WHERE HAS THE FIRE GONE

Disclaimer : Contents in the blog are strictly based on my opinions and are not meant to offend anyone. You are most welcome to agree or disagree on any of the points. Also please ignore the grammar mistakes, if any.

Don’t worry guys, there is no fire. Wait, have I said something which make you feel relaxed. If so, then that's the thing to worry about. Let’s figure it out why.

For more than 800 years, India was under the shackles of slavery. First came the Turko-Afghans, then came the Arabians, and finally the Britishers. It took India around more than 600 years to realize their self-pride and a fire of mutiny was lighted by an unsung hero Mangal Pandey. This fire of mutiny spread in whole India like a fire in forest. God also helped India by sending brave souls on earth like Mahatma Gandhi, Bhagat Singh and many more. Such was the fire in them that they finally freed their motherland from alien forces.

On 15^th August 1947, a new chapter began in Indian history. But wait a minute, India was only independent in terms of center of power but not at the core. After the 60 years of independence, people of India are still living under the shackles of untouchability, female foeticide, corruption, unemployment, illiteracy, poverty, etc. Let’s go a little deep.

·      Caste system is still prevalent in many parts of our country. I am Brahmin, you are Shudra. As if the people are tagged at the time of their birth that son you are a shudra and there only his destiny is written. I can bet on my bottom dollar that no one surely knows who created this differentiation but they follow it blindly (usually they blame the God and yes what else can we expect from a person with such a cheap thinking). Your only fault is to take birth in a lower caste family and you are doomed for lifetime.

·    People generally say that they need a son who will take care of them and will carry their generation forward. Mark my words guys – “Son is a son till he gets his wife, Daughter is the daughter till the end of life”. Though she is living with her husband’s family, she always takes care of her parents (exceptions do exist). And one main point is that it is a girl only who has the power to give life, not a boy.

·     Corruption has weakened the core system of India from inside like termites feed on wood. We our self are involved in corruption in some way or the other. You might have noticed that sometimes while paying for paid parking, the person does not provide the receipt and in hurry we also don’t care for it but this is also a corruption because that person won’t be paying tax on those earning. Corruption is one of the main reason why India is still a developing nation, still has unemployment, illiteracy, poverty, etc.

Let’s first determine the base of all these problems (this is what MBA teaches, analyze first). Are they actually problems or effects of a problem.  Most of these problems emanate from bad governance either directly or indirectly (and I want to make it clear that here I am not supporting any political party). It's the duty of the government to eradicate all these stigmas. Just for the heck of it, government has initiated many schemes and every year in the annual budget, our Finance Minister allots crores of rupees to these schemes but is this fund actually reaching to those who deserves it or is just adding to the black money reserves of corrupt bureaucrats.

But wait, where are we in the picture. Are we doing something good for our nation. Are we helping our countrymen in developing. A straight blunt response is NO. We are not doing anything. Yes, what we can do is to sit in a group and discuss on such issues and give conclusions or reading newspaper, having a cup of tea and commenting – “Nothing good will happen to India”. Whenever any incident happens like introduction of more than 50% FDI in retail or some scams, people throng the social media and put status giving their viewpoints. This spreads like a fad for a week or so and then people forget about it. But yes, what else can we expect from such a sleepy facebook generation.

This will not going to change anything my friends. So, if you really love your nation and wants to see it in the list of developed nation, take the broom in your hands and clean the squalor yourself. Be an IAS or IPS, join politics and become the CM or PM (and yes you can) and try to change the system. I know that many people have a bad perception about politics because of today's politicians. But my friends, Politics is not bad, instead Politics has the power to bring a complete revolution and our history vouch for that. I hope you all know about Chanakya. He was the person who with the help of politics (saam daam dand bhed) united the whole India under one great ruler, Chandragupta Maurya and saved our motherland from foreign invasions. So, it depends on the purpose for what you are playing politics.

So my friends, ignite that fire once again and fight to help India gain independence from social stigmas, corruption, etc. Show the world that the fire is still there and can erupt in volcano in no time. And friends, one last thing is that a good government can play a major role in this. So, I request you all to atleast take out some time from your busy schedule to deliver your precious vote. Vote for the party that you think is best, will bring a revolution in the country but do vote as each vote counts.

Thank You

By

Rishabh Bhardwaj

PGDM 2013-15

IIM

SIR SIR SIR PLEASE SIR PLEASE SIR

Disclaimer : Contents in the blog are strictly based on my opinions and are not meant to offend anyone. You are most welcome to agree or disagree on any of the points. Also please ignore the grammar mistakes, if any.

No No guys, I am not calling someone, but yes this is what you hear the most in some of the lectures.

Let me first introduce myself. I am a PGDM student of a new born IIM.

So as most of you know that in a B-School, marks are segregated into various portions. There are marks for class participation, quizzes, assignments, project, mid term, end term, (how you sit, how you sleep, :P) etc etc. This clearly shows the greatness of faculties. No no, its not that teachers don’t load me with assignments or like me more than others (which they actually do :P) but we have the advantage to screw some portions which won’t have much effect on our GPA.

So, why I mentioned some of the classes. The reason is that lectures of those faculties who only provide 5-10% weightage to class participation, you won’t hear a word, except from some bright students (like me :P). But there are faculties who allocate 30-40% weightage to class participation and sometimes they are accompanied by some assistant to mark the name of students. Now the show begins.

So, let’s see what are the types of participation one can see in such lectures.

Let’s begin with a positive note. There are some students who actually don’t care what weightage the faculty has given to class participation. For them, each class is similar to the other. They will prepare well before attending the class and will properly listen to the faculty and put forward their arguments or ask valid and interesting questions. This also enhances the learning of the whole batch. But some of the bright students are so much obsessed by the grades that they overparticipate (new term coined by me :P), which means that even if Professor is writing let’s say 120 X 5, they will quickly spit out the answer (and Professor is like Thank God, I didn’t know it :P).

Some students generally need a push to get things done. The increased weightage plays this role. These students also come prepared and add value to the lecture by giving valid points. But they do the preparation only for this class not the others. They have the potential but do not utilize it properly.

Now here comes a very interesting set of people. These type of students will never prepare for the class but they want nice grades. In this group, everyone wants to speak. Yes, I am focusing on the word “SPEAK” because they just want to open their mouth, no matter whether it is related to the topic or not. Sometimes they themselves don’t know what they want to say (and in this case even God also doesn’t know :P),  but they want to say something so that they can get some points. These people are not only annoying but also waste the time of the whole class. The irony is that marking the student is very much numeric in nature. For e.g., okay that student raised his hand, mark him irrespective of the fact whether he actually knows something or not. Some of these students say exactly what other person has just said and is marked by the assistant.

One common thing to note about above three types is : “Sir Sir Sir Sir Sir, please Sir please”. You will feel that as if the whole class is full of Newton and Edison.

But, there is one unique category who regularly participate in every class but do not run for marks. These are people with very high mentality which is nice. But due to this high mentality, they feel that raising their hands and screaming “Sir Sir” is against their values and they stop participating. I absolutely respect their feelings but on the same hand I would also like to say that if they involve themselves in class participation, the whole batch can learn something new. So raise points not for marks but for yourself and your batch.

And now comes the most important point. For faculty, the purpose of giving weightage to class participation is to involve everyone in the discussion. But as we have already seen what it leads to, is it really helping. The question is why the faculty is offering weightage to class participation. I can bet on my bottom dollar that even if faculty doesn’t allocate any grades for class participation, there will still be 5 to 10 students who will participate actively and make the discussion fruitful. Coercing someone by showing them the stick of grades may make them participate at that time but it actually won’t help them.

At the end, I would like to draw an analogy with what I said in the above paragraph. Similar to this, companies also have their target market and they completely focus on them. They don’t target the entire market. Many a times, it has happened that company targeting each and every one failed to do so (Marketing Gyan :P).

Thank You

Rishabh Bhardwaj

PGDM 2013-15

IIM

YAAR...KITNA DE RAHI HAI

Disclaimer : Contents in the blog are strictly based on my opinions and are not meant to offend anyone. You are most welcome to agree or disagree on any of the points. Also please ignore the grammar mistakes, if any.

If you are some automobile geek who is reading this blog because of the title representing mileage, then this page is definitely not made for you.

So, before starting let me first introduce myself. I am a PGDM student of a new born IIM (Batch 2013-15).

Though its winter but currently in almost every B-School, Summers are going on. No No, don’t get confuse, I am talking about Summer Placements. The two important months where we get the real feel of the business. We do live projects for the company which in itself is a very awesome feeling. Though company provide stipend to interns but the main purpose of the summer internship is to gain knowledge.

But actually, for most students this is not the real objective of internship. Now-a-days, the students don’t see what profile the company is offering but rather are attracted towards the stipend. Let’s see some examples. For the following examples, I am considering an assumption that it’s a student’s call whether to apply for the company or not.

·                             A student who is not interested in HR, applies for a company offering the profile of HR just because the company is paying a hefty stipend and in the interview, he has no answer of why he is applying for HR. My simple question to this guy is that will he gain something from this internship. Whatever work company will provide him, he will do it just for the sake of completing it (as we do in our projects :P), not to learn. Those two months will be a total waste of time. And if they persist this attitude in final placements also, then I would like to quote a saying of a great saint, Baba Ranchoddas – “Zyada package waali company mein select ho ke zyaada paise toh kama loge par life ke agle chaalis saal tak tumhara balatkar pe balatkar hota rahega”.

·                                   Another student who is interested in let’s say Marketing. A company comes and offers a damn good job profile in Marketing but only paying Rs. 2000/- per month. The guy doesn’t apply just because the company is offering very low stipend. He doesn’t know what opportunity he is losing.

Actually, there is an irony hidden in it. The purpose of internships is not to earn money, which you will definitely do after you complete your MBA. The purpose is to make you understand the practical part of the theory you have studied in 1^st year. So, tell me guys how often have you been paid for receiving the education. Till now, we have received education by paying the fee. In case of MBA, company pays some amount because you, in some sense, will work for it. Now, let the company decide what amount they want to pay, you just focus on your learning part.

Let’s also consider the case of a student (good in Finance) who is forcefully made to sit in a company offering a job profile (HR) which is not of his interest. And due to some bizarre twist of fate, he gets selected. My suggestion to this guy is that the PGDM course is of 18 months. Out of that, if he considers those two months as a waste, then consider the remaining 16 months as an opportunity which he can leverage to attain perfection in his field of interest. Participate in events, do live projects, publish some research papers. I can bet on my bottom dollar, that if you strive hard to be perfect in your field, no one gonna ask you why you did your summers in some other field.

Now comes a myth breaker. Many students feel that working in start-ups will not add much value to them as compared to some well known companies. Guys use your grey cells and try to think for a while where the opportunity is more. I think you got it right. It’s the start-ups who provide us the opportunity to experiment. In the high end companies, it might be possible that they won’t give you any work for two months. On the other side, a company which has just put its steps in the market has a wide dimension to experiment and generally the projects are like creating their brand image or introduction of a complete new product in the market. Think what tremendous amount of knowledge it will provide.

There are some students who consider themselves as they are of no value and they don’t have that standard that they can choose their company. These people always feel that they don’t have enough confidence and they fear to put forward their points. Such people apply for each and every company visiting the campus and their attitude creates a bad impression in front of the company, which spoils the relationship of the institute with the company. Here, I would like to tell them that for God’s sake, you are an IIM student (har student ka khwaab). You have entered this premier institute with your continuous efforts. And if you still feel that you have many weak points then start working on them right now (not exactly, first read the complete blog :P).

At the end I would like to say that we are students of a new born IIM. No, no need to feel pity about it but what my point is that it would be better if we keep our expectations low to some extent. To be more precise, all the high end companies which are currently visiting in so called Tier 1 institutes, might not visit so early to our campus. But if you have that spirit in you, then one day you will definitely get your dream job. So try to focus on your interest, not the stipend.

Here I would like to quote one more line said by the same great saint – Baba Ranchoddas

“Success ke peeche mat bhaago, excellence ka peecha karo, success jhak maar ke tumhare peeche aayegi”.

By

Rishabh Bhardwaj

PGDM 2013-15

IIM