10 steps to develop a compensation strategy for Startups/SMEs

Does your start-up/small or medium scale organization have a compensation strategy? If not, then below are some essential points to think about before randomly paying your employees. A meaningful compensation strategy ensures that your start-up/SME stays competitive,  helps to align with external and internal equity and most important makes you stay in the game by ensuring you are able to attract and retain talent and do not run out of liquidity. 

How to start? First of all, think about-

1. Organization Culture -  Culture plays an important role in your compensation philosophy. Think about your organization's core values as it will cascade down to everything else. Think about what is more important i.e customer satisfaction/having a competitive edge/technology and innovation/flat vs hierarchical structure/human capital?  These factors will decide whether the organization should match the market rate, lag the market rate or lead the market rate.

2. External Factors - External factors also play an important role to have internal pay structure alignment. For example - Labour market disruptions, government policies, immigration issues, globalization vs localization, etc will affect the pay strategy.

3. Legal and Compliance Requirments - Every country has well defined legal framework and compliance requirements and it must be considered before compensation policy is drafted. For example, in the U.S.A, it is mandatory to consider factors like the minimum wage, working hours, employee classifications, guidelines as per FLSA, FMLA, etc. 

4. Job Analysis - The next important step is to conduct a job analysis, which is a process of collecting information about the skills, competencies, qualifications, responsibilities required to do a job. This can be done by observing employees, conducting surveys or interviewing employees, or using a combination of these methods. A website called O*NET is also a great resource where ready-made detailed descriptions of multiple jobs are available as a go-to reference. The end result of a job analysis is a clearly defined job description. 

5. Job Families, Ranking, Job Worth - An organization may have an administrative job family, technical job family, management job family and executive job family. Once job analysis is done, the next step should always be to create job families as it makes life much easier when you have to make a decision about a job's worth and pay ranges. Depending on the scale of operation and company size, organizations can have different job families based on various factors like geographic locations, skill requirements, competency requirements as well. Combining Job family and business rationale will help to understand which job is worth more important than the rest and help to rank them in order. For example, under a competency-based pay structure, a Data Scientist may have more salary than a Project Manager depending on competencies required, market competition, supply/demand of talent availability, etc which is connected to the organization's strategy. On the other hand, under a skill-based structure, for example in a factory/assembly line set up, organizations usually would create skill blocks to certify skills and have pay structures revolving around it. Of course, factors like the labor crunch will be an important factor of consideration.

Job Family	Job Category	Job Title
Human Resources	Comp and Ben	Total Rewards Manager Compensation Specialist Benefits Specialist
	Talent Acquisition	Talent Acquisition Manager Senior Recruiter
	Employee Relations	Employee Relations Manager Training Specialist Culture Specialist

6. Salary Survey, Grading and Pay Ranges – Salary survey is the most important aspect of a compensation strategy and is a must even if it is a start-up or a small organization. Organizations spend a considerable amount of cost to get data from professional organizations like Mercer/Hewitt. However, there are plenty of free resources available from where data can be taken. For example - Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Glassdoor, Payscale, Linkedin. Once data is collected, the data needs to be evaluated and quartiles need to be created i.e. 1st quartile, 2nd quartile, Median, 3rd Quartile, and 4th Quartile, which is basically to understand what is the minimum pay for a job to the maximum. This can be simplified by having just the Minimum Range, Median and Maximum Range.

Example:-

Proposed Ranges	Min	Mid	Max
Grade I	$11	$15	$20
Admin
Teacher
Grade II
Teacher 1
Teacher 2

  7. Things to consider -

- Availability of qualified people (market demand/supply of talent)

- Other factors discussed above

-  Profit margin(Startups/Small organizations should start with basic pay and gradually increase on adding benefits to be sustainable and think more about long term benefits)   

- Start with base pay and gradually add benefits as required

- Have a balance of benefits i.e. what people will actually use

- Pay philosophy must talk about all rewards and explain about how much organization is spending and investing in each employee and must communicate clearly with employees

8. Fun Facts about Benefits – Components  ** Legally required are applicable in the U.S.A

Legally Required	Voluntary – Non Legal	Work/Life Fit Programs
Social Security – Taxable, 12.4% payroll tax 2.9% Medicare tax	Medical Health Insurance	Time Off – Holidays, Parental Leave, Sabbatical
Workers’ Compensation – Protection for -Lost wages -Medical Treatment -Rehabilitation -Retraining	Retirement Programs/ Increased Retirement Contributions	Child Care
Unemployment Insurance	Life Insurance	Counseling
	Vacation	Financial Planning
	Additional flexible options- Dental/Vision	Flexible work arrangements/Tele commuting
	Disability Coverage	Employee Service - Discounts- Theme park, Merchandise, Tickets@work
	401 (K)- Not taxed until retirement	Free or subsidized meal coupons/meals
	Misc – Stock option/profit sharing – n/a for non-profits	Education expenses – Partial or Full

9. People Analytics - Even if you are a small organization, in today's complex business world, you must analyze all data and have a cost model to keep improving and be agile with the changes around to be in the game for the long run. Here is a basic snapshot of a cost model that every startup can implement.

10. Finally, scale your compensation philosophy and strategy as you grow, adopt agile project management framework and make changes as required.

Reference:-

https://www.bls.gov/data/#wages

https://beta.bls.gov/dataQuery/find?st=0&r=20&s=popularity%3AD&fq=survey:[wm]&more=0

https://web.mit.edu/e-club/hadzima/how-much-does-an-employee-cost.html

https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/how-to-guides/pages/howtoestablishsalaryranges.aspx

Conscience Capitalism & Spiritual Leadership

An Oscar-winning corporate movie “Wall Street” had an infamous dialogue “greed is good” and the same appears to be the mantra of many in the corporate world. Too much capitalism is an economic model grounded in a world view of only "self-interest". For example, some of the recent social media influenced crimes and acts of violence suggest how less has been done by social media companies to eradicate the menace with flawed algorithms as only reactive actions on content moderation & so much more sincerity and investment are required in Artificial Intelligence and other deep learning to take equal responsibility. As per Alice Marwick, a communication professor at the University of North Carolina, "If you are going to garner the benefits of having a massive platform - of tremendous ad revenues and humongous user bases - then you also have a responsibility to govern that platform." Another example is the fast-food industry, a multi-billion dollar industry which has only reaped the benefits but has been destructive for our health and for the society.

Though capitalism encourages innovation, it provides consumers to freely choose products and services they desire and eradicates bureaucracy to an extent, however, too much of it can be detrimental to exploit not only consumers but the backbone of the companies i.e. it's people and lends towards inequality. Most of the time the externalization not only creates division but also impacts workplace culture. However, the culture culprit of too much capitalism is slowly making entrepreneurs and leaders think and create the right balance which not only fosters innovation but innovation which leads to harmony at the workplace and the world as a whole. Today's consumers are way more aware than before which is prompting many organizations to consciously try to inculcate a culture of spirituality and conscience capitalism still not sacrificing the core purpose of profit earning. So what exactly is Spiritual Leadership and how does it bring workplace harmony and greater productivity?

Spiritual leadership has actually nothing to do with religion but purely based on a moral code of conduct and ethical business practice. According to researcher Louis Fry, "Spiritual leadership in business is a constitution of values, attitudes, and behaviours necessary to intrinsically motivate one’s self and others through a compelling vision where employees experience a sense of responsibility towards their work; a vision that is meaningful and provides purpose to their lives. Spiritual leaders create a work culture based on inclusion, trust, altruism, and respect such that employees feel valued and appreciated".  

Corporate culture stems from the fundamental ethical values of top managers that affect employees’ behaviours. When selfless values of respect, fair treatment, honesty, ownership of work and the like are an integral part of an organization’s culture, a culture of trust emerges. Leaders play an integral role in creating an Organization’s culture and an ethical Leader rests upon three important pillars: i) the leader’s moral conduct, ii) the leader’s vision and values and iii) the integrity of choices made and actions taken. And an organization’s long term performance is strongly linked with ethical leadership.

A research done by a renown researcher shows that great organizations who have achieved excellence in performance year on year have established culture by creating an environment of inclusion in the decision making process and have flattened the hierarchy, an environment where people have been empowered to take personal ownership of good work as well as bad work and can communicate the same honestly and openly, an environment where leaders can accept failures and criticism with humility. Such leaders have sustained high performance by creating a culture where truth is heard and brutal facts are faced. Such organizations have been cautious in hiring the right people and letting the unethical people off and then worry about developing the vision and mission for the company. Recruitment in such organizations gives greater importance to a person’s ethical thinking, integrity, moral character rather than looking at the person’s educational background, managerial competence, expertise or work experience.

Another research shows that the main reason for absenteeism, attrition, and low productivity is that people feel that their work fails to provide them with a sense of purpose and meaning. This is where Spirituality in work comes in the picture; a spiritual leader can motivate such workers by showing them a vision of where the company wants to be and how the worker can equally grow with the company. A spiritual leader can inspire the workers and work towards meeting the spiritual needs of workers which can be aligned with the organization’s objectives. This higher motivation, commitment, and productivity have a direct impact on the bottom line. Research shows that in today’s complex business scenario workplace spirituality not only increases positive human health and psychological well-being but also delivers improved employee commitment, productivity, and reduced absenteeism and turnover. In such organizations, the environment is cleansed from denominational politics and religious ideology is avoided as religion can lead to arrogance. Spirituality instead is concerned with qualities of the human spirit, positive psychological concepts such as patience, tolerance, forgiveness, personal responsibility and having the humility to regard oneself as equal to another and not greater in value than to another individual.

Some other HRM practices for creating positive workplace culture-

# Recruitment and Selection Process – Organizations that have achieved greater achievement through workplace spirituality give the highest importance in their selection process on employee attitudes and values rather than technical abilities. This philosophy includes everyone from top managers to the bottom line. To test a person’s behaviours such as a sense of humour, teamwork, friendliness; group interviews can be taken where applicants are asked to tell jokes, role play to demonstrate teamwork, capacity to act spontaneously, taking ownership if anything goes wrong. The interview panel also includes peer employees to provide a greater perspective and emphasize teamwork.

# Induction – An induction is very important as it introduces the new hire to the organization’s work environment and values. Spiritual organizations ensure that the induction process is also team-oriented rather than a typical practice where the responsibility is entirely given to HR for introducing the new hire to the company’s history, policies, managers, etc. A spiritual organization rather makes team members, managers, HR all together greet new hires and making the new hire feel at their comfort zone. Such organizations also go a step ahead and invite customers to provide their perspective or an introduction mail welcoming the new hire. Senior employees without looking at the designation are assigned as mentors empowering employees to think independently, training sessions are arranged as per the employee’s need and also making sure stress is diagnosed. Training sessions can include humorous videos and skits prepared by volunteers to teach the company’s culture and fun at work.

# Few other policies such as casual dress code, financial and non- financial rewards, a pat on the work for good work done, empowering to express tough issues which do not compromise their security of a job. No lay off policy even in difficult economic scenarios rather than face downturn with innovative policies including the employees as well to participate in bringing the company back to its feet.

# Career Management- Policies such as lateral transfers, promoting employees from within is a great way to inspire and retain people.

#Robust Compensation and Benefits Programs - Chalking out tax-effective salary structure, sharing profit and being fair and honest about the organization’s performance, retirement savings policy, stock option plans, etc motivate employees to remain committed with the company. South West Airlines, an organization which has consistently done well for years, demonstrated this attitude when the CEO agreed to freeze his own pay when SWA’s pilots were asked to choose a stock option plan instead of an annual pay increase for five years. During the downturn, the chief executive of Southwest Airlines voluntarily cut his 2009 base salary by 10 per cent citing the company’s first-quarter results. In 2017, Southwest Airlines announced it would be sharing $586 million in profits with its 54,000 employees – which equates to about a 13.2% average bonus for each employee, or roughly the equivalent of six weeks' pay. And that doesn’t even count the extra $351 million the company contributed to its employees' 401(k) plans. Remarkably, Southwest shared profits with its employees year after year because the company always had a people-first approach which resulted in continuous growth and success and never laid-off or cut pay as a short term approach.

Thus, to conclude conscience capitalism along with spiritual leadership can bring a paradigm shift in the way organizations work and can bring long term excellence in performance and social harmony.

Ref: 

Fry, L. (2003). “Toward a Theory of Spiritual Leadership.” The Leadership Quarterly, 16, 693-727.

http://investors.southwest.com/news-and-events/news-releases/2017/02-09-2017-153011218

#consciencecapitalism #workplaceculture #spiritualleadership #ethicalbusinesspractice

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Durga Pujo - Festival of the autumn !

It's 8 pm in California and I am glued to the television to watch a live stream of Durga Pujo back in Kolkata, India. As I am miles away from home; this year for me is pure nostalgia.

Durga Pujo - The festival of the fall or Sharadotsav as we Bengalis say is one of the world's biggest street carnival. What makes Durga Pujo so special and Bengalis so crazy about the festival is because it's FREAKING AWESOME!!

The sheer excitement of Pujo aashche ( the wait for pujo), the last-minute rush for pujo shopping, asking your friends and cousins about "Kota Jama Holo". It's not just Ma Durga's homecoming but also an excuse for friends and family to get together and enjoy these 5 days.

Till last year, pujo meant whole night pandal hopping with friends and family, waiting in queues and squeezing through a human swam for hours to get a glimpse of that famous pandal, Durga idol, and lighting decor. And how can I forget to take SELFIE with Ma Durga at the backdrop while Baba giving continuous bokuni (upbraid) to move ahead? Pujo meant to pray and give anjali with ma, baba and asking baba for a biryani feast at shiraz or amenia and various other bhuribhoj. One has to be in the city of joy - Kolkata to feel it when the city looks like a newly wedded bride.  The city turns into a big street carnival with people thronging from all walks of life despite their caste/creed/religion/nationality- this festival is SARBOJONIN meaning for all. The festival represents a breathtaking display of Pandals(Festive Tents) and Idols made with clay with their innovative themes and exotic artwork which is a spectacle to watch with not only eye-catching craft work but also with powerful social messages as it's a theme. Pandals are the center of attraction during pujo made with bamboo frames, clothes, and other materials.

For Bengalis, Ma Durga is the symbol of Shakti and epitomizes the triumph of good over evil. She is depicted as a warrior with ten hands carrying different weapons with hand gestures or mudra representing the teachings of life. Her arms carrying Chakra, Conch, Sword, Club, Lotus Flower, Bow and Arrow, Trishul, and Fourth Lower hand represents Dharma to perform our duties sincerely, to be happy in life, to eradicate the evil within us, to face all difficulties with courage, to forgive oneself and others, to not get intimidated by limitless power and control animalistic behavioral thought process like anger, greed, jealousy. Her mount - the ferocious and powerful Lion; she reminds us to control such feelings and use the power within us to protect the virtue.

The festival means lip-smacking food, illumination of extravagant lights and Bengali's favourite ADDA. For Bengalis, pujo also means-

# Pandal Hopping - Pujo means pandal hopping with friends and family some time for the entire night. Pujo means to walk, walk and walk and get either a muscle cramp next day or to get a blister from the new sandal.

# Dhaak and Dhunuchi Naach - Pujo means to wake up to the sound of dhaak(drum) and dance to its rhythm with dhunuchi or earthen pots filled with coconut fiber and incense. The aroma from dhunuchi is so mesmerizing and beat of dhaak so foot-tapping, you just can't sit idle but dance. I really can't think of another song but to sing " Dhaker thaale komor dole; Khushi te naache mon".

# Pet Pujo- We Bengalis love food and pujo means closing the home kitchen and enjoy bhog at pandals with khichuri, labra, payesh, chatni and mouth-watering street food like phuchka, rolls, biryani, fish fry, telebhaja and so on and on and on...

# Let it glow - Pujo means an extravagant display of creative installation of lights from Chandannagar. For me, since childhood sparkling lights always meant College Square.

# Pujor Adda -  Adda is an integral part of Bengali life as we can discuss and debate about just any topic, anytime, anywhere. So, Pujo means adda at your parar pandal and an evening adda at Maddox Square with friends, guitar, and food.

# Sindoor Khela - Well, it's the last ritual and to say farewell to Ma Durga until Aashche Bochor (Next Year) where women wear red & white saree and apply red vermilion to the goddess and to each other and wishing shubho bijoya for a happy year ahead.

So no matter where you are in the world; enjoy this wonderful festival with family and friends. Eat, eat and become a bit fat and of course, enjoy the adda and have lots of fun.

Incredible Women @ Workplace

March 8th as defined by UN is the International Women's Day to celebrate the achievements of women all around the world despite their socio-economic background, beyond cultural/political differences, geographic boundaries, despite all the struggles how women fight it out with their strong will, women who despite their hardship never dither from achieving their dream, their dedication and integrity makes them incredible in every way.



So what does it mean in 2016, where is the disparity, how do we unblock the bottleneck, what's the future of women's human rights @ workplace, equality and empowerment, how far we have come in delivering gender equality and willing to provide opportunities that best ways continue towards true parity, and how are some organizations taking path-breaking steps to treat women not as special but equal.

Women have struggled to work alongside men as equals still there has been a lot of work done since the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s still there is a lot remain especially when it comes to a leadership position and in developing countries. Numerous studies have shown that companies with more gender parity in top management roles do better financially still there exists a glass- ceiling.
A recent Mercer gender diversity survey shockingly published that around 40 percent of the global workforce consists of women however they account for only 19 percent of executives, 26 percent of senior managers and 36 percent of managers. To reach those conclusions, Mercer looked at workforce data from more than 1.7 million employees in 28 countries, including more than 680,000 women. The statistics obviously looked better in the USA as compared to other developing nations due to cultural/political/social barriers as a contributing factor. 

On a positive note, there are many organizations in the corporate world who have taken extraordinary steps and have invested in social empowerment of women which worked positively for both sides-

1. Hindustan Lever’s Shakti program,  which empowered women to reach remote markets the company couldn’t otherwise. Launched in 2000, the program offers microcredit grants that enable rural women to become direct-to-home distributors. This new sales force has significantly boosted sales of the company’s products in rural villages, a market that is otherwise dauntingly expensive to reach. By the end of 2008, the Shakti network had grown to include more than 45,000 saleswomen covering more than 100,000 villages and more than three million homes in India

2. Some of the most striking employee benefits from Tech Giants are infertility treatment coverage, in addition to surrogacy and adoption benefits. Companies like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, have all started offering these benefits to its employees apart from providing benefits like alternative schedules, remote & mobile work options, transition coaching for women re-entering jobs, mentoring programs, etc.

3. Accenture is celebrating 2016 women's day with a theme called "Being Greater Than". The vision of Accenture is to go beyond boundaries, expectations and raise voice and sights of people to advance the women, the ideas and the goals that will drive the next generation of leaders. It’s not just a movement. It’s how they believe in working everywhere, every day.


4. The UN is campaigning "Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality". Pledging For Parity! Everyone – men and women – can pledge to take a concrete step to help achieve gender parity more quickly – whether to help women and girls achieve their ambitions, call for gender-balanced leadership, respect and value difference, develop more inclusive and flexible cultures or root out workplace bias.
Let's have a look at what exactly are the targets of the 2030 Agenda:

1. Ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education.
2. All girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care, and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education by 2030
3. Terminate all discrimination against all women and girls by 2030.
4. End of violence against women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation.
5. End practices like child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation.

To conclude, women are teachers, farmers, businesswomen, politicians, mothers, homemakers, law enforcers - women contribute every day in many visible and invisible ways. That's the essence of being a woman. And International Women's Day is a time to reflect that progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of their countries and communities.  

A better interviewer

An interview is a great forum to exchange information. Over 95 percent of jobs are filled following an interview. However, despite its popularity, a typical one-to-one interview is known to be a poor predictor of subsequent performance in the job. If an interview is designed and constructed well, it can be transformed from a gentle ramble around the candidate’s appearance, prior employment, educational background or a falsely pressurized grilling session into a more meaningful interchange.

Below is an example of better-interviewing set-up and technique for a face-to-face panel interview interaction -

Panel Preparation – It is important that a panel of interviewers introduce themselves in advance and are clear about each member's role during the interview. During the day of an interview, interviewers should come at least 10-15 minutes before the interview starts. It provides an opportunity to settle down in their role and sort out clarifications amongst the panel & discuss any last-minute details and objective for the interview.

Putting the candidates at ease - Furniture setup is very important during a face-to-face interview session and it is important to keep the furniture at the right place and ensure that the seating arrangement is being done properly.

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For example, the above layout is a formal setting but increases the threat to the candidate and is more interrogative. In such a setting it is hard the engage the candidate in a flowing discussion.

Now, the second layout is also a formal setting but it reduces the threat and allows both interviewers and candidates as equal partners.

Many organizations understand the importance of furniture set up and also ensure that the interview room's table is covered from all sides as open tables might cause unnecessary discomfort to both interviewer and candidates. Organizations ensure that tables also have enough space for note-taking.

Good habits for better interviewing - In order to have a more productive interaction with a candidate, it is very important for interviewers to exercise good interviewing habits i.e. to read the job description and candidate resume in advance, to be aware of the objective for taking the interview, to develop skills for identifying technical/functional/behavioral competencies required from the candidates through constructive and structured methods of interviewing. Also, it is important that interviewers especially during a panel interview to avoid bringing too many laptops(except for a specific reason) and exchanging notes in the middle of the interview, attending phone calls, sending SMS as it may disrupt the flow of the interview.

Interview bias and influences –

1. First Impressions - Many managers believe that they can tell the best candidate from the early stages of the interview. The strength of the handshake, whether the candidate waits to be asked or sits down straight away, making eye contact, good looks and grooming are all common indicators to decide which candidate will perform the job the best. However, in reality, such factors provide more scope for error in selection than accuracy in decision making. First impressions like appearance, initial behavior, language, and accent are not an adequate predictor of performance in the job.

2. Saliency – This is a very tricky factor to control as it may affect the memory of an interviewer without being aware of what is happening. For example, during an interview, a candidate was selected on the basis of rapport built with the interviewers. The panel decided to hire even though the candidate didn’t have the technical & behavioral skills to perform the work but rather had well developed interpersonal skills and they felt that any pitfall inability can be rectified by intensive training. Now such decisions taken outside the framework need to be explored as it may have serious repercussions.

3. Seeking similar characteristics – Usually, interviewers check for similar characteristics so that the new hire can mingle easily with the group. For example, the service department of an organization had suffered for years under the weak leadership of its manager. When the manager left the company; the management decided that a panel of senior leadership will interview candidates. The panel of interviewers decided to hire a candidate who was liked by the interviewers and was pleased with his technical knowledge. Moreover, he spoke their language. However, after a few months, the organization realized that even though the hired manager had a good rapport with the senior leadership and had good technical knowledge but the service provided to the customers was just bad and complaints were rising. On analyzing, the management realized that the interviewers had focused more on the technical skills & similar characteristics rather than on his ability to lead a team but these were the very qualities needed; the team was short of management, not technical skills.

4. Rules of thumb – We develop our own perception to view what’s going on around us. Experience, lessons learned from others, things we are told influence our decision making. And we seldom question the assumptions. As an interviewer, it can be a dangerous influence and one needs to be aware of his/her beliefs and rules of thumb to be sure they are based on truth, not a truism.

5. Cause and effect- This is a very common tendency and can lead to disastrous appointments. If we assume that a person who has worked for a highly successful company was the alone cause of that success, we could place unreasonable demands and have unreal expectations of them, in effect, set them up for failure. For example, a company had a bad year when its accounts were rejected by auditors and the finance manager was accused of improper conduct. As a result, most staff from the finance department was sacked. A young accountant felt she was unfairly treated and found it difficult that her employment history was making it very hard to convince potential employers that she was honest and competent at her job.

Although there are many dangers to trip up the unwary interviewer, training interviewers will make them more aware of what they are doing wrong and this increased awareness can be a major step forward to hire and retain the best talent.

Organic Migration

It was the 90's during school days, I was a true patriot and believed in the ideology of "unity in diversity". Being a student my day in and day out was with students from all corners of the country. The ethos we were taught was never to tear apart each others' identity. I never asked questions but believed in what I read in the textbooks.

Today, I live in one of India's most developed tech cities and have migrated from one state to another in search of a job and education. I.. have started asking questions......My ideology questions me and I cry for acceptance in my own country.

India's current GDP is at 6. 9% and Asia's third-largest economy is growing at a rapid pace however its all at the macro level, are we really addressing our micro-level issues especially to our ethos, our belief towards unity in diversity.

Organic migration and its repercussions associated with it is one of the most important bottlenecks towards the vision of modern India. It may seem like a minuscule issue at present times however its a matter of time when it may become like a widespread fire for saving the age-old culture of each state and its people while the economy grows. The question I am asking is about the feeling of belonging for our own people as a nation no matter where you migrate to your own country.

Have we ever noticed our own double-standard when we discriminate with our own people in the name of the state, caste, and color while we ourselves fight for acceptance and power? We call our North-East friends as Chinki.. racial discrimination while we debate in the parliament for safety against racial-discrimination of our countrymen in Australia. We divide our own country by generating heat over North Indian and South-Indian, when that's not enough then within North India we divide further by looking down upon our friends from Bihar or UP and South India similarly flights over the numero-uno position by looking down upon its neighbors. And further, we have discrimination over caste, our complexion and finally within our own family tree.

As we still struggle for employment, shelter, and food; the common man gets brain-washed easily by politicians as he doesn't have the time or strength for asking questions, he asks only for basic needs of survival.

But what about us, the educated youth of the country? Do we ask questions to its system? Do we genuinely want to protect the culture and ethos of our country and our own people? Do we really bother to think about protecting the unity? Or our motto is only for five-figure salary, accommodation in a posh locality, an on-site project in the US and copying the cool look from the western world.

Are we rooted in our people? Why can't we be proud of our own identity and its rich ethos and ideology of "unity in diversity". We can be the change if start respecting our own countrymen while we migrate across the country for job, education, and business. We have to protest if we see any discrimination. We have to respect in the constitution of our great land and we can be the change towards building modern India a great nation economically and culturally by protecting its "unity in diversity".