Saturday, February 26, 2011

My Engineering/MBA Class

A classroom resembles more of society than may be apparent at first. There are like in the civil society, the upper class, the middle class and the lower class.
A Class can be similarly divided into haves and haves not with a large number thrown in between the two. There are ofcourse outliers too but they are few and far in between.

Ambanis and Mittals of our class are people who have always had more than 90% throughout be it nursery, matric, high school, undergraduate or post graduate. Anything less than 90% and they will scorn like they have broken one of the Ten Commandments. It almost seems like they were born with a purpose and that divine purpose was to mug and mug so bad that no question in the paper would be left unanswered.




It is very easy to locate these Ambanis, they would always sit in the front row and take notes like their life depended on writing every syllable that comes out of the prof as if they were divine revealation. They could be seen tailing the professors when prof’s left the class.

Then there is the Aam Aadmi (Mango Man). This part of the society gives meaning to the upper class and is something that lower class people aspire to be. They can be spotted occupying from third row to anywhere upto the last row depending on when they entered the class.



They are the ones who will download ppt’s , get the notes Xeroxed on the night before the exams/minors as the case may be. This section actually determines the quality of the profs. For if the prof is any good some of them might actually listen to the prof else they will just turn their deaf ear to the prof, read ET, novel or the best of all sleep.

Then there is the lower class ot the BPL class. They may be the most misunderstood section of the society.
They are the ones most prone to spring a surprise. They are hard to spot in class for they are never present in the class. At the end of the semester, they are running after prof’s to get their attendance completed or have a medical certificate in hand. They generally come to know of the syllabus during the course of appearing exams.

Finally there are outliers. They are the hardest to classify for they elude any set description. Some may top the subject even though they never attended any class (or may be because of it). Some of them will line up to get their medical certificate when they should be appearing exam. Nothing concrete is however known about them.



You might also like Dancing Woes and God should be in a B School

Monday, February 21, 2011

The curious case of Berlo and Tiwari



The more things change the more they remain the same. This may sound lika a cliché but it is a cliché for a reason: it is true.
Have you ever heard of Mr Tiwari, the Andhra Pradesh governor or rather known as the protagonist of a video whereby he indulges in threesome (that too at an age of 84)? I think most of us can recollect it. Now have not we been hearing the exploits of Mr Silvio Berlusconi. These two gentlemen had something in common for sure. They were drunk with power and are extremely virile. The only difference they belong to different parts of the world

Recently lot of scams has been making the headlines: the 2G scam, The Adarsh Society scam, the CWG scam, the ISRO Spectrum scam. There are so many of them that it is hard to keep track of all of it. Well there is a reason why we had so many scams, the liberal justice system, the political system that will protect their own at every cost and the largely apathetic population which has accepted corruption as part of the culture.
But the mother of all scam was certainly Recession. Well may be it was not scam in the traditional sense of the word but the underlying factors were the same: Greed that led to flagrant breaking or finding loopholes in the legal system, Putting the good of one over that of the community and most important of all the rewards that were associated with these activities. There was only one difference again, the origin of the scams were from different parts of the world.
Despite being culturally so different why is it that things do not look that different when viewed from the distance.
Well if I may be so presumptuous as to venture a guess than it would be that humans don’t change. May be we play under different systems and under different circumstances but the underlying nature of human is what determines the course he will take and every now and then there always will be someone who can find loopholes in the system or break the law with impunity. There is nothing left for society but to pick up the pieces and try to move forward and may be for a change punish the ones responsible.
P.S – Read on rediff.com that the wealth of Mr Mubarak amounts to roughly $5 billion and that is a conservative estimate. What can I say Hats off to you Mr Mubarak.