RePost:Crutches to hop around

Crutches to hop around

This was about time when I was fresh out of Engineering Admission Counselling and had to throw away the seat I wanted to someone who had scored half as much as I did.Reservation on any ground puts me off.This was also about time when I had started sending articles to The Hindu and they used to publish it!Found this on one of the usual random browsing rounds.

Read On...

Come the counselling sessions for admission into post graduate or undergraduate courses and the bright and hardworking students have to face "the ground realities". A friend or classmate of his manages to get into a better college and stream.
How? He has reservation, on social grounds.
In my college I see and meet scores of bright students, who cannot afford even the bare minimum amenities a student needs, and their families toil hard just to pay their semester fees.
And there are students who would spend an equivalent or even a few times more the same amount just on `ordinary outings'.
Let me remind u that the latter are the same people for whom our government reserved a certain percentage of seats and the former category of students, in most cases, are among those who have been burning the proverbial midnight oil till now and have worked out of their skins.
Some have toiled for more than a couple of years, just to get into a college and study with the people whom he has seen wasting time and money, roaming around and having a gala time till now.
Just imagine how depressing it can be!
These students get a seat into the most preferred stream in the most preferred college or somewhere near that, still way lot better than the seat he would have ordinarily got.
No wonder they continue the same wayward attitude here as well.
As in any other case, there are still many backward classes, which need reservation, and it was for this section of people that the system of reservation was initially launched and is still in place because many of these people need an opportunity to progress.
But I strongly feel that there should be reservation on Economic grounds.
Contrary to popular perception, the so-called socially backward class is in most cases economically better of than most of the socially forward class people and vice versa.
As one person aptly put it -India is perhaps the only country where the rich enjoy the fruits of socialism while the poor are fully exposed to the vagaries of capitalism.
But people cannot be blamed for this it is just the politicians who cannot let go of a valuable tool to get the votes in their favour.
But again the government should not forget that the knowledge is the cutting edge of development and social reservation just blunts it.

Read the Original Article Published in THE HINDU

Read the Original Blog Post

Masters (?) of Business Administration

November is coming and the MBA fever is catching up.Every year lakhs of students in India plan their future on something they are not even half sure of.The whole MBA thing looks so amusing that I couldn't resist but blog about it.I am sure all of you would be nodding your heads in disapproval at the end this.

I have been looking(read observing)at this India-goes-MBA crowd for some years now and have broadly divided them into five categories.

Why do you want to do an MBA?

First response: It is cool!

A good majority.

Let us accept that the glitz and glam factor attracts us much like a cotton candy attracting a five year old.We see and hear so much about how they party,how the booze flows from the fountains at their colleges,about how much the girls like young MBA graduates; that it is hard to ignore that twang in the tummy whenever someone says the word M-B-A!But as far as my knowledge goes(which I am sure is tad bit better than that of a freshly passed out college graduate) the gloss would at the max last only as long as your farewell party.And would still be an understatement if I am to explain how ephemeral all this is.

Next Response: The pay is high .

This would come a close second.

This,I bet you will discover as soon as you enter the college, would be the silliest reason ever.No one cares about how much you get or worse yet,chooses a job based on the weight of the pay packet.

Response #3: Everyone else is doing,why should I be left out?!

Honest and sick.

What are you going to plan and what are you going to manage if you are not sure what you want to do with your own future?End of discussion!

Response #4 :Nothing else to do.

Again honest but this time,the limpest of all the reasons.

commune d'intervention:I have always dreamt of it and have wanted to do an MBA for quite sometime now.

Dicey!

Ask yourself,why an MBA?If you get

a clear answer,prepare well for the exams.

But I don't see more than some one or two percent in the last category.Result we have thousands of unfit MBAs passing out of the factories-in-India.

Then there are some others like:

I have two options MS or an MBA.

This is the confused category,precisely they know nothing about either fields and are heavily misinformed.Coaching institutes cash in on this ignorance of the crowd to introduce packages such as GRE+CAT and GRE+GMAT for people from this category.They should sit and think what they want rather than which is better.

All said and done I still cannot comprehend the heated discussions before an exam and this applies to our approach to all the exams in India.If there are two or more CAT aspirants,try eavesdropping and you will hear things that start at what the scores are like,but then head to dumb-er topics.

The TV channels also do their bit,inviting center directors and other students.All this is pretty usual and might sound innocuous to everyone.But then there is the crowd which makes heroes out of the people who have made it to any of the top colleges and also assume that those who haven't are mere losers.At times I feel like tie-gag-ing these guys up and then screaming out loud that what a person chooses to do with his life is his personal and we should respect him for that.I know scores of my friends who are doing fantastically well in their area of core competence,I can talk about only the engineering fields,simply because I have been in that field and have closely been and worked with them.

Having said that I still feel that those beautiful people who choose to work for an NGO or dedicate their lives for what they love,not worrying a bit about how much money they are going to make are the real managers.Time and again I have been with people for whom money is everything in life,and no I am not talking contra-socialism here,I know what is the significance of money but do not quite understand the need for the abundance of it.

I have always maintained that Manage-men-t is for people who can Manage-Me(self) and then Manage-Men(people around).Joining the MBA forums,'Bell the Cat Community' on Orkut,posting your scores on PG and TG,attending seminars,building your profile,solving tonnes of problems,indoctrinating people on why one should do MBA or even cracking the exam does not make a manager out of you.Come on guys,get a life!