What this MBA thing is all about

Today MBA (the degree) is sacrosanct. No wonder nearly 2 lakh Indians took the CAT this year. To most it is the passport to a higher management job & of course, an amazing salary. But what is this MBA thing all about? What exactly can they teach you in 2 years that transforms you from a 2 lakh junior management guy (read programmer) to a 8 lakh senior management wizard. Not that I am against the whole MBA idea. In fact, I have myself taken the CAT this year and hope to get into a good management institute. But somehow I find it hard to digest how 2 years of studying management can so easily bypass years of experience and hard work. Also, how in the world can a manager, who has never written a piece of code in his life, be part of a senior management team of an IT company (IT firms do pick up a lot of MBAs from premiere institutes).
Today, a majority of people giving the CAT happen to be working as programmers in top Indian IT firms. I think the reason for this is that they see very little future in their present jobs or they are just too bored with their jobs. I do not think they want to do an MBA just because they had a brainwave that they would make good managers. It is almost as if they cannot think of anything better to do, so why not do an MBA. After all, it is the ‘in thing’ right now.
But is the MBA bubble like the IT bubble of the 90’s? With the way things are going, a few years from now, India will have only two kinds of white collared professionals- the MBAs and the programmers (oh, I forgot the call center people).
But is this the India we want? It is high time we focus on creating other jobs. What do you think?