At 48,Arun Ramu seemed to have it all. As head of product engineering and testing,he led the fastest-growing business unit at Infosys Technologies. His 12,000-people unit brought in $500 million,or 10 per cent of the companys revenues. The pay and perks were top notch. Still,Ramu felt something was missing. Work was no longer a challenge,but rather a routine of chasing numbers and counting money. Ramu,who had grown up dreaming about dividing his life into four neat,equal quarters the first for education,the second to earn a living,the third for community service and the fourth to seek spirituality quit Infosys. In November last year,he joined eGovernments,a foundation that partners with city and town municipalities to use technology to improve services to citizens. Ramu is the new CEO of its for-profit division. At eGovernments,Ramu takes home a fourth of his Infosys pay packet but there are no regrets. Sometimes his younger daughter,a college student,anxiously asks if the family would need to lower their lifestyle. Nothing has changed,Ramu says. He has built his home,his first daughter is married and his financial investments are all made. In a changing,wealthier India,many savvy professionals like Ramu are jumping off the corporate ladder and plunging headlong into the social sector in the hope of bringing about meaningful change. The downturn is the tipping point and has speeded up decisions for many professionals long contemplating a crossover,says eGovernments managing trustee Srikanth Nadhamuni,who founded the not-for-profit with support and funding from Infosys co-chairman,Nandan Nilekani. In a good economy,these achievers would still have their foot on the gas pedal but people are increasingly disillusioned with the stock markets,high-pressure careers and the prospect of a long-drawn downturn, says Nadhamuni who describes the economic slump as the last straw. In the last few months,eGovernments has received hundreds of job resumes from professionals,a good portion from the technology industry. Nadhamunis wife Sunita,CEO of Arghyam Foundation (founded by Nilekanis wife,Rohini),a funding organization working on urban water management,echoes the experience. She says applicants tell her they are done with a lifetime of thrills and feel ready for something different and far-reaching. When Sunita wanted senior managers to manage and lead large projects at Arghyam some months ago,she sidestepped regular NGO job channels and chose to advertise on the mainstream job site,monster.com. Resumes flooded in,some from people with decades of experience in the corporate sector. The Nadhamunis,coincidentally,quit successful careers in the US technology industry to return to India with the idea of doing good. Sunita puts food on the dinner table with her salary from Arghyam. Though she makes a fraction of what a person at her level would make in the tech industry,working in the social sector is infinitely satisfying, says her husband. A couple of analogous factors are making the choice easier for professionals abandoning the corporate cube farm. The gaps between corporate jobs and not-for-profits are narrowing. Social sector jobs are no longer about pulling on a kurta,wearing a jhola and ambling down a village path in the blazing sun, says Srikanth Nadhamuni. While the work setting is somewhat similar to what they are used to at a Wipro or a Hewlett Packard including city-based,air-conditioned offices the compelling argument is that they can help create social change,adds Sunita. With living costs still reasonable in India,many find that they can lead comfortable lives even with a salary comedown. Gopal Kulkarni,48,had a successful,two-decade long technology career in the US,working with leading companies such as NetApp. Three years after he returned to Bangalore from Houston,Texas,Kulkarni made what he describes as the big switch. Yearning to do something for the community,Kulkarni joined Arghyam as its technology director in end-February. It is the perfect move that allows me to continue in the technology field while doing work that can have a multiplier effect. Arghyams rural water expert joined recently after working in the technology field for several years in the US and Europe. Its director of grants also jumped off the corporate ladder earlier this year. At eGovernments,its new project director for Bihar moved a few months ago straight from a job with American Airlines in Dallas,Texas. Of its 60 employees,20 were hired in the last five months from the corporate sector,mainly technology companies. Over 200 Indian cities and towns including Bangalore,Delhi,Kanpur and Chennai now use eGovernments software solutions to run their cities whether to collect property tax,issues birth certificates or deal with citizens complaints about street lights or garbage collection. I have always heard that you cannot get the government to move without a bribe, says Ramu,Then I see something like this successfully implemented and it is like a ray of light at the end of the tunnel.
