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Everybody and anybody is changing his or her name these days, from Tusshar Kapoor and Akhshaye Khanna to Shobhaa De and Malvika Sangghvi. (Unfortunately, no one has told her that she now sounds like a cat sneezing.) These are society types for whom adding an ?a? or ?e? gives them something to talk about at the next party.
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Far removed from Page 3, there are people changing names because it is vital for their jobs and careers. Dilip Kumar (born Yusuf Khan) and Zaheeda from Pakistan (who has become Veena Malik) have camouflaged their Muslim ancestry because they felt it would hamper their careers.
There is also a large amount of name dropping going on at the call centres. Rachna becomes Ruth and Ashish Ash, because American callers find it easier to correlate with such familiar names. These are, of course, temporary persona.
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In the corporate world, there is inevitable discrimination. Most political parties encourage hiring of locals ? the ?sons of the soil?. This also helps achieve a better cultural fit. Thus, a company based in Bengal will prefer a Banerjee to a Bhandarkar. Says Mumbai-based HR consultant D. Singh: ?That?s just common sense. It happens all over the world.? According to him, there is reverse discrimination in public sector units where, if your name belongs to a backward classes category, you get a preference for the job.
In the Indian environment, little data is available about whether it works the other way around in the private sector. Research from the US, however, indicates that this is clearly the case. Last year, Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business conducted a study which they later published as ?Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labour Market Discrimination?.
The experiment involved sending fictitious resumes in response to help-wanted ads in Chicago and Boston newspapers. These were sent under African-American names and White-sounding names. While the study explores a lot of areas, the key finding was that potential employers are 50 per cent more likely to respond to a person with a White-sounding name. (Want another trivial indicator of discrimination? Feed the list of names into a Microsoft Word document. All the White names ? Brendan, Brett, Brad and ilk ? pass the spell check. All the African American names ? bar Tyrone and Leroy, which are also White names -? fail.)
| LEADING THE PACK |
| The most popular Indian baby names in the US Boys : Aditya Girls : Shreya Source: US social security card |
Earlier, audit studies in the UK started in the 1970s found that potential employers discriminated against minority-sounding names. Later research seems to indicate that the discrimination still continues, despite the increasing number of African and Asian immigrants.
What lessons does this hold for Indian jobseekers? Singh says that the obvious conclusion is that it is better to stay at home. It is not that Indians have not done well abroad. They have; but they have had to fight much harder. ?You end up sacrificing everything to your job,? he adds. ?Now that Indian women are no longer willing to accept passive roles, it means wrecked families and nothing to look forward to in the evening of your life.?
In the Indian environment, the place where you can least expect to find such discrimination is in large, professionally-managed business groups or in multinational subsidiaries. In the latter, of course, there is huge discrimination; all Koreans, for instance, are supermen in a Korean subsidiary.
You can?t blame them, concludes Singh. After all, Ratan Tata took over from JRD. And there is Noel Tata now waiting in the wings. Singh?s final take: you have to live with your name, but always keep in mind that it could be an albatross. Remember there are others with bigger problems. Think of direct mail expert and conference speaker Dick Shaver. He is constantly asked whether it is name or his profession.
