The Freelance Brigade

Take this job and shove it," goes an old song. It is a call being heeded by agrowing number of twenty and thirty somethings who are dumping secure jobs and taking onthe challenges of an uncertain future. Resigning from an engineer’s position, one isa fancy-free shutterbug today. Another, a former music company executive, has become anindependent music-maker. Leaving steady media jobs, others are exploring telespace ontheir own.

With such tiny triumphs of steel-willed individualism, this socialperestroika has spawned several ‘rebels’ disenchanted with the rotting cadenceof the old order. Regular working hours, promotions and salary increments dictated by timeinstead of performance—the parameters defining the past have now become archaicwisdom. Today’s freelancers realise how monotony reduces people to a robot-likeexistence.

Says Shiv Vishwanathan, a social scientist: "It is the newAmericanisation of Indian society. These freelancers do not subscribe to an isolatednotion of identity and refuse to be committed to a specific company since the idea is tobe rich and famous, and quickly."

To many belonging to this tribe—most of whom are in their 30s—the recent mediaexpansion has played temptress. As veteran journalist M.V. Kamath observes:"Today’s newspapers, like their American counterparts, prefer a variety ofopinions on the same page so that the reader gets a wide range." Says socialscientist Ashis Nandy: "Since training is unavailable or not required in professionslike the media, people are quitting jobs and going for the other option after theboom."

Take Delhi’s S. Gautham, 32, who quit his job with Octave Communications in 1989 tobecome an independent software maker. Then, there is 25-year-old Leela Jacinto who leftMetropolis in Bombay three months ago to become a freelance journalist. Or Minty Tejpal, 28, who left Newstrack to get into software production. And Pranab Dutta, 31, who resigned from India Today and provides designing con-sultancy services to leading publications inthe country. Explains Jacinto: "I found that I was spending a lot of my time doingthings I did not want to. I also wanted to dabble in different media which was notpossible as a staffer."

But young professionals striking out on their own are aware of one bigcatch: those leaving secure media jobs cannot afford to be mediocre or complacent. Thoughfreedom from bosses can only be a welcome change, freelancing is a rat race with room onlyfor the best and the brightest. Despite more money, more work, and the consequentialmitigation of insecurity, anyone on his own must deliver sustained quality if hisaspirations are not to crumble on the hysterically competitive turf.

It seems to take a certain personality trait to leave a secure job.Selective by nature, these freelancers revel in financial uncertainty, since earningsmight multiply but none are assured of a salary. As Gautham, who directed a few episodesof a serial, A Matter of Choice, remarks: "Despite the stray phase when one earnsnothing, one can afford to do exactly what one likes."

One of the most successful designers in the print media, Pranab Duttais likewise motivated: "I can be selective about what I want to do. There is no needto do all the work, both good and bad, for a particular company." In fact,Tejpal—who has two serials on the air and another in the pipeline—puts hisfinger on the bottom-line when he says: "I need the freedom and space to do what Iwant. I have never given a damn for security as long as I am doing well. Till now, Iam."

And money? Dutta and Tejpal again concur: where there is quality, there is work. And wherethere is work, the money leaves salary scales far behind.

Of course, there are cases where personal choice, independent ofprofessional demands, acts as the decisive catalyst. Take Saba Naqvi Bhaumik, who left herjob with India Today to become a freelance professional. "My priority is travellingand not money since my husband does the earning," she says. "And ever since Ileft my regular job, I have been able to travel a lot to research for myyet-to-be-completed book." Her husband Prashun Bhaumik, who became a freelancesoftware producer last year, sums up his career: "I am not answerable to anyone, I amvery happy, and what I earn is enough to have a ball. I have a wider choice of doingthings, and can live life on my own terms."

 This trend is not limited to media-based professionals. Delhi-based SiddharthMishra, 37, left his job as an engineer with the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC)in 1991 to become a freelance photographer. "When I looked around me and saw myseniors, most of them looked like moving vegetables who failed to motivate me. I even hada feeling that about a decade later, I would act similarly." His income speaks foritself and for his professional stature: "When I left NTPC, I was making around Rs8,000 per month. Now I charge Rs 10,000 a day, though I have to maintain my own crew,equipment and studio."

 All one needs to register this type of a success story is adogged confidence. Something Susmit Sen, 33, has large doses of. Lead guitarist ofDelhi’s fusion band Indian Ocean, Sen left his job with HMV  last year to becomea music-maker. After gliding over some initial hiccups, he was involved in the compositionof three musical scores for the Onida Pinnacle Awards held recently. And the rewards makethe effort worthwhile. "The kind of kicks one gets are simply unthinkable if one wereto have a regular nine-to-five job," he says. "Besides, I lack the temperamentthat is essential to work under a boss. My present position makes me free to choose ordump things that come my way."

Thenthere is 35-year-old Vivek C. Sekhar, a former operations managerwith Digital Equipment (India) Pvt Ltd in Bangalore. Sekhar’s resolution to quit fourmonths ago, was inspired by his desire to do what he ‘was good at’: helping newfirms with ‘incubation management’, that is, assisting them to establish theirinfrastructure and acquire manpower. "There was this itch to do my own thing,"he says.

And since in the area of ‘incubation management’ supply isinversely proportional to demand, he can assert what many other freelancing starterscannot: "The advantage  of being on my own is that I have enough funds to takeme past a rainy day. What one makes in a company is maybe one-fiftieth of what one canmake on one’s own."

 But personal satisfaction alone can trigger professional drifts even when sufficientmonetary gains are not guaranteed. An interesting case is C. Ravi Kumar, 43, a projectmanager with a Thapar group holding in Bangalore, who is planning to strike out on his ownas a "green-based technology" consultant in the increasingly profitableagro-based industry. "In every job there is a point of saturation," says RaviKumar, who worked as a lecturer in Bangalore University and in an R&D organisationbefore joining the corporate sector. "At this point of time, I feel that my freedomis more important. The freedom to do what I feel like doing and leave what Idon’t."

 Pramod Shankar, 33, an advertising copywriter working on his own, says itsuccinctly: "Freelancing was a move driven by an inner force to fulfil what I wasmeant for." Shankar now handles the Bangalore operations of Urja Communications,Bombay. "Freelancing is in," he says, "since everything is opening up. Theeconomy, people’s attitudes, and personal values are going through a state of flux.As a result, values that stressed that people had to belong to a big entity are breakingdown."

Clearly, there has been a collapse of value systems steeped in antiquity. Yet, it has itsflip side. Says Chitra Subramaniam, 30, who left client servicing to establish her ownadvertising firm in Bombay, Salutations: "I missed interaction with like-mindedpeople and felt a drop in my personal growth." Disappointed, she returned to a properjob.

There are also the people who have detoured willy nilly into freelancing.Bombay’s Sanjeev Khandekar, 37, who had headed an apex body in touch with all theNGOs in Maharashtra, has returned to his foremost love: gardening. Today he is a gardeningconsultant for small shopbowners, nurseries and small industries. "Three-fourths ofmy time is spent on gardening as against a quarter for management. But it pays me three tofour times more than my government job," he says.

And so, the list of professionals who work, but work for no single boss at a time, growswith each passing day. As Vishwanathan puts it, "They are a generation in time,people who realise that time needs to be abbreviated. Now that they have seen thedissolution of the old order, they seem to know the importance of youth for success."Conventions no longer bind these self-seeking adventurers. Uncertainty is preferable aslong as there is one guarantee: the kind of kicks unthinkable in a pucca job where oneretires as an old, ‘unknown citizen’.