Some thoughts running through my mind

Now that I've started doing my MBA, I often wonder what will I be doing after MBA?

My long term objective is to become an entrepreneur.

I've taken up Operations as my major (Still not sure whether I've made the right decision coz I don't like the subject much) and Finance as my minor (I love this subject). The options which I have in front of me are the following:

1. To secure a job in supply chain, inventory management department in a good foreign FMCG company which will obviously pay me handsomely
2. To do a job in prijects department of manufacturing companies and have the thrill of handling day to day operations os a factory. (Which I loved at my stint at SI Group).
3. To start something on my own immediately.

I've always believed that very few Indians get a chance to study in the best engineering colleges in India and also do MBA in reputed B-Schools in India. I am lucky to be one of them. I feel that it is my duty to do some good for such a wonderful society and country. As such, working for foreign FMCG companies & consultancies will not do much to help for the cause.
Also, I feel that working in a large organization will limit me to a particular department and will not provide me the opportunity to look at businesses as whole. I want to get myself involved in all the departments of the organization I work for. (The same as Herdillia where I could interact and work with people of various deparments). So, I believe that working for large organizations wherein the tasks to be done are well-defined will not suit me.

So, I feel that the best job for me will be a small organization wherein I'll get to know about different business functions which will in turn help me when I start my own organization. However, in this case I will not be able to see the "Best Practices" followed in companies.

Similarly, when I think about the third option, I feel that I'm not well-prepared. I don't have a business plan, nor I'm sure which sector I want to start my firm in. Reading about entrepreneurs has made me understand that this path is going to be very tough and I'll have to take a lot of risks. When I think back in retrospection to the way I've handled things, I find that I don't take much risks. This makes me wonder whether I am really capable of starting something. In case I want to start something on my own, I know that this is the right time to think about this because in case I end up doing a job now, in 2-3 years, I'll be married and then I'll have to take up an apartment in a city (on loan)which will cause me working for some more years to repay the loan amount. After that I'll have to ensure adequate availability of money for children for education and a lot of endless expenses which will obviously need a good stable cash flow. So, that won't be the appropriate time.
So, the point is that I'll not be able to start something on my own for a long time in case I don't do it after my MBA. But the problem is I'm not prepared.

These are some of the thoughts which run through my mind as and when any company comes to my collge campus for summer placements.

Gender Bias

After my Semester 1 examination of MBA 1st year was done, we had the previlige of holiday - one day long holiday. I decided to go home on that day. I decided that I'll go in the luxary of a volvo bus. To my dismay, I found that the bus was full. Yet, the bus operator being considerate asked me to wait and in case any passenger doesn't come, he promised me a seat.

I waited for about 20 minutes praying passengers not to turn up. Everytime, I saw someone alighting an auto near the bus stop, I cursed them in my mind for having turned up. At about 1515 hrs, a pretty girl, approximately 25, came to the stop, obviously with her boy friend. Even she wanted to get into bus and had no ticket. Even she was asked to wait and try her luck.
Thed bus was at 1530 hours and at 1525 hrs, I found that about 11 passengers hadn't turned up. I was overjoyed. However, int he last 5 minutes, a mini-tempo came from nowhere with about 9 passengers. So, now only 2 seats were left and it was time for the bus to leave.
So, the bus operator now turned to us - first to me since I had come before for the service. He checked his papers and saw that seat 36 and seat 8 were vacant. I being the first contender, I demanded seat 8. However, he being a 'responsible' citizen said that ladies should be given front seats. I reluctantly agreed to him and allowed the gorl to seat in the front. Ah bad luck.
But this was not enough. This girl who had just come on a bike with her boyfriend saw that seat no 7 was occupied by a man, in his late 20's say about 28-29 years, demanded that she cannot sit next to a man. (It was only 5.5 hrs journey).
Even this demand of her was accepted and guess what, she was transferred to seat 1, the seat behind the driver where we get a lot of leg space and also no jerks. For me, seat 1 is the favourite seat in a volvo since we can stretch our leg and can relax just like in the train. The poor guy from seat 1 was transferred to seat 8.
No one could protest because on the ticket it was written that the decision of the bus operator would be final in case of any disputes with regards to seats. Thus, the girl inspite of coming later as compared to me got the best seat on the bus and I got
possibly the worst seat (in the last row) in the bus.

At one place women say that they are equal to men in all the tasks. They compete for higher positions in the corporate world, earn as much as the men - atleast in the IT comapnies. On the other hand in situations like mentioned above, they conveniently project themselves as weak and vulnerable to get better treatment. This is not done. Equality has to be followed in this case too.

But alas, this will continue so no point arguing it. Even I'll want my wife or daughter to be given a front and a better seat in a bus if she is faced with a similar situation. So, no use cribbing about this!!!

Dangers Threatening India

Four Dangers which India is facing today

Swine Flu, Chinese aggression, economic recession and drought

Swine Flu:

Still at its inception in India, H1N1 virus has already affected a common urban Indian. The Swine Flu death toll has already crossed 82 in the country, the highest - number of deaths : cases detected, which raises doubt on the centre as well as the state to effectively tackle the deadly pandemic.

The government has declared that the swine flu is here to stay and with the number of death reported increasing every day, it could lead to a major problem if not controlled properly. Reports say that the vaccines for the H1 N1 virus will come up the next year. Let’s hope that till then the number of death is bare minimum

The swine flu has resulted in quite a loss to our country economy - particularly in Maharashtra. The closure of malls, multiplexes, etc have resulted in tremendous losses to the economy. Also the timing of the flu couldn't be worse. It struck in the 1st week of August and aggravated around the middle of the month when there were festivities across all the religions. The celebrations of the Independence Day, Gokulashtami, Patteti, Padusan (Jain New Year), Start of Id fastings, Ganesh festival, etc have been affected. Especially the income of the people who sell roadside things during the festivals has taken a beating. Movies - Kaminey, Life Partner have also survived loss of close to Rs 25 crore.

Chinese aggression

I’ve never considered China a friend of India. It has now and then made it clear to the govt of india that it supports Pakistan and Bangladesh. The act of banning Indian sea food in response to India's ban on the Chinese toys and milk products clearly shows the Chinese attitude towards India. It's opposition to India at the Asian Development Bank recently for an irrigation project in Arunachal Pradesh exemplifies its stand towards India. China is still not ready to accept that Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim are a part of soverign India.

According to a news (on *INDIA TV*), Chinese thinktank is planning to divide india into 30 parts. Though this piece of News is highly exaggerated, Indian Government cannot neglect the movement of Chinese troops along the northeastern border of our country. Steps to answer to their aggression should be thought about and implemented quickly.

I am though an admirer of China who by its sheer power has managed to emerge as a global leader. However, its hunger for is worrying me. It doesn’t believe in peaceful existence.

Economic recession and the drought combined

Time couldn't have been worse for the drought to strike India. India has been trying hard to come out of the clutches of the global recession. The huge fiscal deficit created by government of India to help the economy will not be sufficient in case the monsoons don't come in the September.

174 districts in India have been declared drought affected and huge chuncks of money are being allocated to these districts. However, according to some reports there has been corruption in the list too (some northeastern states receiving ample rain have also been declared drought prone).

Food security problem which was actually a problem this year has just become more grave with the declaration of drought. Problems related to power, water shortages, agricultural suicides, etc will be more rampant in the next year.

Thus, the next year looks very tough and I that India is able to sail through without much damage.

Wow what a month!

So many things occurred in the last month. The appointment of the cabinet of the new government in India, the failure of Indian cricket team at the world cup, the emergence of Fedrer as the 'all time greatest tennis player', the end of the M.J era, to the opening of the long awaited Bandra-Worli sea link, the presentation of the dismal budget by the FM and the slow progress of monsoon.

While all these diverse things were occurring, I've been having a great time at my new B-school at Pune. It has been a great and a wonderful experience so far here at my college.I've been really impressed by the quality of the students in my batch (their academic diversity as well as their achievements), the discipline at the institute (It is really like a school where attendence is taken in every lecture and the sitting arrangement of the students is predecided- something I only had in school), the attitude of Director (to keep everbody on the feet at all times with assignments), the welcome by the seniors at the Freshers party (where all the seniors dressed as if a fancy dress competition and made us all have a gala time), the ambience at the institute (I've felt like I am staying in isolation away from the city), and some faculty (I didn't like all though).The things worth mentioning are:

1. We had a test conducted on the very first day (commencement of lectures) on Financial accounting. (Most of us were ill-prepared) and got average marks

2. The outbound learning (A routine team building exercise which I enjoyed thoroughly)

3. The schedule - The schedule of the 1st month atleast was very gruelling which left no time for anyone to do anything other than studies. (I, however, managed to meet Vish, Shan, Ravi, Dhav once)

4. The academic rigour - The pace at which the things are taught here is very fast. (Infact, the school believes in the funda of learning and not teaching). So, we are made to self learn most of the things.

5. The Freshers day (Milaap)- It was one of the memorable events that I recall. The seniors dressed as if in a Fancy Dress competition made a grand entry into the institute auditorium in front of the whole junior batch. (The entry was really awesome - spectacular - wish I had taken my camera). For the first time after coming here (After nearly 1 month), I saw people dance, make fun and enjoy. It was a great change from the regular routine and a pleasant change.

6. The marketing assignments - There is one professor who asks the class to read the chapters from the book before taking lectures. Once we didn't read for his class. When he realized it, he gave the whole class a punishment assignment wherein we had to the write whole chapter on 24 A4 sized papers. It was the first time after school may be that I wrote for 5 hours continuously. The funnier part was that the marking scheme for this assignment was -10 to 0. The perfect assignment earned us 0 marks while any substandard work fetched us negative marks. Never heard about such a thing before.
There are a lot of other interesting things here though they are not that worth mentioning.
In short, the past month has been a sort of a roller-coaster ride for me and hope to continue doing well - both academically and extracurricularly.

How fair is it?

Consider the case of two of my friends who have obtained the same degree from UICT with almost the same academic record. Both had aim of obtaining a Ph D after the degree and then teaching at an institute and become a professor and then act as a consultant to the chemical industry.

One of the two opted for the option of doing a Ph D at an university in USA and the other opted to do it at UICT, the same college where both had done their under graduation. Needless to say that the second one had the desire to do something for our own country and do research for India and what better place than UICT (the best for chemical engineering in India).

The person who has gone to the USA for research enjoys a scholarship of $ 22,000 per annum.(the normal scholarship for any person putrsuing PhD there). In addition to this, he is offered some teaching assistanceship where he has to teach people simple mathematics which he is quite comfortable.Alongwith that excellent research facilities and the tag of staying in America (parents' pride and all that). The research consists of studing the cell wall of a human cell. Now this kind of research is done with a view of clubbing together research of different students from the same university to create some biological drug by a faculty member of the university. The /final result will be the development of some kind of drug. The benefactor of this research - USA & the drug manufacturing company.

The other guy starts his reserach with the Director of UICT, the highest paid chemical engineeing faculty in India (on consultancy & teaching). For the first two years, he studies multphase reactors & then turns to research in core chemcial engineering, the development of reactors. Alongwith this, he has to do a lot of work on nuclear projects, a result of the Nuclear Deal in India. After 4 years of hardwork, he is offered a post of faculty as a lecturer & he has to teach multi-phase reactors - (a tough subject in chemical engineering) to final year students. In this case, the benefactor of this is India and its people (power generation by the development of new reactors). He is offered only Rs. 22,000 per month.

How fair is it - a person who wants to do research in India and do something for India is offered only Rs 22,000 per month and another who does research in USA earns $ 22,000 per annum (close to Rs. 90,000 per month).

Cartoons - What happened to them?

When I think of my school days, I remember that I and some of my friends used to watch 'Disney Hour' at 6 o'clock on Zee or the Sony channel without fail. In fact, when we reached school the next morning, the topic of discussion used to be the cartoon seen the previous evening. We spent the lunch hours on discussions on the cartoons like Gummi Bears, Duck Tales, Chip & Dale, Tales Pin, Alladin, Mickey & Friends, etc. We even talked about cartoons on the cartoon network like Caption Planet, Swat Cats, The Centurions, Scooby Do and many more. Everybody - right from children in 1st standard to those in 10th used to watch the cartoons daily. Even some adults used to see the shows. Such was the power of these cartoons.

The cartoons have played quite a role in my upbringing indeed. I have unknowingly learnt quite a lot of things from these cartoons. While cartoons like Gummi Bears and Alladin took me to a new world which improved my ability to imagine, cartoons like Tales Pin and Duck Tales helped me learn the art of deducing from clues, thereby improving reasoning skills. (treasure hunting). Caption Planet threw light on the environment and nature while Swat Cats and Centurions focussed on the new developments. Apart from these teachings, the moral values like honesty, self-discipline, truthfulness, friendship, sacrifice, etc. were learnt from almost all these cartoons.

I wonder whats happened to the cartoons now.

Last week when I had been home and did not have much to do, I turned to the cartoons for fun. I was surprised to see that not a single old Disney cartoon was being telecasted on any of the children TV channels. 'Tom and Jerry' was being shown on the Cartoon Network for long stretches of 3 hours or so. Now 'Tom & Jerry' though good, (in terms of animation) doesn't help much w.r.t developing imagination, moral values. Nor can we watch the mindless cat and mouse show for hours long. The other cartoons shown on the cartoon network were not watchable due to poor animation or negligible content. The only cartoon on which was watchable on the Cartoon Network was Richie Rich. But the number of breaks in the 30 minutes show (about 4 or 5) took all the fun away .
Other channels like the Toon Disney showed sme cartoons under the name JETIX. The quality of animation of these JETIX cartoons was pitiful. I couldn't distinguish one character from other. (I wonder whats happened to the animation industry in spite of the advances in digital technology). On the Pogo channel, some good cartoons were being shown but none were interesting. These cartoons were appropriate only for a child in K.G class - were filled with a lot of colors and music with no story whatsoever. When I tuned to the Disney Channel, I was surprised to see no animated shows screened. I tried to see the much hyped recent cartoons of Shin Chan and the Pokemon on Hungama channel but unfortunately none of these were aired during my stay of 5 days.

Largely, I am disappointed with the quality and the content of the cartoons aired on television. None of the cartoons are what can be called appealing to the children or the teen agers. None of them had any quality of the brilliant Disney Cartoons mentioned before.
I really feel that the kids of today are missing out on an important aspect in their upbringing - the cartoons.
I wish that the old cartoons are again aired on the television so that kids of this generation do not miss out on the wonderful opportunity to learn from the cartoons on their own.

What happened to our dreams?

This thought occurred to me when I was seeing the Aviva Life Insurance Children Plan advertisement in which children talk about becoming pilot, sportsman, model, etc. after growing up.

A lot of children have plans to do something adventurous or creative in life like becoming a pilot, sportsman, model, actor, painter. However, I wonder how many children actually end up becoming something they wish for. May be a few have but I don't think that a majority of children end up becoming an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer which is so very conventional. Why does this occur?

I feel that our educational system has been created in such a way that a child gets trained to follow the conventional career path. After standard tenth, a child is made to choose between science, commerce or arts. While arts is a field where painting and other creative skills could be honed, it is not the preferred choice. This is because arts is not viewed as a good career option by most of the parents. They force a child to take up either commerce or science. Also the peer pressure plays a major role wherein a child is forced to take up either science or commerce. After 12th standard, again the path forward for most is engineering, medicine or law for science and B.Com (CA alongside) or BBA for a commerce candidate. And after the completion of these courses, he/she starts to look for a job to support his/her family. Some go for higher studies (many don't) and do their post graduation in their respective fields. Then they start earing and get involved in their jobs. Now if he/she has to go for his/her dream it has to be done so only by quitting the job which becomes very difficult considering the fact that he/she has to support family.

I have a friend of mine who has completed his LLB degree and now wants to follow his dream of becoming an actor. So, now he has started his new path to become an actor. It has been a lot of struggle for him to go along a path which is totally different from his qualification. If he had started preparing for it when he was in 11th or 12th, he could have been in a better position. However, better late thane never. Moreover, his family approves of him becoming an actor. So, I feel that he will achieve what he dreamt of. I wish him all the luck to become a renowned actor.

In the case above, the parents were supportive and there were no pressures on him. However, I do not think that most of the parents will not be supportive.

So, what happened to the dreams a child saw? The dreams died somewhere right in the school where the child was compelled to follow the conventional path and then his dreams remained dreams.

I feel that this happens for a majority of the children. Few lucky ones have a chance to follow their dreams and fulfill their aspirations.

So, what can be done? We can in no way change the educational system in a radical manner. So, it is the parents who have to be supportive of their children to help them pursue their dreams. Also, the child should be determined enough to be follow the path which will help him achieve his dream.
As a song from Westlife goes,
'Make that magic rule, let the miracle stay. Dreams come true'

Looking at the Sea

Looking at the calm sea about 6 years back at Ganpatipule, my father asked “What does the sea help us learn?” I couldn’t give a satisfactory answer as is the case when one is young (I am still young though). He later explained “It makes us leave our ego aside. A man thinks that he has conquered the world. He thinks that he can do anything. Yet in front of the large body mass of the sea, a man is just a small tiny creature standing helpless. So, whatever a man thinks of himself is just his brain doing the talking with absolute reality being that man is nothing in front of the sea. It has tremendous power to do things which he cannot even think. So, whatever ego a person has just dies away in front of the sea.”These thoughts didn’t leave me. From then on, I started to view the sea as something with a force to do anything. The Tsunami incident made these thoughts more profound.Now after so many years, I have come to realize the deep meaning of the statements made by my father. Not only did I understand the meaning of the explanation given by him but also I made up came up with my observation. I think that the sea is one of the most powerful forces the nature has created. It is spread over vast area and is all the time moving with waves always trying to expand its area. Yet despite all the turbulence within, it remains on the area it occupies. It doesn’t move out of the area it has chosen. (Tsunami is a time when an earthquake caused it to move. But at all the other times, it is in its own fixed area). It means the sea respects its existence and at the same time it respects the existence of humans and all the other living beings. Despite of all the forces within (waves and the high tides), it doesn’t trespass the area occupied by humans. This belief helps us understand we should respect each and every individual irrespective of our size and position, thereby, forgo the ego we have regarding ourselves.