Why should I care who Sundar Pichai is?

A google search for this title will obviously return a favorable response, since he is after all the new CEO of Google. Congratulations to him on that elevation. However, unlike most other Indians, I really care a damn about this episode.

You would have to be Kumbhakarna to have missed out the announcement of his appointment and you must have been in a coma to have missed out the follow-up news articles splashed all over the media. But unlike those who wrote those articles or the larger herds of “educated” Indians that consumed it with glee, I AM JUST NOT PROUD OF HIS ACHIEVEMENT. I don’t have any kind of attachment with that person to feel happy or proud or going to the other extreme on the emotional scale, I don’t feel angry or jealous. It is for the simple reason that I F***ING DON’T CARE who Google appoints as its CEO or its janitor for that matter.

Why should I or any Indian feel proud of his achievements? Agreed he didn’t inherit this position by virtue of being related to the owners of Google, but his life is not really a rags to riches story. He hails from a regular middle-class family, studied in IIT and then moved to the US for higher studies. Fair enough. That pretty much sums up every Subramanian, Mahesh and Ranganathan in this part of the world. Ok, not all of them become CEOs of Google, Microsoft, Pepsi or Apple. Oh wait, only Apple doesn’t have a person of Indian origin at the top.

While I said earlier, quite colorfully, that I didn’t care, I actually do care about something and that is what is prompting me to write this post. It is about all the tax money I pay and all the tax money that so many other Indians pay, for which we see no returns.

This is a rant about all the IIT students who get the best of education using MY MONEY, who then opt to pursue a non-Engineering course OUTSIDE INDIA and then go on to work for some foreign company. And most of these people, give up their Indian citizenship at some point; not sure if Sundar did it, but I won’t be surprised if he has.

The defenders can give a thousand reasons from the lack of space for creativity to corruption to reservation and what not, to justify this brain-drain. If these IITians can actually beat those very same parameters to gain admission into an IIT, why can’t they stay back and do some actual engineering work within this country? They simply choose the easy way out and leave India.

But not all of them leave the country. Some of them actually complete a management degree right after finishing their technical course and join the Financial or Marketing line of Business. Seriously, is that what I paid MY MONEY for? If you were not going to continue working in the Engineering field, why the F*** did you pursue a course in the most premium of institutes in this country? Couldn’t you have simply done some vanilla Bachelor’s degree by correspondence and then take up an MBA? Wouldn’t that have actually helped another fellow Indian citizen to gain proper technical education? Or did you decide that even the person who would take up your space would also do an MBA and so it doesn’t matter if you do it. I can’t fight that line of argument!

What I really want to implement is a fee structure in the IITs, so that it is made clear to the students that what they are paying as fees is only the interest component of the loan that the Government has given them. This loan has to be repaid over a period of 5 years after completion of the degree and it would be waived off for those who join a Government agency and serve there for 2 years. Kind of like the internship that every MBBS student has to go through.

If the student wants to pursue a non-technical higher degree of education, he/she must pay out the loan and get the Transfer Certificate. Alternatively, those wanting to leave the country must have to repay the loan or else have their passports revoked.

Does this sound a tad too dictatorial? I don’t deny that. But unless something like this is setup, all the money that we tax payers shell out, is never going to be of real use to us. And we will continue to keep complaining about the lack of infrastructure in this country, even as we work harder to send our offspring to these institutes and then abroad; who can actually stay back and make the difference we want.

Alas, Sundar’s achievement is only going to be another bad example for the beleaguered middle-class to follow. We are going to send more kids to IIT training centers in the hope of creating the next Sundar.

Footnote:

1. The one inspiring thing about Sundar is the fact that nobody really knew him; his schools didn’t know that he studied there; his friends didn’t seem to. This shows that he was an average Jawahar when it comes to scoring marks. Yet, he has succeeded with his knowledge. This trait must be advertised more to students. And parents!

2. My entire argument about keeping IIT students in India can be negated with just one name –Arvind Kejriwal.

3. This is also the country where Governments have awards named after Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams; so who am I talking to!

Who or what is an MBA?

For quite a long time in my life, I had this aspiration of wanting to hold an MBA degree. I really don’t know why I wanted to do an MBA course, but during my College days, I thought it was the best way for me to move out of the “technical” space. Also, I was generally interested in solving arithmetic and logic problems and felt that the MBA entrance exam would be one place where I could excel. As history has pointed out repeatedly, I don’t do well in exams. And despite my near Ghajini-like attempts at joining some MBA course or the other, I haven’t progressed anywhere.

But this post is not going to chronicle the numerous unsuccessful trysts with MBA that I have had over the years (ranging from entrance exams to joining long-distance courses). Rather, it is going to address something more important – why I don’t want one anymore.

The reason for this change can largely be attributed to my experiences in interviewing a bunch of MBA students who would be passing out this academic year. In few earlier posts, I have shared some interesting experiences I’ve had in interviewing fresh graduates and sometimes, even lateral employees. When I went into this MBA campus recruitment last week, I certainly didn’t expect anything interesting. I was a little off-target.

I asked a few candidates, what courses they studied as part of their electives. There were 2-3 who actually couldn’t list the 5 or 6 major topics that they study. At least 2 guys in Marketing said that Sales was a part of Marketing and 2 others felt otherwise.

There was one other girl who felt that she was quite old; the profile listed her at 26 years of age.

To one candidate, whose profile said that he was majoring in Operations Management, I posed a simple question.
Me: “Assume you have opened a petrol bunk. Can you tell me what all would you do to reduce the operating costs?”
MBA: “I will hire cheap labour”
Me (mind voice): “Maybe he is talking about salary costs. Ok, let me see if he says it directly.”
MBA: “You see, I am from Kerala. And in Kerala, if we employ the local Kerala people, they ask for higher salary. So, I will hire people from other states.”
Me (mind voice): “Whoa whoa whoa”
Me: “What else would you do?”
MBA: “I will install CFL bulbs everywhere.”
Me (mind voice): “Have I come across the joke where they ask how many MBAs are needed to change a light bulb?”
Me: “Ok, moving on…”
As a fresh MBA he was only expected to state where the costs are generally high and that he would focus on the high cost items to see what can be reduced. This guy directly went ahead into the solution and even there, came up with the option of hiring people from other states and switching to CFL bulbs!

Then there was a strikingly good-looking girl who came up to our panel. Her major was in Human Resources. I asked her why she joined an MBA course. Her response was: “Sir, my father works in (Govt. Company) and so we live in that colony. If you see, in my colony, everyone does only B.E/B.Tech. I wanted to be different and so, I decided to do B.Com and then took up this MBA course”.

We gave a simple puzzle to almost all the candidates. It was the standard “How would you get exactly 5L if you use a 3L and 4L jar?” I was actually surprised that the first 2 candidates couldn’t even think beyond “I will cut the jar in half” or “I will look and estimate”. But what surprised me even more was the fact that despite this question being “leaked” out, only the 7th/8th candidate could actually come up with a convoluted answer to the query.

While these responses may pale in comparison to some of the gems I have http://jawaman.blogspot.com/search/label/interview experienced earlier, they clearly showed me that an MBA degree is certainly not of any use, unless you apply your mind. Otherwise, it is just a set of alphabets that one adds at the end of their name. My parents have been asked by quite a few prospective in-laws “The groom doesn’t have even an MBA degree?” and I now understand what that “even” stands for!

Interviews - some more pearls of wisdom

Poor Albert Einstein would have turned a lot in his grave yesterday. Reason: statements made by 2 girls in my interviews.

Please note that both of these girls are B.Sc Physics majors.

Here is the conversation:

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# 01
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Me: What is the Theory of Relativity?
She: I don't exactly remember.
Me: Do you know Albert Einstein?
She: Yes.
Me: Isn't he credited with Theory of Relativity?
She: Ah, yes.
Me: But, you don't know the Theory of Relativity?
She: I am not fully sure, but I think it has to do with, like with vehicles moving in the same direction then their relative velocity will be faster. And if they are moving opposite each other, then it will be slower. Its the relative velocity.
Me: Ok......


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# 02
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Me: Do you know the Theory of Relativity?
She: I don't know sir.
Me: Do you Albert Einstein?
She: I think she was famous scientist sir.
Me: (in mild shock) Do you know any important or famous theories of Albert Einstein? (I purposefully didn't use a pronoun so that she wouldn't identify the gender).
She: I think she only invented the Mass Theory sir.
Me: Mass Theory? What is it?
She: It is atomic weight by weight, but I am not too sure.


I am seriously worried with the education system in this part of the country - probably it is the same everywhere in the country. If a Physics graduate does not know what the Theory of Relativity is and does not know who Albert Einstein is, then where is this country headed?

Beautiful judgement

Blow to Anbumani Ramadoss

The best part I liked was where the Court informed the authorities to send the certificates by flight, to the Minister who is at Chennai (I have a hunch that he came off here just to avoid this situation).

I think its a big shame for Anbumani Ramadoss - but he doesn't seem to come across as someone who cares. He was willing to compromise the careers of the Doctors passing out of AIMS, just to spite the Director Mr.Venugopal.

I also believe, the minister said in some interview that he is not giving out the degrees only because, all those who get it, leave the country and pursue their career abroad.

If that was indeed his reasoning, I think it sounds very noble. But I would have really appreciated it, if he had put in the rule of delaying the issuance of Degree certificates for students of all Medical Colleges in the country. Or if its a case of jurisdiction, he should have pushed it to the "GREAT" Arjun Singh - the Education Minister and not the Minister for Castes - and imposed the same rule on IITs, IIMs etc. He must note that the Government is in fact subsidising the education for these folks, knowing full well that 90% will leave the Indian shores immediately on completion of their course.

So why not extend the rule to those places as well? The reason is simple. Like I mentioned before, Anbumani doesn't really care about 'brain drain'. He is just fighting Venugopal out in public in a very shameful manner. The court has also admonished him on this.

Any person with anything remotely like a spine - or loosely translated in Tamizh (the Minister's claimed language of choice): anyone with vekkam, maanam, soodu, soranai - should resign from the post.