“That woman should be shot for corrupting the minds of Indian people and women in particular” said my attractive female friend about Ekta Kapoor. I have not watched even 5 minutes of any serial made by Ekta Kapoor or her ilk, so I was intrigued. “But why?” I asked. “Doesn’t she show the triumph of the Bhartiya Naari and her value system?” “What bloody bhartiya naari and what value system!” She replied back. “The heroines sleep around with multiple men and have kids from them. The heroines defend that giving ‘a moment of weakness’ excuses. Similarly the men keep falling for the vamps that’ve no aim in life other than to bed those useless fellows. Everyone is sleeping around with everyone else.” “And you North-Indians should actually pelt stones at her. Because of those serials nowadays everyone here in the South think all North Indians are like that – promiscuous & loose-minded. My mother will never marry me off to any North Indian guy more so because of this perception”
Apart from being disturbing because of the narrowing of my (and most probably your) marital prospects, this conversation raised some broader questions. I’m not in a position to verify what she’d said about Ekta-Kapooresque serials and frankly I cannot undergo 60 minutes of torture just to confirm that. I will much rather use my other observations to arrive at the same conclusion – That Indian television is becoming little more than “Saas Bahu and Sex”
It all started with the arrival of cable television in India post Gulf War 1 with shows like “Baywatch” and “Bold & the beautiful” exposing Indian audiences for the first time to sex on television. Then Friends came along and an entire generation grew up watching them. As long as it was restricted to English channels, no one cared as a miniscule minority watched them. Till the kind folks at MTV decided to make “crass entertainment” mainstream in the name of “youth entertainment” and brought in ‘Roadies’. Now Roadies is the small screen equivalent of a brainless Chinese flick which has loads of unbelievable action (flying around), wink-wink sex (talk about it but don’t show it) and outright stupid dialogues but little substance. However people liked it because it was a quasi-reality show about how hot chicks and dudes behave in real life.
Roadies became a hit spawning an entire genre of masala stuff and crowded the TV spectrum with filth. Let’s take the case of “Emotional Atyachaar” on ‘Bindaas’. They make hot chicks seduce ordinary guys who probably haven’t even talked to a girl having that high a hotness quotient in their lives. For one such hot girls have their own standards and will never do such a thing in real life so it’s impractical. It’s akin to showing a pot of gold to a beggar and when he dips his hand in it, you clap your hands in glee saying “Gee, I told you so! He’s greedy”. Secondly this is an extreme form of tactic used on highest ranking generals and officials during WAR-TIME to eke secrets out of them. Sex spies (Hot chicks) are used to lay what are called “honey-traps” for such high-ranking individuals and it’s so wildly successful that we’ve an entire department in counter espionage to avoid such cases. And you’re using such a powerful weapon on susceptible ordinary people when there’s no contingency at all.
Recently in the gym, I caught an episode of TRUTH, LOVE, CASH , apparently one of the “7 deadly shows” on Channel V. Here a bunch of real-life couples are taken and are randomly juggled to have different onscreen opposites. Then they’re asked to do a set of demeaning tasks which will prove if they value their love or the prize money at the end of the show. One of the tasks was for the onscreen couples to do a sexually suggestive dance and get audience votes for the lustiest dance of them all. One of the girls decided to do a pseudo-striptease with her onscreen opposite touching her at all the inappropriate(?) places. She opened her shirt for a while revealing her undergarment and then snapped it back again. Later on she was telling camera “Yes I did that because we needed audience votes. But I did it for only a moment because we also have to answer our PARENTS” Hey, Hey Hold on Girl! If (although I doubt that) your parents ask why you showed your stuff, this is the “answer” you’ll give? “It’s ok papa, it was momentary! “ You’re doing a suggestive strip-tease in front of national TV and want us to believe that you’re still steeped in our culture. What illustrates the typical Indian hypocrisy better. We believe sex to be something alien to our culture and hence don’t accept it openly. Maybe this is the reason why we’re having crass sexually suggestive entertainment on TV, semi-nude pics on national newspapers like Times of India, B-grade novels and movies selling by the hordes. It shows that we’re the most sexually repressed people on the planet. Don’t believe me? Type in UNZIP on both google.com and google.co.in and see the suggestions which these different google pages throw up. Maybe (and that’s a big maybe) if we accept this facet of our life, we will have something better – something like F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
Coming to F.R.I.E.N.D.S, it is intended for a target audience and that audience is definitely not the teens. Its indeed a very powerful evangelism tool for the American way of life. Before I started watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S , I was an ordinary middle-class dreamer who believed success and happiness is achieved by hard-work and dedication towards your goal in life. I was a one-woman man and had fantastical (if impractical) notions about love being a pristine and a “know-it-when-you-feel-it” entity. Then F.R.I.E.N.D.S happened and by the time I was done with it, it had done me in. Now I didn’t deserve to live as I didn’t have a girlfriend, my virginity was a shack of stones on my back weighing me down in life and which should be cast away at the first opportunity, I needed to get a life as I was home reading/working on a Saturday night and my life had been a failure because I’ve done nothing except working on my career. As I grew older I realised F.R.I.E.N.D.S has a very sublime message many of us fail to read. Who among the F.R.I.E.N.D.S onscreen characters is doing a job any of us will aspire to? They’re all mostly less ambitious individuals who’re contented with their way of life and have no hopes of making it big in life. So friends, if you want to follow the F.R.I.E.N.D.S kind of lifestyle then prepare to sacrifice some of your career goals as well – This is the message which is true in US as well. About 84% of MIT Math majors are virgins. Rejoice!
So Indian TV like Indian cinema, with few exceptions is going down the drains. What can we do about it? Absolutely nothing. Get along with your work and pray for the education situation in India to improve so that people start demanding substance, all channels of black money to be stopped so that it actually hurts financially when a crappy TV show flops , TV channels to introduce self-censorship so that they’re forced to think creatively rather than take the easy way out by producing cheap and vulgar entertainment. Its clear why I said pray because this is not an action-list or a wish-list but a pray-list. One which you know won’t happen.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
Why IIM Calcutta won't become IIM Kolkata
Okay this is the last post on anything to do with IIMC for some time to come I promise that. On the previous post my cheesy sardar friend commented “You could’ve inserted IIMC in at least two more places. You didn’t try hard enough :P”. Instead of being another useless post on the way of life in my school (which I believe anyhow occupies too much of server space of B-school websites and forums), it’s a more general comment on the education system of the country. This particular post is occasioned by several denizens of my school raising objections in our campus intranet about IIM Calcutta being erroneously (?) referred to as IIM Kolkata in the media. Apart from brand identity and regulatory issues (Eg. IIT Bombay is an autonomous body distinct from Mumbai and the normal city name-change regulations don’t apply to it) there’re some larger questions involved.
Nehru created the IITs and IIMs mainly to serve as a pipeline of high quality talent who will be expected to generate good ideas to take the economy forward. To avoid the usual problems infesting general higher education in India, he decided to take the help of marquee institutions of the world in establishing these colleges and did that from scratch. So Harvard helped set up IIMA and MIT helped set up IIMC. Similarly all first-world countries established the IITs. And to give due credit, they did a good job of it.
However there was one major oversight. The marquee institutions didn’t become iconic overnight. They had a long history of several centuries behind them and their progress was entwined with the progress of their host countries and more importantly host regions. For eg. MIT,Cornell etc came up with the passage of the Agricultural Act 1862. The aim of this act was to set up universities which teach workmanship and agriculture so that the local regions could be benefitted. All through their history these colleges have played pivotal role in the development of their regions. Entire cities and research hubs have come up near these places. To give an illustrative example, in Massachusetts , MIT alumni companies are estimated at 6900 having worldwide sales of $164 Billion which is 26% of sales of all Massachusetts companies. Interestingly only about 10% of MIT students are from the state while about 31% of MIT alumni companies are based in the state (Kauffman report).
Contrast that with the IITs and IIMs. They’ve the name of the city after them but the association ends there. Local projects (NGO and industry) don’t have any sheen attached to them and are usually done in an ad-hoc fashion by students. Most students don’t know the culture or history of the region that is hosting them and they couldn’t care less. These institutes are riding the huge demand supply mismatch created out of our skewed education system and have become plum-pickings for the MNCs who usually utilize this talent to help them capture markets abroad with new innovation and strategies.
I had a first-hand experience of this acute lack of good talent when I was consulting for a reputed NGO in my home town (Jhansi). They had lots of great work to offer which usually can be done in a span of 3-6 months but they were forced to rely on extremely sub-standard colleges situated in that region for the same. This is the situation everywhere especially in the major cities. The fact that hardly any of these projects make their way to the reputed colleges which are eponymous with these cities is enough testimony of the disconnect between these colleges and their host regions.
Unfortunately the Nehruvian thinking (which was based on flimsy ground even in his time) continues to this day. Rather than upgrade the dozens of universities churning out graduates in assembly-line fashion, all the government can think of is opening new IITs and IIMs , with a few hundred seats in each and making them islands of pseudo-excellence whose inhabitants consider themselves above the petty issues involving the local masses. As with all other things in politics one doesn’t need any research, feasibility study or cost-benefit analysis to come to any conclusion. What matters is whether the conclusion will attract headline space and generate sound bytes in the media.
What surprises me even more is how at the drop of a hat the government announces opening up of new IITs and IIMs while there’s not a word on creating new medical colleges. Medical education is not just about churning out new doctors. One government medical college gives free treatment to hundreds of thousands of poor patients in a year. It improves the entire health setup of the region by training nurses and other para-medical staff. Due to the huge scarcity of seats , MBBS grads are wasting precious years studying for post-graduate entrance exam while they could be out treating patients.
So there it was, my rather cynical take on the IIT-IIM hoopla. The usual disclaimers apply. I’m writing for my blog and not for IPCC report on climate change. So my research has been limited and counter-data can be easily used to dump my arguments. Not every IIT/IIM student is unaware of one’s surroundings and not all of them do local projects mainly to get one additional line on their resume. The profs are superb and very much involved in local issues. Finally we’re all sometimes prone to wearing our pride on our sleeves which can backfire as the following story of my hostel-mate illustrates. In his summer internship travelling across the dust-bowl of UP in an auto rickshaw , he proudly tells the auto driver that he’s from IIM. The auto driver replies “Oh good! But you guys only get a diploma. I’m considering a guy for my daughter who’s got a proper DEGREE in biotech. Degree is after all better than diploma” :)
Nehru created the IITs and IIMs mainly to serve as a pipeline of high quality talent who will be expected to generate good ideas to take the economy forward. To avoid the usual problems infesting general higher education in India, he decided to take the help of marquee institutions of the world in establishing these colleges and did that from scratch. So Harvard helped set up IIMA and MIT helped set up IIMC. Similarly all first-world countries established the IITs. And to give due credit, they did a good job of it.
However there was one major oversight. The marquee institutions didn’t become iconic overnight. They had a long history of several centuries behind them and their progress was entwined with the progress of their host countries and more importantly host regions. For eg. MIT,Cornell etc came up with the passage of the Agricultural Act 1862. The aim of this act was to set up universities which teach workmanship and agriculture so that the local regions could be benefitted. All through their history these colleges have played pivotal role in the development of their regions. Entire cities and research hubs have come up near these places. To give an illustrative example, in Massachusetts , MIT alumni companies are estimated at 6900 having worldwide sales of $164 Billion which is 26% of sales of all Massachusetts companies. Interestingly only about 10% of MIT students are from the state while about 31% of MIT alumni companies are based in the state (Kauffman report).
Contrast that with the IITs and IIMs. They’ve the name of the city after them but the association ends there. Local projects (NGO and industry) don’t have any sheen attached to them and are usually done in an ad-hoc fashion by students. Most students don’t know the culture or history of the region that is hosting them and they couldn’t care less. These institutes are riding the huge demand supply mismatch created out of our skewed education system and have become plum-pickings for the MNCs who usually utilize this talent to help them capture markets abroad with new innovation and strategies.
I had a first-hand experience of this acute lack of good talent when I was consulting for a reputed NGO in my home town (Jhansi). They had lots of great work to offer which usually can be done in a span of 3-6 months but they were forced to rely on extremely sub-standard colleges situated in that region for the same. This is the situation everywhere especially in the major cities. The fact that hardly any of these projects make their way to the reputed colleges which are eponymous with these cities is enough testimony of the disconnect between these colleges and their host regions.
Unfortunately the Nehruvian thinking (which was based on flimsy ground even in his time) continues to this day. Rather than upgrade the dozens of universities churning out graduates in assembly-line fashion, all the government can think of is opening new IITs and IIMs , with a few hundred seats in each and making them islands of pseudo-excellence whose inhabitants consider themselves above the petty issues involving the local masses. As with all other things in politics one doesn’t need any research, feasibility study or cost-benefit analysis to come to any conclusion. What matters is whether the conclusion will attract headline space and generate sound bytes in the media.
What surprises me even more is how at the drop of a hat the government announces opening up of new IITs and IIMs while there’s not a word on creating new medical colleges. Medical education is not just about churning out new doctors. One government medical college gives free treatment to hundreds of thousands of poor patients in a year. It improves the entire health setup of the region by training nurses and other para-medical staff. Due to the huge scarcity of seats , MBBS grads are wasting precious years studying for post-graduate entrance exam while they could be out treating patients.
So there it was, my rather cynical take on the IIT-IIM hoopla. The usual disclaimers apply. I’m writing for my blog and not for IPCC report on climate change. So my research has been limited and counter-data can be easily used to dump my arguments. Not every IIT/IIM student is unaware of one’s surroundings and not all of them do local projects mainly to get one additional line on their resume. The profs are superb and very much involved in local issues. Finally we’re all sometimes prone to wearing our pride on our sleeves which can backfire as the following story of my hostel-mate illustrates. In his summer internship travelling across the dust-bowl of UP in an auto rickshaw , he proudly tells the auto driver that he’s from IIM. The auto driver replies “Oh good! But you guys only get a diploma. I’m considering a guy for my daughter who’s got a proper DEGREE in biotech. Degree is after all better than diploma” :)
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Screw it Just do it
Well folks, here it finally is! My long delayed and long-awaited(by myself of course) blog. Aptly named “Screw it Just do it”. Well first of all to all the plagiarism minded folks out there, yes it’s stolen from the title of Richard Branson’s book. But as of now, Richard Branson is too rich and famous and I’m too poor & unknown for it to be of any concern.
Why did I name it so? Well firstly, I’ve been waiting to write a blog for so long that my mind, heart, subconscious, superconscious ,in fact everything which are not constrained by my lazy hands and feet, revolted and said “screw it fella, just do it you lazy bum”. Secondly the school I’m attending (IIMC to be precise) yanks the procrastinator out of you and stamps it till it’s declared dead. Stuff that we used to think will take months materialize in a matter of days. In span of a single month, you do four live projects, complete a research paper, participate in competitions and recommend market strategies for major corporations, arrange sponsorships for your festival and dozens of other stuff. If anyone in the IT world is asked to furnish an estimate for the list of tasks we do in a month it’ll probably be a year in the best-case scenario( no offence meant IT folks, I used to be one too and if things go at such a maddening pace in the IT world, everyone will be dead in 5 years). Anyway, doing so many things at the same time doesn’t leave you time to ponder over the best course. You just screw it and do it. Doesn’t matter if the end result is actually screwed up which is the norm anyway (Just take a look around and tell what percentage of well-studied & well-resourced, properly estimated projects see the light of the day the way they’re supposed to ?). The bottom-line is you gotta do it. It becomes your philosophy whichever religious or spiritual doctrine you subscribe to.
Little bit of what this blog is about. As a rule, this blog won’t contain any cricket or movie related stuff except in a purely academic sense. Even though I confess seeking a little guilty pleasure in watching some matches especially when India is playing well, I still believe cricket to be an utter waste of time, a sedate outdoor activity masquerading as a game. If you can play a game for a whole day and still live, then it’s not a game at all. And this thing can actually run for five days! Heck people won’t be able to play chess for five consecutive days all through. It’s the only game I know where only two people in one team (batsmen) and two-three persons in the other (bowler) really wrestle it out while the others are mostly spectators on ultra-front row seats. It would’ve been fine if a thousand or even hundred thousand people wasted their time on this game playing or watching it for days together. What is not fine is hundreds of millions doing the same. It’s not the national sport of any country simply because it’s not a sport. Only in the subcontinent where all nations share a 100+ ranking on the UN Human Development Index does it thrive as it provides succour to multitudes of unemployed/underemployed who find it as a palliative to relieve them of their plentiful idle time. Cricket fans will surely cite golf as a game which enjoys massive viewership and sponsorship and which is surely more sedate than cricket. Point taken but golf is kept on its own high pedestal – a rich man’s game. It’s not a game of the masses and never tries to be. Similarly cricket was not meant to be a game of the masses. It was meant for the white sahibs who after finishing off India’s wildlife were searching for some other way to engage them. In the subcontinent they did not have to contend with a violent resistance movement and they couldn’t care less about administration, hence they were always thinking of new ways to utilize their idle time. And they found the answer in cricket – it was not physically demanding, took care of a huge chunk of their time and distinguished them from the natives. Scan the English literature in nineteenth century and see how many references to cricket you can come up with. Only intellectuals like P.G Wodehouse or G.H Hardy followed cricket. The industrious British middle class never had the time for it and neither should we. I would love to analyze how much of our productivity is actually lost due to cricket and I’m sure this will come to a decent percentage of our GDP. When faced with this line of reasoning, the usual response I get is that “Hey but cricket is such a big industry. Its generating so much money”. True but who is the money going to? Few mandarins in the cricket establishment. Less than a hundred players. Some big TV channels and franchisee owners. That’s it. How much employment is it generating? Close to nil. Few players have become super rich while even Ranji trophy players fight to get a sustainable livelihood. How much money is trickling down to the grassroots(local cricket clubs, coaches,small stadia) to further the game. Nil or close to it. And money is not new to Indian cricket. We’ve had the richest board since 1996 world cup. Then why is cricket at the grassroots still languishing? Cricket is not an industry. Industry generates employment, furthers productivity. Cricket is profiteering – plain and simple.
Okay, so in speaking of what this blog is NOT about, I’ve roughly given an idea of what this blog is about. It’ll be usually my observations which will unfortunately be supported by mostly anecdotal evidences. I’ll try to substantiate with facts as much as possible but the nature of the blog is to convey one’s judgements and inferences. Hence it’s pretty much open to sensible attack and I’ll love to change my opinion in the face of convincing evidence. For instance if you can show me that cricket is actually good for us as opposed to other sports like football,hockey then I’ll be your debtor and maybe buy you a beer.
A final word. I’m not much of a blog reader with few exceptions like Joel Spoelsky, Paul Graham etc and I don’t expect much readership/comments for my blog either. In fact this was one of the reasons why I took so long to start writing because I felt that since I don’t read any blogs why should anyone bother reading mine? Well I’ve realised my folly as I’m reaching the fag end of the first post. A blog is for oneself. It allows one to put a structure to numerous directionless meandering thoughts in his brain. It documents and codifies them and stores them for future reference. By doing so it allows new thoughts to come in and neatly stacks them in the appropriate places. As the newly evangelised preach the most, so shall I extol the benefits of blogging for a long time to come. But please stop me when I start saying that blogging is good for your sex life as well :)
Why did I name it so? Well firstly, I’ve been waiting to write a blog for so long that my mind, heart, subconscious, superconscious ,in fact everything which are not constrained by my lazy hands and feet, revolted and said “screw it fella, just do it you lazy bum”. Secondly the school I’m attending (IIMC to be precise) yanks the procrastinator out of you and stamps it till it’s declared dead. Stuff that we used to think will take months materialize in a matter of days. In span of a single month, you do four live projects, complete a research paper, participate in competitions and recommend market strategies for major corporations, arrange sponsorships for your festival and dozens of other stuff. If anyone in the IT world is asked to furnish an estimate for the list of tasks we do in a month it’ll probably be a year in the best-case scenario( no offence meant IT folks, I used to be one too and if things go at such a maddening pace in the IT world, everyone will be dead in 5 years). Anyway, doing so many things at the same time doesn’t leave you time to ponder over the best course. You just screw it and do it. Doesn’t matter if the end result is actually screwed up which is the norm anyway (Just take a look around and tell what percentage of well-studied & well-resourced, properly estimated projects see the light of the day the way they’re supposed to ?). The bottom-line is you gotta do it. It becomes your philosophy whichever religious or spiritual doctrine you subscribe to.
Little bit of what this blog is about. As a rule, this blog won’t contain any cricket or movie related stuff except in a purely academic sense. Even though I confess seeking a little guilty pleasure in watching some matches especially when India is playing well, I still believe cricket to be an utter waste of time, a sedate outdoor activity masquerading as a game. If you can play a game for a whole day and still live, then it’s not a game at all. And this thing can actually run for five days! Heck people won’t be able to play chess for five consecutive days all through. It’s the only game I know where only two people in one team (batsmen) and two-three persons in the other (bowler) really wrestle it out while the others are mostly spectators on ultra-front row seats. It would’ve been fine if a thousand or even hundred thousand people wasted their time on this game playing or watching it for days together. What is not fine is hundreds of millions doing the same. It’s not the national sport of any country simply because it’s not a sport. Only in the subcontinent where all nations share a 100+ ranking on the UN Human Development Index does it thrive as it provides succour to multitudes of unemployed/underemployed who find it as a palliative to relieve them of their plentiful idle time. Cricket fans will surely cite golf as a game which enjoys massive viewership and sponsorship and which is surely more sedate than cricket. Point taken but golf is kept on its own high pedestal – a rich man’s game. It’s not a game of the masses and never tries to be. Similarly cricket was not meant to be a game of the masses. It was meant for the white sahibs who after finishing off India’s wildlife were searching for some other way to engage them. In the subcontinent they did not have to contend with a violent resistance movement and they couldn’t care less about administration, hence they were always thinking of new ways to utilize their idle time. And they found the answer in cricket – it was not physically demanding, took care of a huge chunk of their time and distinguished them from the natives. Scan the English literature in nineteenth century and see how many references to cricket you can come up with. Only intellectuals like P.G Wodehouse or G.H Hardy followed cricket. The industrious British middle class never had the time for it and neither should we. I would love to analyze how much of our productivity is actually lost due to cricket and I’m sure this will come to a decent percentage of our GDP. When faced with this line of reasoning, the usual response I get is that “Hey but cricket is such a big industry. Its generating so much money”. True but who is the money going to? Few mandarins in the cricket establishment. Less than a hundred players. Some big TV channels and franchisee owners. That’s it. How much employment is it generating? Close to nil. Few players have become super rich while even Ranji trophy players fight to get a sustainable livelihood. How much money is trickling down to the grassroots(local cricket clubs, coaches,small stadia) to further the game. Nil or close to it. And money is not new to Indian cricket. We’ve had the richest board since 1996 world cup. Then why is cricket at the grassroots still languishing? Cricket is not an industry. Industry generates employment, furthers productivity. Cricket is profiteering – plain and simple.
Okay, so in speaking of what this blog is NOT about, I’ve roughly given an idea of what this blog is about. It’ll be usually my observations which will unfortunately be supported by mostly anecdotal evidences. I’ll try to substantiate with facts as much as possible but the nature of the blog is to convey one’s judgements and inferences. Hence it’s pretty much open to sensible attack and I’ll love to change my opinion in the face of convincing evidence. For instance if you can show me that cricket is actually good for us as opposed to other sports like football,hockey then I’ll be your debtor and maybe buy you a beer.
A final word. I’m not much of a blog reader with few exceptions like Joel Spoelsky, Paul Graham etc and I don’t expect much readership/comments for my blog either. In fact this was one of the reasons why I took so long to start writing because I felt that since I don’t read any blogs why should anyone bother reading mine? Well I’ve realised my folly as I’m reaching the fag end of the first post. A blog is for oneself. It allows one to put a structure to numerous directionless meandering thoughts in his brain. It documents and codifies them and stores them for future reference. By doing so it allows new thoughts to come in and neatly stacks them in the appropriate places. As the newly evangelised preach the most, so shall I extol the benefits of blogging for a long time to come. But please stop me when I start saying that blogging is good for your sex life as well :)
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