I had the pleasure of meeting a Ukrainian lady recently who served as one of the loaned engineers from the USSR to Hindustan Aeronautics Limited from 1969–1970, back when the USSR was helping India establish an aircraft industry of its own.
She told me a lot of curious details about how Soviet engineers would apply for laborer positions instead of engineer positions so they could go abroad for postings as the pay for foreign postings was very high. So a lot of USSR engineers who were very qualified would be doing workshop jobs or other manual low skilled jobs on postings abroad as engineer postings were limited while laborer postings had more quota. Soviet Engineers posted in Western bloc countries would be paid in clear checks while Soviet engineers posted in the developing world would be paid in yellow checks.
Her job was helping assemble Mig 21s in some place called Naisek or something in Maharashtra and there was a military base nearby as well whose name sounded like Diwali. She had a very thick accent so it was difficult to understand some parts of her story. They were posted in a remote mountain area and provided a bus service that went to nearby cities once a week and medical facility provided by a nearby military hospital. The Soviet engineers spent most of their time on their facility that was specially built for workers of HAL, socializing with each other and their Indian colleagues and singing Hindi songs and so forth.
(Edit: Comments have pointed out that she was referring to Nashik and Deolali.)
The Ukrainian lady was quite a product of her time and an epitome of the Communist shaping of women in the USSR. She had originally intended to work for the secret police and intelligence departments of the USSR and had acquired weapons training and foreign languages training for that purpose but had failed to secure an appointment in the end. Which is why she had to pursue a career as an engineer instead, which lead her to a posting in India.
In India, She recalled how several of the Indian young men struggled to control heavier machines like some kind of Press Pump which vibrated a lot during its operation so she would operate it herself using her strong physique, much to the awe and admiration of her Indian male colleagues. Her memories of the time were a treasure trove of details. Like how she recalled a lot of tanks being moved around during her stay as there had been a war a few years ago (65 conflict).
To me, her views were an incredible snap shot in time of India in 1969–70.
There are plenty on this website who take great pleasure in lecturing others on the state of their countries. Which I have no interest in doing. So this answer is more of a invitation to reflect on the Ukrainian lady’s memories of India in that brief snapshot of time and compare it with the India of today to reflect on what progress has been made and where the shortcomings still exist, based on 3 key points from her story.
- Technical talent.
Overall, the Soviet engineer was satisfied with the technical competency of their Indian counterparts at HAL. Their top most respect was reserved for the Indian talent that had studied abroad in the West and brought their knowledge and expertise back to India. But local graduates through the networks of local engineering schools were also quite at par with the Soviets in terms of their technical aptitude and proficiency. As a lot of the Soviet highly qualified engineers were working labor related jobs in the workshops as there were more posting quotas available there, they had ample opportunities to work with the less qualified Indian non-college graduated technicians and skilled workers and also deemed their work to be fairly at par with the Soviet laborers back in the USSR.
2. Crony Capitalism.
The Ukrainian lady said that most of the USSR engineers reserved their contempt for only one class of engineers at HAL: The tax break engineers.
Basically, back then the government had a policy that if a person was working in Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, their family was entitled to a significant tax break from the state.
The policy was originally devised to encourage lower middle income families and rural families to send their best and brightest to HAL in return for tax relief from the government.
But instead, what happened was that top business and industrial families sent some of their kids to work in HAL through some shady back room dealing. This allowed them to avail huge tax breaks from the government on significant portions of their income as they could claim on paper that they had contributed top level technical talent to a strategic national organization.
The engineers who came this way to HAL had 0 interest in the job and spent most of their time sleeping, watching movies, passing time and so forth as their only purpose was to exist on the payroll of HAL for their family’s tax benefits.
3. The hunger to learn.
The last story from the Ukrainian lady is perhaps most notable. As their facility was in a somewhat rural area, it was not uncommon to meet Indian villagers in their area.
One day, she was stopped by a young Indian girl who asked her (Not sure in which language, I forgot to ask. The Ukrainian lady did speak some Hindi though):
“Are you Russian?”
“No, I’m Ukranian, but I speak Russian”
“Can you teach me Russian?”
“Why?”
“I want to learn the language”
“…..Ok, but I cant teach you alone. Bring some other people to our office as well and if you bring enough, then I’ll teach you.”
“Ok, Ill be back tomorrow”
The next day, there was a huge ruckus at the gate of the facility as dozens of young children had showed up at the gate to learn Russian from the Ukrainian lady and so many had gathered that their noise reached the workshops inside and other workers came out to see the ruckus.
The Ukrainian lady described how some young girls had even brought babies to the class that they were supposed to be baby sitting to avail the offer of learning a new language.
The key takeaway from the story, in her words to me, was:
“Indian people really want to learn, they have a hunger for knowledge”.
That there were dirt poor village children who would carry their younger siblings all the way to facility that wasn’t exactly close, on a regular basis to learn a foreign language they were curious about and eager to learn.
I promised that this answer would not turn into a high and mighty lecture from an outsider about India as God knows, I despise it when every tom dick and harry has an opinion about Pakistan without any nuanced understanding about her internal issues.
So I instead leave the reader with three questions/observations of my own and invite them only to reflect:
- Back then, India’s high tech industry seemed dependent on top talent coming to India to work on her industry or on Indian foreign graduates returning to work in Indian hi tech sectors. The quality of local engineer graduates as well was rated as not bad by the second Superpower of that time. As was the lower rungs of the engineer ladder (technicians and workshop workers). Does India still succeed in attracting such top foreign talent from abroad as well as convincing Indian graduates from abroad to return to India to work the high tech sector? Are the IITs still producing graduates of a high enough quality to keep pace? Has enough attention been given not just to engineers but also lower rungs of the technical ladder which are just as important? (technicians, maintenance workers, workshop workers, fabricators, welders and so on?) Or is the focus on college graduates only despite market demand? Can Indian technical talent, if evaluated from the standpoint of a technically advanced country like Germany, Japan or the US be considered competent, like it was from the USSR perspective in the 1969–70 period? What are the short comings if any?
- Is crony capitalism still a problem in India? Are wealthy, politically well connected families still exploiting the tax system to their benefit? Is it impacting Indian industries in a meaningful way? Is it harming the high tech industries? Or is the impact tolerable and a necessity of politics and can be ignored for now? Can sophisticated and high tech industries that are in the public sector succeed to be profitable and competitive despite certain unsavory and corrupt practices that can bite into their financial margins? Strategic organizations must often have government control and public sector shareholders, can they thrive despite the imposed costs of unfair hiring practices and unproductive labor?
- Has the Indian education system expanded enough to the rural areas and lower-middle income classes enough to tap into the immense human potential of a 1 billion+ country? What is the quality of this education? Has the desire of Indian citizens to advance their education in a meaningful way been met by the government in a satisfactory manner? Can access to education be considered universal? Can the educational system compete with that of developed nations? There is a hunger to learn in the Indian populace, has the government met their needs? Whats more is that the Indian populace back then was very globalist in its vision and outwards looking like Japan in the Meiji era. Does this vision still exist or has it turned inwards and isolationist more?
I am indebted to the Ukrainian lady for her invaluable time and perspective which I truly value, given my history buff enthusiasm. Her stories about how people used to line up to buy diamonds in the USSR because they were actually cheap after their pay checks came through, How people would bring their kids to the store so they could buy extra butter which was rationed per person and how cheap beef and other groceries were back then were incredible insights into a time and place that is now fading from history. I hope this answer helps to preserve some of these perspectives and memories for all of us.
You will see,
everything will stay as it is,
only my routine will change.
When the birds return in the evening
I will also return,
and in the morning when they fly,
I’ll fly away with them.
-Jaunga Kahan, Srishti Par Pahra
