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IIM Ahmadabad, 2008-2010

Exactly a month back, the Indian Institutes of Management announced the results for their flagship 2 year Post Graduation Programme.
I made it to IIM Ahmedabad. I will be writing about my experiences at IIM A, once the classes begin, mostly on this very same blog.

B-School fee Hikes will affect Entrepreneurship

Many of the Indian Business Schools have planned for fee hikes, some like IIM-A by as much 200 Percent. One of the areas that gets affected due to this is the reduction in the number of people opting out placements in order to start their own venture. Here is how they are linked.

1) A fee hike would mean that a bigger loan needs to be taken from the bank.

2) At the end of 2 years when the time to start repaying the loan comes, you need money, and entrepreneurship ventures would take some time before they start to generate revenue.

3) A salaried job, on the other hand allows you to start repaying your loan immediately.

4) Hence, people would be a lot more cautious before opting out of the placement process.

IIM-A, lst year, had about 10 people opting out of placements to start their own venure(s). It will be interesting to see how many do so in the class of 2008-10 (the first batch to bear the brunt of the steep fee hike)

Photography Enthusiasts, Please Note

Sakal is organizing a Photography Contest titled 'Reflections 2008'
Check out this link for the registration forms and more details.

India - South Africa 3rd Test - A Sham

The Recently concluded 3rd test match at Kanpur was a total sham. The pitch had begun to crumble from Day-1 itself and had become what the media calls a 'dustbowl'. Under such pitch conditions, India with their decent spin attack were going to win without any doubt.

I remember a similar incident a couple of years back, in a test match between India & Australia at Mumbai. A similar dustbowl situation prevailed and India clinched the match within 3 days. Ricky Ponting was rather cross at the pitch conditions and complained to the authorities who din't obviously encourage it.

In my opinion, Graeme Smith should have complained too, rather than just saying 'India played well and so on...'. Indian fans & their team may be happy to win but look at the uselessness of it all. Nowhere in the world are you going to play on such bad pitches. It is not without a reason that we struggle when we go overseas because we have simply never created similar contions at home, not even for practice's sake!

I wonder how a India-Sri Lanka contest on the same pitch would have been. I would put my money on Sri Lanka if Muralidharan was playing.

Reservation in Educational Institutes

If you are one of the many aspiring for a Government Institute (IITs & IIMs included), this news has got to hit you. There is now a possibility of upto 49.5% reservation in these institutes.

The reservation percentages first,
Scheduled Caste - 15%
Scheduled Tribes - 7.5%
OBC - 27%
Physically Handicapped - 3% (not compulsorily)

3 of them existed before, OBC is of course new.

What are the implications? Clearly lesser seats in the General/Open Category.

The problem, accordining to me, is that reservations for certain classes is in itself not bad, provided the correct class of people benefit from it. Instead of reservations based on Caste, there ought to be reservations based on Financial standing, for the financially underpriviledged would not get enough opportunities in education as compared to his wealthier friends.
Also, reservations must be in Primary Education so that the problem of equal educational opportunity is solved at that level. Now obviously, reservations work best in Government institutes, but many Government run schools in India are nowhere as good as their private run counterparts (simple reasons include low pay for teachers in Govt. Institutes)
But, the reservation needs to be tackled at that level.

How would the Govt. go about identifying the financial standing of individuals in a country where majority of the people show a wrong income to pay lesser taxes? (exclude salaried persons here)
So, you see the problem in hand.

What could be a good action plan,

1) Plan for reservations based on financial standing of the individual
2) To genuinely identify the needy, come up with stricter laws for frauds in showing incorrect income (how does 'teen gunaa lagaan' sound ;))
3) Have reservations for the identified people in Govt. institutes of Primary Education
4) Improve quality of such institutes by paying well to attract good teachers (you have more money now that people are being made to pay taxes in full)
5) Once you do that, by the time students enter their graduating schools, they are at the same level in terms of education opportunity
6) Now you can afford to not have any reservations (at all) at the graduate levels and higher. Entry to institutes is purely on merit from this stage onwards.

The outcome of this is, everyone gets equal opportunity in education upto some point after which he/she has to let his performance do the talking. Surely seems a better option than what is being followed now.

Indian Classical Music & Running

Have you ever listened to a complete piece (a full raga) of any Hindustani Classical Music? You might have observed that there are roughly 3 parts to a piece, viz, the Alaap (setting up), the body, the trail off towards the end (exceptions exist).
This compares well with Running. How? Note the similarities.

Music - Running
Setting Up - The Warm Up Run
Body - The Actual Fast Run
Trail Off - The Cool Down Run

Just as fast running without adequate warm up is not good for the muscles, in music, starting off with the body directly isn't pleasing to the ear.

I have observed this 3 part approach to music with respect to the Flute (Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia) and the Santoor (Pt. Shivkumar Sharma). Have you come across this approach someplace?