Education and India

It’s the most hotly debated topic in India what with the Bhagats and Rashmi’s swarming all over the place having come through the great Indian education “system”. While I would be drawing comparison with the Education system in the US and Western nations, I would, for once, sympathize with the Indian Government. Yes you read that correct, sympathize.

Before I get on with it, lets us first highlight in short what is actually the difference in technology and research between India and the West. Technology as you already know is driven by high-powered intellectual research which in turn is driven by state-of-the-art technology and infrastructure. At every stage if you look into the depths you will find money written all over it. Go inside infrastructure and high-tech facilities and laboratories you shall find dollars powering them, Go inside top intellectuals and nobel lauterates and academicians you shall see that their retentivity in a particular university largely depends on money. What runs a top institute, a top R&D, the answer to everything lies in those green pieces of paper, as Douglas Adams had put it.

Now it is clear that in order to deliver and sustain such strata of innovation and technology on a regular basis we need money and lots of it. That is exactly where India lacks and why I sympathize with our government.

Now don’t get me wrong , I never meant to and do not say actually that India is impoverished. Those days are gone but then, India is still a developing country and is not a developed country. Hence all the money it has goes into healthcare and importing oil and coping with famines and what not. US has milligallons and billigallons of oil stored in its country and is more than self sufficient in all respects. India isn’t ! And whatever resources it has thanks to its huge population gets consumed so fast that we end up with lack of some.

The billions that get pumped into NASA missions and anti-cancer drugs by the US, do you think we can emulate that right now ? But something has to be done right . So our politicians opened some namesake IITs and IIMs which I doubt will become world class even in a decade. Most of the IITs and BITSP were set up with the aid of foreign governments, and lots and lots of money had to be pumped in, year after year, budget ater budget, for them to become world class. India cannot create 20 IITs all of a sudden . Its not a matter of “can but wont” but rather not suitable.

NITT Lingo – 2

Continuing with my NITT series where I present quotes by actual NITTians here’s the latest.

In the Lab

Jackass 1 : Experiment kyun kar raha hai ?

Jackass 2 : Tere ko marks chahiye ki nahi ?

J1 : Chutiye, mere pass readings hai.

J2 : Dikha ?

J1 : Yeh dekh, Pelton turbine.

J2 : Apna Francis Turbine hai.

J1 : Chod na, turbine to turbine hota hai ? Naam se kya matlab !

 

Exam Preparations

“Maine teen table rat liye hai ! Teen B ne rata hai, baki me se aaya to toilet jana padega !”

After the Exam

“Abe prof ko mere upar shak ho gaya … Main teen baar toilet gaya tha na !”

 

This from a NITTian, disgusted at the mess food. His theory of evolution will surely earn a Nobel if not put Darwin and his followers to shame.

“Ive noted that our mess food is not touched by dogs,cats and cows. Only we can eat and still survive. That makes us the most evolved species “

 

Lastly, a remake of an old IIT quote.

“You think getting into NIT-T is difficult ? Try getting out of it”

Life’s Like That

NIT-T is just too full of surprises. They spring up here and there arousing a little laughter here and there as we attempt to run down our relatively otherwise sleepy four years.

It’s the semester examination and amidst all the feverish last-minute mugging, R1 had forgotten his precious calculator in his bag parked right outside the exam hall. Ten minutes into the exam he realizes that his brain can no longer cope up with .36X415X500 and sorts and wastes no time approaching the professor. Now the professor is” what-you-have-all-heard-about-engineering-professors” come true. And as for R1 I have attempted to present his accent by changing spellings exactly as he talked.

R1 : Saar, I hab foorgooten my Kel C in my beg outside.

Prof : No problem, you can go after 30 minutes

R1: Oh-kay

Seeing him go back to his bench with such confidence left the professor of all people a bit befuddled, for probably he had not managed to put the meaning through properly. So he calls him back.

Prof: No, you can give me the paper and go!

 

Its winter in TN so it was raining in TN so the earthworms had all come out of their safe water clogged havens- Earth. Another R, lets call him R2 for the sake of disambiguation, had his Mathematics supplementary examination the very next day. And he had chosen the job of catching earthworms inching in the corridors as a worthwhile pre-occupation than catching up on problems. When given the quizzical look, all he could muster up was

“Do they bite?”

Why Am I Engineering ?

Once there was a millionaire, who collected live alligators. He kept them in the pool in back of his mansion. The millionaire also had a beautiful daughter who was single. One day he decides to throw a huge party, and during the party he announces,

“My dear guests . . . I have a proposition to every man here. I will give one million dollars or my daughter to the man who can swim across this pool full of alligators and emerge alive!”

As soon as he finished his last word, there was the sound of a large splash!! There was one guy in the pool swimming with all he could and screaming out of fear. The crowd cheered him on as he kept stroking as though he was running for his life. Finally, he made it to the other side with only a torn shirt and some minor injuries. The millionaire was impressed.

He said, “My boy that was incredible! Fantastic! I didn’t think it could be done! Well I must keep my end of the bargain. Do you want my daughter or the one million dollars?”

The guy says, “Listen, I don’t want your money, nor do I want your daughter! I want the person who pushed me in that water!”

Its been 3 years since the fateful decision, I’m still figuring out what got me into engineering.

Consensus Management

I just found out about consensus management and as much as I believe it to be a complete myth and not worthy of my time and space on NIT Trichy Inc., here I am, writing about it because lets face it-its fascinating.

Consensus management, from what I understand , is a form of management practiced in which everyone , and literally everyone, has a say in company policies and decision making. It can be practiced from NGOs to corporate, from clubs and teams to professional organizations. When everyone has a say in decision making here are the not-so-obvious benefits

1. Outfit looks more democratic
2. Organization moves smoothly towards a common goal
3. Members have a sense of responsibility

The obvious impending disasters can be

1. Utter chaos and mass disagreements
2. Difficulty in organization
3. Organizational structure loses its meaning

Lets just move away from these nitty-gritties.Just think for a moment its not feasible or cost-effective to have everyone in an organization having a say in decision making. No one could be held accountable for wrong decisions, CEOs would lose their chair value and there is potential for massive chaos. The credentials of all the people having equal say is also a debatable point of view. Hence for good reason virtually very few organizations practice consensus management.

But here’s why some actually do , only in part , maybe , but they do follow the principles.Here are the reasons why they do follow consensus management

1. Loyalty to its employees- If you can have a say in the decisions the company takes the company in a way involves you and is a way of saying “Listen, We care for your opinion, It’s important to us”
2. Attaching a certain snippet of responsibility by saying that we shall hold you accountable and responsible if certain things go wrong

When I said, consensus management is practiced only in snippets, I meant this : The real decisions are taken by the CEOs and the directors themselves but this is a good technique of keeping employees involved in the company and also being transparent about how the company functions at the upper echelons.

East India Company All Over Again

The other day, we were discussing placements in NIT Trichy, just like jobless third year guys with lots of time to kill and contemplating salaries and recession. The subject veered to one MNC called John Deere which pays a miserly four point something to us lesser mortals despite being the largest tractor-producing company in the world.
On the assumption that you agree with me that we do figure among the brightest minds in this country and on the fact that JD, an extremely high worth company, is fully capable of paying us numbers many times the one being paid, we started speculating on the reasons why such a thing happens in a top institution in India whereas our counterparts in luckier parts of the world get paid far more.
Then I realized, Its East India Company all over again !!
The British decided and did actually come to India because of a very good reason. They wanted to buy cheap products in India and sell them at premium rates across the world. Things eventually went from trading to settling to establishing colonies to monopolizing and exploitation and everything else. The rest as they say is history and like your middle school classes you can forget it now.
Fast forward a couple of centuries, Western companies like John Deere and Harvey Brothers ,the Lehmann Sisters , the Microhard and Ooogle are doing what we dint – Learn History in junior high and apply it to business. They selected India of all second and third world nations since they know it is the land of resources. In the 1800s it was the spices and the silk and the gold , now it’s the cash hungry intellect and brains of the great Indian middle class. Mental labour is cheap and they know we have written articles in newspapers about brain-drain-so they did something even better. Create low paying jobs here in India only. Not only do they have to pay less here but they get their work done with minimum hassle and sell the product (like before) at premium rates all over the world. And the sad part is , we would not see the consumerism that is driving India Inc. and with it all the India Shining drama and theatrics without these MNCs.
Like I said , its East India Company all over again !!