Bunty Aur Babli in the Corporation

The workplace has always been a safe haven. This had always been a place where the regular folks came to work. They all spoke English with the same fake accents and chewed gum while moving their jaws sideways and wore their underwear like a fashion statement. They all used "kewl" and not just a simple "Yass" like the wannabes. The regular folks all had been to similar schools and had seen similar films and read the same set of books while growing up. It was not surprising that their world view was also the same. They all had similar nicknames too. So Harmeet or Harpreet were all called Harry or something that sounded Western. Then when they came into the workplace, they all hung around with the regular people in the office cafeteria and on weekends socialized with each other over imported wine and cheese. Their progeny played "Scrabble" in the next room.

Then the talent crunch happened and all this changed. The regular folks had to come to the workplace and rub shoulders with a diverse employee population. The talent crunch forced organizations to look beyond those who spoke the Queens English. The social change in the office has been palpable. Slowly but surely, the workplace has been adapting to the new inhabitants of cubicles. Over the last few years, there has been a steady dilution of the number of "regular" folks in the offices. The "Buntys and Bablis" - the people from small towns and rural areas have ecome a growing minority that we have to learn to include. The movie Bunty Aur Babli was about the dreams of young men and women from the small towns of India. In the workplace Bunty and Babli represent the archetype of the talent pool corporate India has to integrate into the somewhat homogeneous and insular workplace that we had got used to. I don't know when this insignificant minority began to forge ahead and move into corporate offices, but today you cannot ignore them any more. The people from small villages, the second tier towns, from the not so prosperous end of the great Indian middle class have started becoming noticeable. Maybe it was triggered by the BPOs and now Retail who were desperately looking for more and more employees just to make their business model work.

Many Human Resources people still believe that Diversity and Inclusion programs is just a passing fad. Wrong. Diversity is the answer to the talent crunch in any organization. The BPOs have been doing this for a while. So while they started off with their offices in the Metros, they have quickly discovered that to attract and retain talent they need to take the opportunity closer to those for whom that job is an aspirational job. Frustrated at their failure to attract fresh graduates of the top few Engineering colleges or Business Schools, many top Employers are opting for the next layer of institutes. The time is running out there too as the demand supply imbalance is offering options to the Bunty Aur Babli institutes. Having acquired diverse talent, the bigger challenge is to build an inclusive environment that enables the people who are “different”, to feel engaged enough to give their best. Therein lies the business case for making Diversity and Inclusion a part of the HR professionals’ list of challenges.

The inhabitants of Bharat have stepped forward and are now ready to lead India on their own terms. The Bharat-ization of corporate India is inevitable.