When there was only Doordarshan (DD) in India offering TV broadcasting services, I used to even watch and enjoy agricultural programmes (‘vayalum valvum’ in Tamil).   Today, though there are several channels, I don’t enjoy TV as much I did in my childhood.

I still remember that we watched 5 to 6 movie songs on Fridays in ‘Oliyum Oliyum’ programme (in Hindi, it was ‘Chitrahaar’).   Today there are several music channels which I come across only while scrolling up and down in my remote to watch some other channel.   I don’t have the patience to watch even one song in TV.

I was wondering why I changed.  I guess the answer is “too much is too boring”.

When I was in my regular job, my monthly income exceeded my  monthly  expenses by at least 7 to 10 times.  It means, I was able to  buy anything at anytime.  Today, since I’m having my own company and expenses are more than income, I don’t have the same luxury of buying anything I need at anytime.   But the most amazing thing is, even if I spend one penny today, the joy is very high compared to what I used to feel during my regular job days.

This made me realize one thing: “If you have too much of anything, you may not enjoy it fully and vice versa. “

While I was doing my graduation, I was a member of an youth association in my locality called “Ever Yours” where we used to conduct FREE classes for 10th, 11th and 12th students on all Sudays .  We also used to conduct yearly event with various competitions for the school students in and around our locality.

While I was ‘for reservation’ system in my country (though it was personally affecting me negatively in my education), the President of that association was against reservation system.  We had several debates about this and we never withdrew from our stand.

When I had enough experience in the organization, I was allowed to participate in the ‘Prize list decision meeting’ for the annual competitions where very few senior members took part.  In that, I found that many students from the same school used to score very high marks in all the competitions.  But while deciding the prizes, first prize went to that school student and second & third prizes went to other school students (who scored poor marks).  When asked about the logic behind the prize list, the President told me, ” Viru, if I give prizes to all the students from the same school, then from next year there won’t be any participation from other schools.  Also this prize will encourage students from those schools which doesn’t have similar environment as that of the ‘top performing school’.  We need to encourage those students to participate by giving some prize.”.

I understood his logic and accepted it.  It helped me easily explain my stand on ‘need for reservation system’.  But he was not willing to accept my logic (though he understood it).

Today, I attended the 7th session of Knowledge Community Chennai (#KCC7). For updates about that, please check Twitter

In this, I’m going to discuss about the participation for such sessions (and not about the session itself).

Today we had around 34 participants. The Wipro Office in Chennai was kind enough to provide us a 250 seater auditorium for conducting this event. Last time, HCL Technologies provided the venue and the strength was around 50.

Why is that the strength is so low for such KM sessions?  Aren’t people interested to gain knowledge from various sources?  Or is it that the people believe that they could gain knowledge from Internet and newspapers?

My understanding is that people are reluctant to ‘learn’.  They are interested in going home as soon as possible after completing their ‘regular’ work at office.  They don’t want to spend some extra time (even once in a month) to gain some knowledge and network with ‘real’ people.

When the atmosphere changes in the corporate world where people seek knowledge from various sources, the progress will be tremendous.   The root cause for the existing atmosphere in every institution/firm is, I believe, the ‘Education System’ of the country and nothing else.  If the education system had made the students to seek knowledge, it would have continued in corporate world also.  But it just helped the students to get a degree which was used by the corporate world as a ‘qualification’ for entry into their firm.  “As you sow, so shall you reap.”  Isn’t it?