Honey, is it the money?

An article for students of North Delhi-ICEU

Since June 2010, I have been earning ₹25,000/month; tax free. Nine months later, now I have just over ₹3,000 in my bank account. Every month something or the other always comes up: brother’s college admission fee, travel expenses, cooking gas, rice bag, wedding gift, new clothes, sickness, etc. All this makes it so easy to forget that I’m being paid quite handsomely. I do not compare myself with the Ambanis but I do have colleagues who are getting paid more than me. Of course, I know a person in my office who earns only ₹2,500/month and works as hard as me, but again there are at least 2 other people who are getting paid more than ₹50,000/month. There ends my sympathy for the one with ₹2,500.

What attracts people to the Civil Services if not for the fame and money? There are people who want to serve in the administration, but what will be the proportion of such people among the total population of civil aspirants? If in the course of your service you are paid well, be grateful for the blessing. I am looking forward to a salary raise from April. With it, I hope I can buy a phone for one of my office staffs who couldn’t afford one. Also I can help in paying more frequently the monthly school fees for some of my poorer relatives. Money in itself is not the problem because more money can generate more generosity. This you know but it is worth repeating here, that the love of money/greed is the root problem, as the Bible says. When our careers are directed to meet that greed, it’s a perfect recipe for frustration.

Why do you try for IIMs when you don’t like management? Is it because your parents want you to be rich (of course, for your own ‘good’ and with lots of prayer)? Why go to IIT just because you are able to crack the entrance exam? What a waste, when you are so talented in carpentry, film critic, identifying bird species, or whatever. 

I had an internet chat with a friend who thought that I was talking about ‘job’ when I said ‘service’. ‘In service’ is understood as a job designation/position/portfolio that one is holding. But in that chat, I was trying to tell my friend that our jobs are the means by which we serve others, ‘service’ as ‘serving people’. If our careers are aimed at serving people, God will surely bless us with, among other things, a deep sense of meaning and satisfaction in what we do.