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!

We Indians And Optimism!

Indians are the most optimistic people you would ever come across.We are taught to be illogically optimistic right from ourchildhood and we even outgrow that as the number of candles on our cake increases.A mom tells her 3yr old kid stories ofhow he'll grow up and rule the country as she makes some dinner in her makeshift hut from whatever little she could forageall day.Optimist.A child prays that his test on the next day be postponed because he has not prepared well.Optimist.Youassume that there won't be a traffic jam today when you drive to the office.An Optimist again.A group of people sit down todiscuss about the new government and hope that the new government brings in some real good reforms and they'll do yougood.A bunch of Optimists.Someone in some distant town has gone to the nearby temple to pray that it may not rain on the final day of the test match because India is in a winning position.Optimist.An old man hopes that his alone sugar levels will hit normal and he will get to eat his favourite sweetmeat.An Optimist and veteren at it.The list goes on,well you may ask what is wrong in optimism?Well nothing,but for optimism we would all be living in acynical,depressing world.Some may even argue that it has got this placebo effect on our lives,because but for it the oldman in the tests lab might not find enough reasons to live n cheer about nor the mother in the hut.But what could be morally and mentally damaging could be the being optimistic and doing nothing about it,like the kidpraying that the exam be postponed,the prayer per se is harmless but what would damage would be the fact that he will growup to be an adult who wants something and does nothing about it,just hopes or prays.You want to crack that managemententrance every year,but you just hope that the project that you get at the end of the year would be pretty easy and you cando away without slogging more than 9.5hrs a day.This is a dangerous corollary of the optimism theory,that leaves everythingon your disaster management skills,which are good but might not save something as important and improbable as your career.This is how we operate.No,am not drawing parallels with our financially better off counterparts but a bit of logic mixed with this can take us a long way.