Ohk, i don’t have anything to write really, nothing new seems to be happening anywhere for me to express myself through the black keys that are straining my fingers. I just realized that i had a blog and i have a duty towards it, which is to continuously keep feeding it my rants. Anyway since i have begun this, i better put something to it.

So this Sunday marked the end of a very long week for me, highlighted by go karts, assignments, reports, online tests and a lots of searching (google obviously). Though it started really well with the 20 laps of high speed go kart racing (which even though i paid for the 20 laps for 7 people, felt thrilling!)..it went pretty much downhill from there. It was like the karts provided the adrenaline to make it to the end of the week in sane condition, as the next couple of days went into googling everything about recession for our TRW report (don’t bother with what TRW is) followed by some serious data editing and manipulations which took up most of the time. though i did learn some new things about recession, but frankly it didn’t really fascinate me.

After some serious two days which involved lots of last minute running and convincing, we made it through the report and to the next level in the week, which was named “ES assignment” (again don’t bother what that is). It was an online assignment which we were given 2 hours to solve and it was really one of the more memorable moments in the week to see people shouting across hostels to see whose question matched with whom. That level was completed at 11:10, 10 minutes later than the time given to us, but really we (that is to say 9 people in 1 room who were doing the assignment simultaneously) had no time to really bother as the final level loomed in the distance, the CP online test (we engineers do pride ourselves in making abbreviations for everything, which only we understand), which was scheduled for sunday.

As some might be knowing, the final level for anything is the toughest and this case wasn’t different as we spent 1 hour pondering over the the greek presented to us and labelled ‘question paper’. The only silver lining in this level was perhaps that the last line stands for the majority of campus, and of course the fact that i felt most relaxed in the week after we were finally asked to switch off our monitors and hide our work behind the black screen reflecting my free face. And thus ended my week long game, testing cunning ,survival skills, hand eye coordination (??) and ya a bit of gray cell concentration in my brain too.

Also I’d like to add that based on some valuable suggestions , i have tried to reduce the length of my posts, though i don’t seem to have done a good job. So anyway i better wind up, its not really a great confidence booster to talk about your disastrous endeavours.

Hope you had a better week!

IIT's IIM's follow BITS

Okay, the topic might be a little biased owing to my bitsian nature, but no one can deny the fact the two premier institutes in the country have gone the BITS way. Kapil Sibal’s new proposal makes it mandatory for students to have a an 80% board percentage, and IIM’s seem to be going online (you can read the article here), something that BITS did long ago (both of them). I wont argue about the online test system because its high time we did that, but is 80% percentage really necessary for any institute??

First of all as an IIT aspirant myself who has given both boards and JEE, i can say that even though syllabus of both boards and JEE is more or less the same, there is a huge difference in the level of the course. While boards keep to the basics of without going much into derivations and details, JEE expects us to know the in depth analysis of each topic we study. Therefore it is safe to say that a person preparing for JEE wont find it difficult to get 80% in boards because basically the concepts are the same. And if a person is good enough to clear IIT, boards should be a cakewalk for him. Moreover, mostly the board question pattern remains same every year and it is easy to predict the questions. So i don’t particularly think that keeping the 80% cut off for JEE will drastically change the quality of students getting into IIT, unless you take boards too lightly and write the exams with too much overconfidence. (which happened to a guy In my college, who scored 350 in BITSAT ,the entrance test for BITS but failed to clear the 80% cut off as he took the boards for granted and therefore had to join in the second semester. Though the fact that he couldn’t score 80% in boards doesnt make him less worthy but does make him lose a semester.)

However i do feel that the cut off criteria will certainly create unnecessary pressure on the students. Even though there was a minimum of 60% required in boards before, but that’s something that you usually get without much bother in boards. But 80% cut off will definitely be playing on the back of the minds of the aspirants. Even though i maintain that isn’t difficult to score 80% in boards, it is enough to make the students uncomfortable. They would definitely take boards more seriously and spend more time on it than they usually would. Till now, people just used to open books a day or so before the exams but now they will definitely be more watchful in boards, considering the fact that boards are now playing an important role in their dreams to crack JEE.

All in all i feel, even though it isn’t difficult for a serious JEE aspirant to score 80%in boards, it definitely does add pointless burden on the students and in the rarest of cases (as the guy in my college) costs a worthy student a seat (or a semester). Without the cut off, people can easily concentrate on their preparations for JEE which is undoubtedly more important to them than boards. Thus i prefer that cut off should be reduced to 70 or 75% as the figure 80 invariably plays with the psychology of the students and adds an additional onus of the board exams (and i speak for every institute which has this criteria, including BITS)

government austerity

Salman Khurasheed, the minister for corporate affairs in the country, recently remarked about the pay packages of CEO’s and indirectly described their high income as ‘vulgar’. For the past few months now, ministers seem to be keen on initiating an ‘austerity drive’ as the popular phrase goes. Pranab mukherjee started it with his plans of curbing government expenditure by reducing security and other benefits enjoyed by ministers and supposedly ‘driving’ tharoor out of his hotel. But is austerity, just for the sake of it justified?

Firstly coming to the point of CEO salaries, i see no point of government interfering in employee salaries there. What a company and its shareholders decide to pay their employee and CEO is entirely their business and surely they are more worried about the company than the government, so they will know how to reward their CEO appropriately. Moreover a CEO works hard to get in a position to lead a corporation and whatever he earns is well deserved and justified , as in contrast to some of the ministers enjoying free perks for just showing up once in 5 years. Also, as H P Singhania (ficci president) pointed out, lack of compensation for employee efforts led to a brain drain 15-20 years ago as more and more people found foreign offers more lucrative and beneficial. We must make sure that this isn’t repeated. Sure economic downturn has caused a lot of changes all around that requires government intervention, but this is an issue that is best handled by the firm itself.

Having said this, i feel Pranab Mukherjee’ attempts to curb unnecessary government expenditure is well placed. Many ministers don’t require Z+ security, but are still covered by its shield. I agree security is important for political leaders, but security should be according to need and not to fulfil the minister’s desires. Besides this, controlling other perks like railway passes etc also seem to be a good move and not just because of the recession but in a stable economy also. Although if a politician wants to live flamboyantly on his own expense, its completely his decision and no one should bother about how he lives his life, as long as he isn’t spending the taxpayer’s money. All in all, i think government should think about reducing its expenditures first before bothering about company CEO’S.

does gandhigiri work??

Recently we celebrated gandhi jayanti and every news channel and newspaper had a special coverage of the gandhian principles and ideologies followed by a note saying how his ideas and methods seem to have been lost as times progressed and gandhi jayanti has become just another reason to plan a weekend. Very very few people (read no one) today i feel lives by his methods and ideas. Have we forgotten him and his ideas or are his principles simply too demanding?
I personally feel living life by the gandhian philosophy requires too much of patience. Almost everyone wants to pace things up and do stuff as quickly as possible, no one is patient enough to wait for a long time to get results. Gandhi asks people to go on doing good deeds without bothering about results, but don’t we all get frustrated when results don’t show? Sure some time or the other we might reap the benefits, but is the wait worth it? Lage raho munnabhai aesthetically showed how gandhigiri can be applied to everyday routines, but again they gave out the message that even though it might work, it requires a lot of patience. I remember when people started sending flowers instead of using violent means to protest against the delhi demolitions. But nothing happened, so after 2 days it was back to violence. People do get frustrated when nothing happens. Same with pink chuddy campaign against pramod muthalaik. Did it actually work?? Did he actually stopped following his so called “Indian tradition”? even gandhiji had to wait about 30 years to gain independence. Could it have been if a couple more like bhagat singh would have come along that the independence would have come earlier? We can never say.
Gandhiji’s principles today are just not realistic. I don’t think people bother much unless we show them that we can do damage if you don’t listen. Can we imagine going to each terrorist and preaching non violence? Will it work?? And if they resort to violence, should we sit back and go about doing gandhigiri?? Will that work? Sometimes its important to follow tit for tat principles to have your way. And frankly speaking if we can get the same results much more quickly following other methods, why shouldn’t we adopt them? Why should we wait so long to get something done?
Its not that i have a lack of respect of gandhiji or what he has done for the nation. i sincerely respect that. and neither do i deny that his ideas work. All i am saying is that i don’t think anyone is patient and selfless enough to follow his principles today.
Opinions welcome.