Real Growth ...... ?????

Its budget time and all the news-channels and print media are busy speculating the changes in this years Union budget. The Finance minister is in a comfortable position with the GDP growth clocking over 9% growth rate. As an optimistic young man ....... working in one of the Fastest growing secotrs(IT) .... i am confident of making it big in my carrer.

Last week i attended a wedding in a nearby town...(4 hours by bus from Hyderabad); The bus was almost empty when i boarded it in the hyd main bus-station. To my surprise the bus did not had ticket conductor ; By the time the bus started ... there were 10 vacant seats. We had to buy the tickets from the driver ..... the tickets were printed out from a PDA device; As we reached the outskirts of the city, there were still few seats left vacant but the driver was not stopping the bus and was signalling to the waiting passengers .. that the bus is full; I was very surprised and did not understand the reason why he was doing that. When we reached a village( "Chityal" ... 20 kms from the city)... a wedding party of around 10 people was waiting at the bus stop. To my surprise the driver stopped the bus; One of the youngeters of the wedding party was sitting besides me; Unable to control my curiosity.... i asked him when did they buy the bustickets..... to which he smiled and told me about the "Online Reservation" counter at their village; I understood the stupidy of my question. But i was happy that the Public Transport sector was using technology to provide the better services. More and more services of the government are made available online and the technology benifits are reaching the common man. The story till now goes on the expected lines( "Real Growth")..... the next 2 hours of my bus journey explains the ("?????" part of it);

I woke-up from a quick nap to realise that the highway was partially blocked by a group of agitating farmers( They were protesting to the proposed "Outer Ring Road" on their farmlands); Two people in the seat infront of me were dicussing the rising inflation and other stuff; Then an elderly gentelmen in his 50's dressed in plain white shirt... interrupted the discussion and said "All these troubles are because of the IT people .... you drive those people out of town and all your troubles will Gone"; From a dizzy state ..... now i was wide awake ; The elderly man explained the troubles faced by a government employee like him...."The IT people will get lakhs of rupees of loan without any trouble ... the Real estate agents are only too happy to push the prices to the roof; The IT people do not understand the value of money; They do not bargain and are restless to buy things at any cost; They are willing to pay house rents of close to 8000 rs per month.... only till four years ago the rentals were less than 2000 in the same areas. Where will the salaried class of people will go. The government increases the salary every four years and adjusting the inflation, the real increase in the salary is negligible. The IT people are the cause for all these problems"; After his emotional outburst ...the Elderly man continued to read a local daily. The two people who initially started the discussion .... inspired by the Elderly man ... continued to bash the IT sector and its ill effects on the country;

I tried to sleep for the rest of the journey ...but could not ... as the statements made by the Elderly man continued to ring in my ears; I realised that if a section of society becomes too rich in very short time leaving behind majority of the people .... the social Unrest present in the society will only increase to dangerous levels. The corrective action is not about "Driving the IT people out of town"(as suggested by the Elderly man)....but "Driving more people into the IT sector". The rural folk should have a stake in the development and they must be made partners of this development not mere spectators. We must try to reach out to the Rural students and enhance their learning and bring them into the Virtuous cycle . As responsible IT people, we must understand the value of Money.... we should not do things which will push the prices even higher and beyond the reach of a common man. With these "words of wisdom"(Bhaashan).... i am signing off;