What profession would you have aspired to if you were born in the early 1900s? That depended on your position in society. If you were born into an upper class family, you would definitely have crossed the kala pani to become a barrister-at-law. If you belonged the middle class, the choices were limited to college lecturer and school teacher.
Of course, the intellectually inclined went in for journalism, mostly as a tool to fight the British. Says 78 year-old A K Damodaran, a retired IFS officer, "The print media was magnificent in the 1930s and 1940s. We had The Hindu and The Mail in the south, The Times Of India in the west and The Statesman in the east."
But it was the Indian Civil Service that was the most coveted job. And no wonder. In the 1930s, an ICS officer's entry-level salary was about Rs 360 a month, while a secretary (the senior-most ICS officer) took home a princely Rs 4,000 (which, says historian Bipan Chandra, would be about Rs 4 lakh today). But only a fortunate few could even dream of getting into the ICS _ there were not more than five or six vacancies at a time.
More From This Section
What about the private sector? In the 1930s, barring a few Indian groups like Tatas, Birlas, Dalmias, and TVS, big companies were British-owned, mostly with interests in tea or as managing agencies. Some prominent firms were Andrew Yule, Binny & Co, Walford and Burmah Shell, Gillanders Arbuthnot. But again, these jobs were mostly obtainable on the strength of social pedigree.
Says business historian Raman Mahadevan, "Europeans occupied all the officer-level postings including the top slots. Even the Indian private firms used to appoint foreigners, apart from their own relations, in top managerial posts."
Also, professionals like architects and the chartered accountants were mostly Europeans. So most people had to look for small jobs like clerks and accountants and teachers. And the jobs were available mainly in the port cities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras.
In the 1920s, professions like medicine and law were overcrowded, says Chandra. So in the 1930s there was a shift toward engineer