While studying corruption in India, I stumbled across this article that reasons why only we are
so dirty and corrupt. The article reminded me of a conversation I had with an American friend, working at an IT company in Gurgaon. As an HR professional, he gets a lot of resumes from Indians, a lot of them with qualifications and skills exaggerated, inflated and sometimes, outright faked. Degrees that don’t exist, skills that a person can’t back up with actual practice and experience that simply don’t add up. For example, a person who claims to be an M.Sc. in Information Technology with three years of experience in troubleshooting computers, but can’t install Windows on a PC or laptop. He couldn’t figure out why so many people would fake their CV and resort to such trickery to get jobs, in a country where there is an ‘economic boom’, so to speak.
so dirty and corrupt. The article reminded me of a conversation I had with an American friend, working at an IT company in Gurgaon. As an HR professional, he gets a lot of resumes from Indians, a lot of them with qualifications and skills exaggerated, inflated and sometimes, outright faked. Degrees that don’t exist, skills that a person can’t back up with actual practice and experience that simply don’t add up. For example, a person who claims to be an M.Sc. in Information Technology with three years of experience in troubleshooting computers, but can’t install Windows on a PC or laptop. He couldn’t figure out why so many people would fake their CV and resort to such trickery to get jobs, in a country where there is an ‘economic boom’, so to speak.
To help him understand the costs of being honest in India, I told him the story of a doctor I knew in Coimbatore who went on to do an MBA from a university in the United States. I knew him from my days as a volunteer at an organization that dealt with TB eradication programs. Recently, I stumbled on his personal profile at a US University website which was for all intents and purposes, a work of fiction. He claimed to the director and founder of the said organization that was actually found and run by a certain Assamese lady I was acquainted with. He actually used to mock people who worked for or donated to the organization, calling them ‘bleeding heart fools’. But now, by claiming to be a director of this organization, he got enough ‘karma points’ in his application to fake his way into an MBA program at a reputed US university.
Now consider an honest Indian who actually works hard and is actually the type of person that the guy above claims he was. If he were to apply for a university or a job and mentions only his honest credentials, he wouldn’t shine or stand out like the ones who fake it. An honest person would fall far behind in standards, where almost every applicant is sneaky, dishonest and corrupt. To have a chance that his CV is noticed, he’d have to fake and spruce up his credentials, like everyone else. This ends up in a vicious cycle where an otherwise honest and ethical Indian ends up dishonest and corrupt. By dis-incentivizing ethics and honesty, the culture creates more and more corrupt and unethical people.
