Week 3 Reflection
This last week was filled with a lot of very impressive site visits. We started the week off visiting the Lion’s Fort which was approximately an hour outside of Pune. Located on the top of a mountain, the fort has been known as a key stronghold for battling kingdoms in the region, and the views were breathtaking. I usually like to nap on a long car ride, but the road up the mountain was filled with potholes and tight turns. I had faith in my driver, but he seemed to go at these bumps with a racecar driver mentality – constantly speeding up and slowing down – making sleep impossible. Once at the top we had a 15 minute climb to the very peak of the mountain and location of the fort. In our final day in Pune I visited the Aga Khan Palace. The palace was where Gandhi stayed in house arrest from 1942-44.
We arrived in Bangalore on Wednesday night, and got settled in at our hotel. Thursday morning we visited Narayana Health for a tour of the facilities, as well as a talk with the hospital’s founder Dr. Shetty. Narayana Health has gained worldwide acclaim for delivering cardiac bypass surgeries at a fraction of the cost as the same surgeries performed in western developed countries. At the hospital, a team of 20 doctors performs 20-30 bypass surgeries each day, and 75 less intensive surgeries in addition to those. We were able to see the pediatric post operation center where halls of new born children – some as young as just a couple days – are monitored 24/7 after their surgeries. It was amazing and saddening to see as many were in assisted breathing machines as their hearts can’t survive independently post surgery. We then had our talk with Dr. Shetty who was a truly inspirational man. He informed us that he still sees 70-100 patients each day, and our meeting was actually cut short because he had to leave for an immediate surgery. It was incredible to talk to a man who seemed to live his life with such a purpose. He has provided thousands of surgeries for people who would have never had any other option, and continues at this work every single day.
On Friday we visited IIM Bangalore – India’s top business management school. The campus was stunning and we had another guest lecturer speak to us – but the thing that stuck out to me the most was how difficult it is to secure admission to the school. We got a chance to talk to some of the students and we learned that each new class of 100 competes with over 100,000 – 200,000 applicants. I thought it was hard to get into Northeastern! Jeez!
We finished our week out by visiting Varnam, which is a for profit NGO dedicated to making local handicrafts and artisan products produced by local woodworkers and toy makers in the state of Karnataka. Varnam makes some very nice, high quality products, but they’re dedicated to paying their workers fair wages as the woodworkers tend to be poorer – and recently have struggled competing with mass produced cheaper knock offs from China.
I can’t help but once again finish this week feeling incredibly grateful for all of the opportunities I have in America. I think back to looking at the families crying as their children go in for surgery – and they’re the lucky ones. Many children wait on the waiting list with no other option but Narayana Health. This is a worry I’m never going to have, and it’s very humbling. Then I think of those who would be similar to me in India at IIM Bangalore and the immense pressure they’re under. Every test, assignment, and question matters because if they don’t get each point then they will get pushed aside with all the other applicants. I consider my schooling to be competitive but nothing at that level. There’s just simply fewer opportunities for most people here. Status is more highly regarded, and children are often forced into getting into a good school, so they can get a good job, and so on and so forth. The general consensus that I receive is that most Indians aren’t doing a job they love – but a job. The lack of selection and extreme competition makes me grateful for the abundance of opportunities that I have in America. It also makes me more motivated to figure out what my very own purpose is.
