Learnings from Chickpet

When I see a well educated politician, talking like an illiterate, I think of Chickpet. When I see an educated young man of complaining about the non-availabilty of employment, I think of Chickpet.

Chickpet in Bengaluru is known as the business hub of the City with more than 1000 shops. It always remains crowded with people, who throng this place to buy clothes, furniture, toys etc at a wholesale price.

A research to understand how the shop keepers do their business here has thrown startling facts. Most of them belong to Rajasthan and are in their teenage and are school dropouts with no proper qualifications.

But all of them are fluent in Kannada. They have not learnt it in any school, but simply by talking to customers. Some of them can speak Hindi, English, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam too, and again by talking to customers. They have learnt the art of calculating values and discounts without using calculators.

Their monthly turnover is around Rs 8 to 9 lakhs per month, and during festivals it shoots up to Rs 15 lakhs with profit upto Rs. 4 lakh per month.

Interestingly none of them wants to complete their education, as they consider it a sheer wastage of time and money. They invest both time and money in business.

Then what is the moral of the story? The moral is that without higher education, one may-

1. not remain jobless.
2. earn in lakhs
3. have no fear of getting fired
4. master good communication skills.

I have come across a number of tea and samosa vendors who earn Re 1 for one samosa or a cup of tea, ending up with a daily income of Rs 4000 plus. They have purchased land and houses, and all other things of luxury.

But, but.. I don’t want to belittle the importance of education. Who knows if equipped with higher qualifications, they might have done far better. Recognising its importance, a vada pao vendor in Mumbai has sent his both kids abroad for higher education. So is the case with most of the successful businessmen in India, who themselves had no professional degrees, but their kids have been educated and trained abroad.

The fact, however, remains that a qualification is not more than a piece of paper, if the education is not utilised properly. Even the so-called uneducated rural people can give you a few pearls of wisdom that highly educated intellectuals may not give.

–Kaushal Kishore

image: pixabay