by Jyoti Pandey

Created on: March 19, 2009

"Man is a social animal" Aristotle may have known nothing about networking when he had said this about centuries ago. Man by nature cannot work in isolation, there has to be a reward for their hard work and attaining a prominence in their social stature is the biggest recognition they thrive on! In recent times, the similar thought and philosophy has taken a totally new dimension and terminology called "Networking" as the new age mantra.

However, this so called new age mantra that has emerged as a key technique in modern sociology for success in professional or interpersonal profiles dates its roots or origin back to good old ancient days. During the time of our forefathers before the innovation of television or internet people would naturally meet or connect with each other to get things done. Local groups and meetings were formed to know each other and exchanging views and ideas and to make sure that they are able to help each other out! However, over a period of time, this noble and need based idea turned into making only powerful and influential connections to meet their own selfish ends at the cost of plundering on someone else's rights and eventually started to become corrupt taking the form of favoritism and nepotism. Merit started taking a back seat. You just needed to suck up to somebody for your own purposes. The obvious losers were the ones who didn't learn this art and just believed in doing the work honestly and diligently and earning the recognition for the work that they are doing, not because they knew the right people. In countries like India this phenomena has taken the most corrupt form in the society. Without the right connections rather political connections, its hard to find your way through the maze. One is pushed back far behind in the queue even for the most genuine causes like getting treatments and finding a good doctor!

Recently , when networking is being so heavily propagated as the most effective alliance building solution in hopes of landing a job through referrals or connections or knowing the right people , I sometimes tend to fear that it may end up turn into favoritism and become unfair to those who are not so socially active due to many reasons( especially women who are single moms or have small kids) or may be because of their own volition, but are working toward building on their skills and doing the right kind of work. They may end up getting lost despite being the most deserving candidate and may not find the right opportunity

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