Sunday, May 11, 2008

Need for better/quality technical education

Today there is need for high quality technical education in India than ever before. It is quite evident that there is big deficit in the talent pool and fast growing IT and manufacturing sectors are in dearth of well qualified professionals. Talking about qualification and our engineering, the latter has unfortunately got the image "passport for a quick job"...well it may indeed be as easy as it sounds, but the fact is its not just a quick job but also a cheap job...yup if you took your studies easily and made it into some software company X speaking all "blah blah blah" during the interview, it is most likely that the work they have chosen you for is something which people in abroad detest to do.....but we never realise that and sadly feel elated about how we fooled the interviewer(s) and how we managed to grab fat packages in the MNCs....the truth is we are being fooled...whatever we get paid is by no means comparable to what our counterpart in US would get....

Getting back to remark i made about the lack of qualified professionals, it may sound surprising, isnt it ??? We are producing more than 2-3 lakhs of engineers every year and they are qualified definitely with a BE/BTech or ME/MTech...still there is a shortage ?? Yes, there is shortage of employable engineers...Our engineering college standards have reached abyssmal levels, that even toppers passing out of those colleges remain unemployed..Even if they manage to get employed somehow (thanks to the placements concept, where the employer comes with an intention to pick you up, unlike in off-campus, where they would try to reject you), most of them are least interested in the jobs they are doing and dont have any respect for their work...It should be evident from the fact that almost 70% of the two and half lakh students who appear for CAT every year are engineers...the number is high not because students in India have management bent of mind or they are all most capable future enterpreuners...the reason for such a high number (trust me most of that 70%are people with work ex) is simply because, these engineers are frustrated to do the work they are doing, they just wanna get out of it and MBA provides an easy option to switch....No wonder with the kind of education our engineering colleges provide and the quality of work the infosyss and TCS's of India make them do, these candidates are left with no other option...

So the bottomline is there is an urgent need for quality education, well qualified professors, state of the art infrastructure and knowledge hungry students...which our neighbouring country and competitor China has recognised quite early and has been working on it meticulously.

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Cricket, India and IPL

Well Cricket, i should say is one of the best things that happened to India because of the British rule. The game has continued to enjoy popularity among the masses as well as the classes and it still continues to grow. What is in this game that makes us follow it so avidly ? Why is watching Sachin Tendulkar play so captivating and by far the best source of entertainment ? Why do we feel low for rest of the day when India loses and what makes us talk about it for weeks when India wins the worldcup or even a one day series in Australia ? It is not an exaggeration to say that cricket is more than religion for most us and I am one among its followers.

I got to watch the IPL match ( T20 :crickets new born baby and truly a marketing genius) between Bangalores Royal Challengers and Hyderabad Deccan Chargers today in Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore. Watching T20 format of the game is more eye candy than watching any other format of the game, and a fully packed stadium today in Blr is the proof that this is gonna be the future of the game. People (including me and my friend) reached the premises two hours before to ensure that we get a better view of the fielders and field. There is no lack of patriotism towards their favourite teams with many sporting t-shirts of their favourite teams and getting their faces painted with emblems of their favourites. To entertain the crowd and cheer up the players, there were cheer leaders who are raking a moolah outta this new championship..Every IPL match is invariably preceded by a music/dance performance by some of the top notch Indian stars and singers. The tinsel town members and bollywood baazigars are not at all left out with few of them owning the teams, few endorsing and few being brand ambassadors....Can there be a better marketing than this ?

With millions of dollars being spent and with stars and pomp everywhere, IPL has not just got the fuel that is needed, but also the spark to ignite it...

Friday, May 02, 2008

Made it into Gods own IIM

Hey all,
I will be joining IIM Kozhikode soon to pursue two year post graduate program in management. I am so excited to study in such a picturesque campus along with some really talented folks. It took some amount of hard work on my side to make it into the IIMs. Especially when you are working in a product development company, it is always hard to take off some time for other activities as there is work at office more or less all the time. Mock CATs helped me to get a feel of how the real exam is going to be ; through mocks, one will also realise what his weak and strong areas are. My regular reading habbit and interest in current affairs had made the GD/PI part easier. Thanks to god that my efforts have been paid off...
but picture tho abhi baaki hi doston....coz life takes a new beginning@IIM