"B" "B Schools"...

Finished your graduation??? Don’t know what to do? Don’t want to really study but still want to make money? You aren’t having any good academic record or interest in any subject but then too you want to have an entry & justify your existence in the corporate world…Well, very simple…get admission to any B School existing in the country. Nope, I am not speaking of IIMs or any other top 10 B school. Of course getting admitted to such top B schools is difficult. But don’t worry, there are easier options too...like getting admitted to B schools offering so-called “autonomous certification”, “AICTE approved certification”, “foreign degree”, “world class education” etc. All these B schools claim to be “A” category business schools in their mass media advertising. By the way claiming to be category “A” business school is very easy these days. Thanks to the n numbers of survey results being published by different magazines every alternate month. Except for IIMs & a few other known good business schools, all other surveys show drastically different results for different B schools. On top of that these business schools also show some weird benefits in their advertisements, e.g., large campus with swimming pool/gym, centrally air conditioned, excellent canteen etc. Now how on this earth a swimming pool is related to a management degree, god alone knows!!! Also what is the point of advertising about their air-conditioned campus when the students once out of such colleges will have to do direct selling of products like credit cards, home loans etc. in scorching sun. Similarly I am not able to understand the connection between excellent canteen & managerial skills. Perhaps such colleges want to satisfy the taste buds of their students by offering such food as the management of such colleges must be aware that once passed out, the students will have real difficult time to even have a normal meal in any restaurant by their meager salary. The best out of all these tactics is to write “excellent placement record”. Now on what parameters, they qualify their placement record as “excellent” is still ambiguous to me. How do they get the courage to prefix the term “excellent” before their placement record is quite wooly for me!!! The mockery is that all these “B” “B schools” (B category B Schools) charge some huge fees because of these so-called benefits offered by them & students keep on paying such abruptly high fees in hope of getting some great job with “lucrative” pay-package.

Well, frankly speaking, even I haven’t done my MBA from any of the IIMs or so. But I have done my MBA from a reasonably good institute & if I do the cost benefit analysis (fees vs. my salary), I am not having much grievances as being a university degree, my institute has charged us a very low fees. Well, I am working in a reputed organization & supposedly handling a good portfolio but if I think of the nature of job, to be very honest for initial one full year of my job, I never did any managerial or so-called “strategic” work. I did some stupid operational level & moron work only which was nowhere related to any of the papers studied in MBA. After doing moron job for almost a year & half and because of my good academic track record, finally I got the so-called “managerial role” which was still way beyond those marketing fundas studied by us in our classrooms. Sometimes, I really think as to what does MBA course teach us because of which it has become such a craze & a basic qualification for getting a job? Believe me friends, I seriously think it only teaches us how to exceed your confidence more than your competence!!!

I know that with the mushrooming growth of B Schools, it is very easy now to become a management graduate but what is happening after that? Management graduate even after paying huge fees in lakhs & lakhs to these “B” “B Schools” are doing the job of sales executives & getting a salary as good as a normal graduate gets.Few years back, same happened with Engineering & Medical courses. These degrees were craze in earlier days but because of these hundreds of private colleges in every city & donation seats in almost every college, everyone with no knowledge & intelligence started to become an engineer or doctor. The value of an engineer or doctor got so diminished that they started to work at the lowest salary possible. I think the same is going to happen with MBA also. Its high time now that the students should understand the difference between a “B School” and a “B” “B School”. Its of no use to waste so much of money in such schools in hope of getting some excellent job with some great package. In fact the Govt. should not give affiliation to any such “B Schools” which are just going to mislead the students by showing them rosy pictures of their career. Such schools are not “B Schools” at all, rather they are “C Schools” i.e., “Cheater Schools”.

Balancing Act

Yesterday, I was watching an interview of a very eminent female who has been quite successful in the field of marketing & advertising. Quite impressed by her personality, I was very keenly watching her interview. Every word coming out from her mouth seemed to be so relevant, relatable & perfect. Finally the interviewer asked her few questions about her personal life and her one main answer suddenly changed my whole perspective about her. With that one answer of her, everything seemed to be so unrelatable, so distant. Suddenly, I felt that I can never become like her…Just few minutes back, I was admiring her & wanted to be like her & her just one single sentence about her personal life made me realize that I can’t be as successful as her. Well, her that one sentence was – “SUCCESS DOESN”T COME WITHOUT ANY SACRIFICE & FOR HER SUCCESS SHE HAS SACRIFICED HER FAMILY LIFE”. She wanted to move ahead in her life & after marriage she realized that her time was getting divided between work & home. Because of her demanding nature of work, she was finding it difficult to cope up & so she finally decided not to have any child at all as she never wanted to have further responsibilities. She never regretted her decision of not having a child as she was knowing that she would have never attained this success if she would have gone ahead with a child in her life.

Well, frankly speaking even I grew up in my life with some fiery ambition & big dreams in my eyes. Got married last year & suddenly the whole life changed. Not that I am some bechari si female who is being dominated by her in-laws & all that but I think things automatically got changed slowly – slowly. Time got divided & suddenly I find so many people judging me. Now, I am not supposed to perform only one role in my office & be evaluated by my boss rather I find myself to be juggling between so many roles in my life & there are so many people who evaluate me for my different roles. Very naturally, my personal time has also got splitted between two fronts of my life – work & home. I am always trying to strike a balance between work & home and sometimes get quite frustrated when I am not able to satisfy either. I really sometimes get scared by imagining the days when I will have a child as I am very much aware that a child will be onset of some huge responsibilities in my life.

I know so many females who are also struggling hard to strike a perfect balance between work & home. Even though they were highly ambitious, their career had taken back seat because of their families. They had literally burnt themselves in this so called “balancing act”. They had given off their dreams of becoming some CEO or MD or XYZ of some big company. Well speaking of me, even though I am aware of the consequences & the cost which I will have to pay, then too I would like to have a child in future as personally I think life gets completed only after having a child & family. I am fully aware of the fact now that I will have to trade off my big dreams & ambition for having a family life but then too I want to go ahead with my family life.
So many females like me just try hard to strike a perfect balance between work & home but striking a balance generally leads to a mediocre level career & a mediocre level home - maker. The moment one tries to attain something big or excellent on either front of life, the pointer of the balance gets tilted to that particular side & the other side gets neglected. So, the next step will be either to reduce the efforts towards attaining that big/excellent thing and bring the pointer to balanced position or choose any one of the sides. I seriously wonder, if there is anything known as “PERFECT BALANCE” between two fronts of life where you achieve good at both the fronts or is it always a “TRADE OFF” between the two

Melee

I was standing in a mob & suddenly I was pushed with a great force by the mob. Oh my god, I was just jammed between so many people. Everyone was just pushing or pulling each other. I tried to turn back & come out of the rushing horde, but it was simply impossible…Just with the push & pulls of so many hands and shoulders, I moved from one point to another & finally entered the gloomy conduit… & after that I can’t explain my exact state in words… , sooooo many people at that cramped place. It looked as if the whole city had got confined to that place. Females were just screeching & screaming at each other. They were just trying to save themselves from falling out of the channel. In order to make their way out, they were just pulling hair, duppattas or whatever they could catch hold of. After observing the whole fiasco, I desperately wanted to come out of the place but it was not at all possible. I felt that the whole conduit is moving at a very slow pace with thousands & thousands of voices floating around me. I was hardly able to stand straight over there.
Finally after sometimeI found a few people trying to move out & I also followed them. I experienced a sudden jolt & then oh lord …… everyone was pushing me, all of them wanted to come out. Some other lady’s duppatta got stuck around my neck & I was actually feeling suffocated & it was so difficult to breathe. I screamed with tears in my eyes. For a fraction of second I wasn’t able to move ahead & then suddenly because of pressure from back I fell down. I was half in that conduit & half on ground, shouting & crying but to no use. People just passed over on my hands & shoulders without thinking even once that they are actually running on a human body. My hands got badly hurt & I started shaking because of pain…but till then I never got the chance to get up from the ground. Then I saw a kid on the ground just beside me who had also fallen because of the mad crowd & he was actually bleeding from mouth. But noone was bothered & the mother of the kid was just crying & trying to pick up her child from the ground. I somehow managed to get up from the ground & I was shaking badly…
Nope, I was neither held in some riot nor at some place which caught fire suddenly. It wasn’t either any natural disaster or bomb blast. I faced this havoc while traveling in a central line local train in Mumbai. Day before yesterday, I just thought of going to Siddhi Vinayak temple & since I wanted to reach fast, so decided to take a train. Also I thought that since it wasn’t peak office hours, so the trains would be relatively emptier. But I was totally wrong. I had traveled by local trains earlier also but my this journey was the worst journey of my life. After somehow coming down at Dadar, I came to know that it was some “Ambedkar Festival” that day because of which the whole city was going towards that side. But the rush, the madness can’t be put in words. Noone was caring about what was happening to others, everyone was just rushing ahead.
I am anyways quite skeptical about traveling by local train & after that day’s incident, I have almost sworn in that I will never take a local train even if I will have to walk for kilometers. But I really feel sad about those who can’t avoid local trains because of their location of job or other reasons. They all lead such a tough & sore life over here. Riding a local train in Mumbai during peak office hours is almost like winning a battle. Not only local train, everything over here, be it finding accommodation or conveyance or any such thing is getting difficult day by day. So, many people are migrating to Mumbai because of job & career but I really wonder if the infrastructure over here is strong enough to support so many people???