management and managing the bribing of the government babus. No wonder Dr. TV Rao and Udai Pareek aptly named such roles akin to the job of a call girl.
Finally, let us not pride in the fact that we are above China on the transparency index. In China, they have started executing corrupt business people while in India we award them with Padmashree and felicitate through industry bodies. Don't believe me? The infamous CMD of Satyam Ramlinga Raju was awarded the Golden Peacock Award for Corporate Governance in 2002.
