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The East-West Divide

The Reuters piece sang praises of how introduction of Apple’s Mac Laptops in classrooms for everyday class and home work in 7th and 8th grades is transforming education eliminating the need for textbooks and excuses of not completing homework. The point that caught my eye was the increase in percentage of daily attendance. On some levels, this is equivalent to the introduction of mid-day meals at all Primary schools across India which was a good incentive for kids to attend school. Laptops and other technology driven classrooms is a far-fetched cry in India. When the basic needs such as a full stomach is not met, it is irrational to expect children to attend school.

The case cited by the Reuters article is not a widespread practice in America just as it would be foolish to conclude that there are no schools in India which are equipped with such facilities and much more - only that they are meant for the few privileged. The facilities in schools abroad, their approach to education are literally worlds apart to what we have at home. Education is the most debated topic and will continue to be one for many years to come with little done about it. If only our policy makers pay some attention to reforming the highly skewed system and aim at 75% of children completing their secondary education, imagine how powerful India will be. To begin with quantity for rural India and quality for urban India is a realistic dream to dream of.

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From what I hear, the social scene outside India is great.  Families plan outings together - go-to parks, have dinners, celebrate birthdays and so on. The social scene in India is pretty dismal, relatively speaking. Early working days for singles are fun because you have a gang of colleagues to spend weekends with. Once they are ‘taken‘ or ‘committed‘ which is usually within the first few months of starting a career, you are pretty much on your own if you are still single. That’s when this Orkut comes as a savior in your life while you add hundreds of virtual friends to your list and start scrapping like a maniac. Reasons to budge out of home on weekends is to keep yourself from starving- ah! I forget there’s Pizza Hut home delivery for such people.

The situation only worsens until one gets married. For some, it doesn’t change even after that. There are two people scrapping now! No figment of imagination. Just turn around and ask your single co-worker what he did over the weekend.

On a closing note, I think those Rotary clubs and kitty parties were not such a bad idea for networking.

The much publicised July 4 weekend  for Bollywood is past us.  My exposure to television has increased marginally over the past few weeks. Surfing through channels, one was exposed to a fair amount of robotic gimmicks of one movie and the familiar boy-has-fun-with-the-girl-who-is-his-friend plot of another. The build-up was so much that for once I’ve felt like watching the first day, first show of a movie - Jaane tu..ya jaane na. Honestly, I have never seen any movie on the first day of its release - for that matter in the first week. The only premiere I’ve been to is that of The Last Samurai in Chicago.

Finally, came Sunday when we realized we could haul ourselves to the multiplex - the first time since LG has been born. Yea, haven’t seen a flick in over two years at the theater.  It was too late - didn’t get any ticket for a show with a decent timing; so, we let it pass. Now the interest has died what with the numerous reviews on every blog, every channel and every newspaper. Even if these guys don’t reveal the storyline or the climax, it’s spoiler enough to make one lose interest for it’s no longer a mystery which was so well kept until the opening weekend.

Mayank’s reviews have a way of doing that. Even if he recommends seeing a movie  or better utilizing one’s time by napping over the weekend, it’s the same thing because it’s out there - the stars, the treatment to the movie, the comparison of actors, overacting and numerous other things which weren’t talked about until Friday. Then follows the interviews with the director,post-release profit statistics, turnout. Suddenly, it’s more than the songs which was the only thing one was exposed to till date. I may sound crazy but try seeing one a week after release and you’ll realize why it’s so easy to settle for a DVD in the comforts of your home rather than hauling your bum to the multiplex and spending a 1000 bucks?

Ironic that today’s editorial in Times has an entry called “Spoilt for choice” on the same topic that’s been running through my mind the whole weekend.

I love the columns De writes in the Sunday edition of The Times of India.  And that’s where my exposure to her writing stops - haven’t read any of her previous novels except ‘Spouse‘ which I didn’t have the patience to complete.  ‘Superstar India’ seemed interesting or let’s just put it this way that the marketing gimmicks of Penguin worked well in addition to the huge effort put in by authors these days in post-launch / promotion of their books. And, I fell a prey to it. I had just finished reading Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns and was in no mood to read more heavy duty stuff. So, I picked up a copy of Superstar India early May soon after its launch.

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Everyday I want to fly, stay by my side

Everyday I want to dream, stay by my side

Every morning I wish I could just play

Wish the mornings would just stay

LG loved it so much so that whenever it played he would drop everything and rush to the drawing room to dance ..the happiness and smile was so infectious that we got hooked on it. Sometimes, during the late night matches when LG would fall asleep and the ad played, we caught ourselves sheepishly shaking a leg. The ad has stopped playing now..all the ads in the “Happy to Help” series have been wonderful. Vodafone guy: if you are reading this, please get back the Pug.

The only thought that crossed my mind as I read this piece taking in the statistic was how were all these 28 million odd people getting connected to the Internet. As one would expect, there are no details of the study on the percentage share of  home and work users, and their mode of getting connected - through an Internet Cafe vs a dial-up/broadband connection at home. It is difficult to draw any conclusions on the broadband penetration in India currently. I found this outdated report on NASSCOM that estimated a total of 1.3 million broadband users in 2006. More recently, India Online 2007 - a  study to understand the Internet users in India across 30 cities found that 77% of home users used broadband. Now, I don’t know how many of the 28 million users are home users but 77% of home users is a significant number to choose broadband as the preferred mode.

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For V, the first and last happened in quick succession leaving the MBA out of our priorities for a few years. Rather, should I say the first time when the opportunity knocked on its door (IIM - Bangalore) in 2005, he let it pass until it happened again this summer.

We, as a family, can’t stay in one place for too long; we’ve moved every August for three consecutive years and then stayed put in Pune for three years - the longest since we’ve been married. Not every move to a different city/country has seen a change in job. This August it’s time to move again; the destination is Bangalore. V will be off to IIM Calcutta to pursue his MBA while LG and I stay in Bangalore.

This cycle started sometime in March - in actions but in thoughts it has been there for longer. There was a complacency, you know the familiar “hitting the glass ceiling” kinda feeling. Everthying was good - comfortable life, good compensation, sane working hours, good recognition. There you go - when the going is good and you are comfortable that is the first sign to get out of a job because you stop trying for better things, in my opinion. V was contented and laidback - it was me who got the itch and pushed him for it. I threw a fit sometime in the last week of March when he mentioned about this course. I wasn’t keen on staying alone with LG for a year and wanted him to do something that is a residential program. We debated (heatedly at times) over whether to apply or not and decided to put it in the back burner for a while and focus all our energies on the residential ones. Five days before the last date for applying, in an impulse he got his act together and sent the courier one morning - essays written overnight, recos signed etc etc. He said, “Let me try. It’s just to get my confidence the motivation to apply for other schools.” I didn’t say much - I have it in me to not carry the aggression and arguments till the end - I lose steam somewhere in the middle. The rest is history - once the call came, the entrance and interview happened over a weekend at IIT Kanpur and he got selected. It just followed a natural course with everyone excited in the family and it was only expected of me to start planning on what to do next - logistics, planning, and how to manage the year ahead. I’ve lived alone in the past but with a toddler it gets a little dicey - knowing LG for one who can get a bump on his head in a second and finds the head rest of a sofa a comfortable place to rest his bum on.

I’ve never been a big fan of MBA. But it’s not fair to be so generic. I’m not a big fan of those MBAs who go to business school straight out of grad school with no experience, and later join the workforce as Business Analysts.  Seriously, think of a Business Analyst taking requirements from banking veterans and then going on to argue about how a stock trading system works. It’s a different thing to have hands-on experience on something even if you don’t have the industry experience. Bookish knowledge and endless hours of arguments (fancy name: case studies) is what the country’s B-Schools teach. This is not my imagination - I’ve had the (mis)fortune of working with a few IIM grads (yea yea the top tier Management Institute of tis country) on a Asset Management Project. I don’t care what they go on to become later in life because it would be unfair not to acknowledge some of the greats those institutes have produced such as KV Kamath. The point is I truly admire business grads and schools abroad because of the emphasis on work ex. It’s the concept in India that I have a problem with - when they join the industry straight out of college after MBA, they pretty much suck which is fine. My grouse is they carry it on their heads that they know it all and are never ready to acknowledge that and learn!

Off track again..this is what years of working business analysts does to you. Anyways so what made the decision easier was the following:

1. Was there a better time to do it than now? No. The ideal time would have been without a spouse and with no family. Spouse is still ok but it gets complicated when there is a child with the emotional factor of separation thrown in. We can’t change that now for us. It will just be much more harder a few years later, so it’s better to just do it now and get over with it.

2. Next in the criteria was financial standing. It seems as this stage we can pull this through with some funding with neither of us being employed for a year. With LG starting school in a few years, commitments will rise and second thoughts will come in. As compared to other schools such as IIM A, ISB which come at much higher cost, this fared better. So it’s a tick on that front too.

3.  Is this degree really required? There is no single answer to it and not a straight one for sure. Even if there is no benefit of it,  education has done no harm.. has it? Moreover, one of the reasons one does an MBA is to get an entry into some of the companies where otherwise it would be impossible to be heard, much less be entertained - the likes of McKinsey, Goldman Sachs etc. Contacts, alumni and transition to different role/industry are the other obvious advantages - how much you leverage these is up to an individual. The school provides a platform and an opportunity which would otherwise be very difficult to get. And in my opinion, this is what you pay for!

So, I guess the decision is made!

Cliched phrases such as this one are used liberally in the Indian IT industry.  It’s not a good idea to use these jargons to appear cool in front of people who are not from your fraternity.  For fun, I made a glossary of some commonly used phrases and what they mean:

Let’s think out of the box: Means “Can you creatively challenged people come up with fresh ideas?” Funny to assume how by saying this, people expect others to wear the creative hat and start churning out new ideas by the dozen.

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