Conductors or Semi-Conductors?

Kerala State Road Transport Coporation was again in the news this time. No, not for breaking the loss-making record again. KSRTC now is paying more money as pension to its employees than the salary it is paying its regular employees.
KSRTC is just another State government tool to ensure employment to a few more people in a state where literacy rates are the highest but the available jobs are among the lowest. Or, was supposed to.
I know a good friend of mine who was a computer instructor at a mediocre computer training institute. The outsorucing boom had just started and software companies were inducting candidates in hordes. Suddenly one fine day my friend said that he had been selected by KSRTC as a bus conductor. And he was accepting the offer.
I was aghast. He was a promising computer engineer who could write reasonable good software and could manage steep learning curves. I tried to change his mind. I told him that with his strong logic and reasonably good exposure to the hot technologies of the time, he would make an excellent software engineer with some real time exposure to software projects. Would not all that talent go to waste?
But he would not budge. He said, his parents considered a goverment job a secure one, with minimal risk and well-paying too. He too agreed with his parents and that was that.
I didn't see him after that.
But whenever I catch the night bus home at 9 pm on Fridays to my native place, I sometimes think of my friend. Where is he? Was he enjoying his work? Or did he turn back to computers again?
My journey lasts 4 hours(half an hour less than in day time due to the empty roads) as it courses most of MC road to my destination. The first one hour the bus is packed with commuters, most of them standing. By the end of the first hour most of the remaining people are seated, the others having gotten down at nearby destinations. The next half hour the bus rumbles on and at the midpoint of the journey where the driver and conductor take a break for a cup of tea and a smoke, the bus empties with only a few dozen Tamil Ayyappa devotees clad in black bound for Sabarimala, the famous religious destination in Pathanamthitta district. They too get down in another half an hour. The remaining one and a half hour the bus rumbles on carrying me and just one or two other odd passengers. When the bus finally reaches its destination there is usually only me and sometimes an odd co-towner.
No wonder KSRTC runs at a loss. All that matters is that the buses be running and the drivers and conductors do their job, passengers or not!