IITB : Ban on Foreign Internships

An article in Mumbai Mirror , DATE : 16/06/08

Premier institute will make it compulsory for students to undertake internship in in a bid to expose them to local conditions, reverse brain drain

In an bid to contain ‘brain drain’ and meet the needs of Indian industry, IIT-B will make it mandatory for B Tech (4-year course) and dual degree programme (5-year course) students to enroll for internship in Indian companies or research institutions. The internship is part of the course curriculum.

Hmm… a very basic question : does an internship for 3 months really change your outlook so much you feel like goin abroad after ur BTech… another question : Is doin a PhD abroad and then comin back to India an example of Brain Drain or is it a matter of manpower enhancement for India… yet another ques : How many students really end up gettin jobs abroad once they pass out of IIT… for those studyin in IITs.. you know there are harldly… for those who are not.. you know the situation now..

An internal report by IIT-B says over 60 per cent of the students undertake internship in foreign companies or universities hoping the experience will come handy while seeking admission for post-graduate programmes abroad or getting jobs in foreign companies.Academics feel this is one of the reasons for losing its talented youths to other countries.

60% !! I thought the figure might actually be just 6%… these are overtly exaggerated numbers… it will be interestin case in RTI to find where it got exaggerated… I think with the kind of articles Mumbai Mirror is puttin up these days, I can safely assume its the reporter himself…  for everyone around… trust me.. the figure is much much lower than what is being stated…

Arguments.. hmm… most internees end up in Europe… some in Australia and Canada.. scarecely in US and other places… however..  the favorite destination for PG programmes or anythin for that matter is the US… I dont see what usefulness this experience carries… if at all.. its just widens the perspective of the students in the field of research.. so they are better equipped in their curriculum in IITs… its what happened to Shaun Marsh in IPL..  I dont see how it harmed the Australian Cricket in any way…

The bigger deal : IITians tend to go abroad only because of lack of proper infrastructure in India… they are a hard workin lot (yupp.. it might be a case of self appraisal here) … and they will obviously reject workin in Indian companies which mostly dont pay much… and have a terrible work culture.. When big companies like TATA, ONGC and some IT giants have not been able to sustain IITians for long… how is it expected that other companies improve the scene… A 3 month intern in any part of the world will not bring about any change at all here.. its fruitless.. the purpose looks only worth some nonsense talk among old 70 year olds… there is no sense at all…

But with the Indian economy looking up and local companies complaining of a talent crunch, it was time to stop the ‘brain drain’.

Ashok Misra, director, IIT-Bombay, says, “Students will have to undertake internship in if they want their course credits.

Instead of foreign universities, they will now get to join Indian institutes such as Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Saket Narayan(BARC), Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

“This move should help both the students as well as the country. We took this decision to retain the engineering talent of the country. Students get attracted to foreign companies and fail to update themselves on the developments in industries in . It is very shocking for us that students are unaware about what’s happening in Indian companies.

We want our students to experience the excitement of engineering companies and research institutes in and have a glimpse of the developments here. At the same time, we want our industry to interact with our exciting and highly talented students.”

Well.. i wont argue here.. this is not even worth it.. With due respects to the IIT administration for blessin their ideas on the only bright thing in ‘India Shining’… Consider the Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science Department of IIT Bombay… with just 90 students at present (this is before reservations and other crap)… lets consider some companies who will be interested in actually takin students for interns.. not just showin interest in front of reporters… Tata Steel… well.. they take 3 guys… Jindal, ESSAR.. another dozen… ITC.. 2-3 more… some other big names.. another dozen… that totals to around 30 guys in big companies… what about the rest 60… they work in road side enterprises… in companies which cant affort to have internship programs… in companies which makes them enter accounts on to excel files for 3 months… in companies which are useless but assure them of a certificate… what useful is this experience.. what good does it do to the country… Unless you go out to see what the developed nations are doin.. you really cant progress… lets face it.. Indian companies are dull, dumb and slow.. the scene might be changin.. but then.. if 60 out of 90 students are to be wasted like this… there is no point callin them the cream of the nation… wonder which base they are gonna strenghten this policy on.. ??

Industrial Internships are anyways very rare and difficult to get… There was no point in bannin it and creatin such a big issue… and it definitely wasnt worth the big issue… A look at the comments on Mumbai Mirror online and its shameful… Nobody understands what this talk is about.. everybody draws out their own conclusions… there is criticism all around…

I would suggest Mumbai Mirror to look for other things to make fun of… I think there will be a point when Journalism will the most hated aspect of the country..  I hope they dont face a ban soon… !!

.. and as far as IITs are considered.. well.. with so much being done to dismantle them forever.. this is just a small.. minor move….

The Case of Afzal Guru

I think that the present UPA government will do all it takes to somehow block or suspend the Afzal Guru hanging case… and my point becomes clearer by the day…If someone is on the lookout for evidence.. here are some :  an unnecessary, deliberate, manned, controlled, strategic, sly delay on decidin the clemency petition… never before has a yes/no answer taken so long.. not even the most pampered girl in the world would take so much time in makin a decision when so much as the entire life of a brave guy is at stake….  then this equation of unrelated issues like Sarabjit singh’s case in Pakistan… Probably the UPA government is tryin its level best to delay the hanging… I feel if you believe that there is a tie up between the screwed Govt of Pakistan (it happens to be Harpic and Odonil in my house) and the UPA to delay both the Sarabjit and Afzal case… then all reports will be found in place…the motion would be clear enough… Although such a thing is just my imagination.. for an iota of truth here would be enough to spark that downfall at the center…

So everyone waits… till Afzal himself escapes from prison (or allowed to escape as is normally the case).. another fine episode of  prison break to be streamed all day long in half the channels broadcasted over television…till another Kandhahar to take place… till someone hits on the bright idea of  tradin him for Sarabit’s release…till Afzal’s supporters create a public opinion for abolition of capital punishment citing the European practices…                                                                   

SO much for the UPA government…

24 hours later

Hmm… so post the first 24 hours of this blog goin public… it had 126 unique hits…Even though I was expecting a late surge, this has far exceeded my expectations… Thank you all for visitin… your comments eagerly awaited..

Keep visitin this space for more…..

life’s cool !

cheers !!!

Maggie.

The case of Narendra Modi

Men should be men… Should standby by whatever they believe in and take on the world, if needed… I think Narendra Modi falls very much into the category… precise, distinct, direct, and disciplined use of words and an honest belief in whatever he says…

“Actually, I have not spent a single minute on my image and that can also be a reason. I am busy with my work. I am committed to Gujarat. I am dedicated to Gujarat. I never talk about my image. I never spent a single minute for my image and therefore confusions may be there”

Thats Modi in an interview recently…

No doubt, he is a demagogue, who let Gujarat burn and let innocent people get killed. But one can’t ignore the fact that today Gujarat is flourishing… It stands among the states that contribute the most to the national GDP (nearly INR 10,000 million)… It is one of the most attractive destinations for foreign investment in India and it is on Kerala’s path of providin education to everybody in the state… If one says that it is all due to the resilient people of Gujarat who are makin all this possible, then one can’t blame him for any mishap in the state…

The Rajeev Gandhi foundation has declared Gujarat to be the best-administered state in India… India Today, on two separate occasions, declared him the most efficient Chief Minister around…Not that these laurels come for free… or without reason… These things became possible only because he has been successful in givin clean, effective and progressive governance over last five years… Outside Gujarat, most people like to hate Modi… but there is a definitive change of views once their eyes themselves amaze to the powerful infrastructure… Gujarat shinin…

I believe that in a democratic and dynamic country, masses have the last word and masses always override media and other speculations… The truth will finally dawn on the people… It’s the people of Gujarat who will decide the fate of this man..

Finally, I don’t think many news channels have shown Gujarat and Modi in a positive manner… For Modi to gain power nationwide, thats somethin he needs to work on… For the rest.. he is the best CM…

… and if an evidence is needed.. here is some :

Modi dares Congress to file case of sedition against him
16 Jun 2008, 1421 hrs IST,PTI

SURAT: A week after daring the Centre to remove Gujarat from the list of centrally-assisted states, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has hit out at the Congress again.

“I invite the whole Congress regime, please do not waste a single day, book me for sedition today and hang me. Let me see how they can,” he said while addressing a public function here on Sunday.

“But how can they? They have not been able to hang Afzal Guru,” he added referring to the man convicted for terror attack on Parliament in 2001.

Modi has been playing political rhetoric again in recent days. At a function in Vadodara last week, he said Gujarat gives Rs 40,000 crore as taxes to the Centre and receives only 2.5 per cent of it in return.

He asked the government to stop collecting taxes from Gujarat and also stop aid to the state. The Congress questioned Modi’s remarks and said they were “nothing less than an assault on the idea of India.”

During recent Gujarat elections, Modi’s controversial statements reaped rich dividends for him. He had taken on Congress chief Sonia Gandhi for calling him a ‘maut ka saudagar (merchant of death).’

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) looks at itself at the only party strong enough to deal with terror and is not leaving any opportunity to hit out at the Congress.

Modi has kick-started the BJP’s new campaign before general elections due next year. And he is looking ahead to a larger role in national politics.

Its Happenin..

Well.. the Petrol and Beer prices seem to have converged to such a great extent…

Drink beer. Don’t Drive…

Cheers…

The Spanish Disaster

ALrite… some staggering facts :   Spain has a budget surplus…one of the highest in the world in absolute terms… This means a solid financial position…moreover absolute dept is also low… It has a quite negative Balance of trade (one of the highest in absolute terms)… This trade deficit is partially compensated with tourism… in fact tourism is at the same time one cause for this trade deficit…consider this : in Spain 50 million tourists must be provided with goods in addition to the 45 millions inhabitants…This results in a negative, but less, balance of payments…mainly due to acquisition of production factors due to the growth and improvements in the relatively low productivity…as compared to other European nations…

Now Consider this : The economies of Italy, Germany and Portugal has had the weakest growth in recent years…and that might just become the biggest problem in the future for Spain… India, on paper, shows tremendous growth… but I think we owe the Chinese (a faster growin economy) for the acceleration as well as Pakistan(a stagnated poor rot) for slowin us down… Although Spain have in recent years had the fourth highest growth rate among the old 15 EU countries, after Ireland, Luxembourg and Greece. But looking beyond headline GDP numbers and you see great imbalances in the Spanish economy.

As late as in 1998… Spain actually had a small current account surplus… but now they have the largest deficit relative to GDP of all major economies…including Uncle Sam… Labour costs have increased by as much as in say Italy… and household debt has increased from 50% of disposable income in 1996 to 100% today… And Spain’s economy is all the more dangerously dependent on the construction sector… with residential investments making up an incredible 17% of GDP… more than double the level in Bush’s own country…

The low interest rates are of course a result of Spain’s entry into the Euro-zone… where interest rates are set at very low levels reflecting the weak economies of Germany and Italy… But clearly, the current low levels are certainly not sustainable… A 8.9% money supply growth rate and 11.4% private sector credit growth is simply not sustainable for an economic area whose structural growth rate is as weak as that of the Euro-zone…

Meanwhile, the continued ageing of Northern Europe means that the number of old age retirees wishing to settle in Spain’s warmer climate will in fact likely increase… not decrease. All of which implies that demand for housing will remain strong in Spain…

I believe the worst factor is unskilled migration… because they cannot be easily reallocated to other business when building goes down… a problem exactly similar to the city of Mumbai except that Mumbai has got more  population to bear with too…

The Magic of Poetry

The Original…

DOVER BEACH by Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

… and the Parody…

DOVER BITCH by Anthony Hecht

So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, ‘Try to be true to me,
And I’ll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc.’
Well now, I knew this girl. It’s true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you mustn’t judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She’s really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right. We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it’s a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come.
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d’ Amour.

The Origins of Maggie

Hmm… So all was goin well as I was into my third year at bansal classes (did a diploma course there I reckon)… when one fine mornin our very beloved Bansal Sir ceded our request for a grand party… and announced that there’ll be another very fine mornin in the coming few days… A day party… 12th and 13th combined (13th being the acronym for the repeaters there)… clear blue skies, lush greenery all around… trees waving… eagles flyin at a distant height… this is how we were to picture the upcomin grandeur celebration… and it wasn’t unexpected… there were 2 official reasons… His son Sameer’s marriage and New Year (On record for the max no. of selections from Bansal, 955 is an awesome figure afterall)…

Anyway… So the venue and menu finally got decided… No problems concerning either of them… You dont have options in Kota for an expected gatherin of 3000+… and if u can arrange for chefs from the north… there is no point lookin for other options…

Some of the enthu ppl like us started practicin their various creative forms of art… music, dram, dance, masala, mimicry, comedy, PJin etc… It was a good excuse to ditch studies for a while…
All this time… I pondered if the show cud do well with an anchor and most certainly an anchoress… But the management had different ideas… different until noon the day before… when everyone actually realised… we needed one…

2 ppl volunteered… (there were only 2 coz no one knew they were supposed to do it )… and the second fella didn’t turn up… for whatever reasons… and the one fella left was the automatic choice… That happened to be me…

So… while the hunt for an anchoress was still on… I think of the stage scenario… clear blue skies, lush greenery all around… trees wavin… eagles flyin at a distant height… somebody just got married… and new year which we all were lookin forward to with high hopes… So I somehow figured out the classical approach of hosting to be the best one… It was a silly idea, but I realised it only after the show…

And by evenin… I was introducing myself to the anchoress after she had gone through a lot of screenin process by the other guys… I saw her for the first time in the insti… And after the usual intros… all we decided on was the costume… (The only part I think that went correct that day)… and that she would do all the talkin in Hindi… while I’ll take up english… (another blunder, I guess)…

The new year eve passes by preparin the script for the event… a 8 page text of what I intended to read…and by the time I am over with the thing, the birds are chirping all over the place.. and its mornin already…

Ok… so we meet again at the stage next mornin… the supposedly fine New Year mornin… with that fresh ray of hope and lot of other things… (Seemingly a good day till then)… and we finalize the script… mine full of colorful quotations… while she had the hindi shayars supportin her… Also, Kota has this powercut problem… and the nearest xerox machine being 2 kms away… I had to make certain number of trips to get the photocopies on time…

So, finally we r on the stage… with the people cheerin initially…last time they’d cheer for me atleast… So I first started with the routine thanksgiving to Bansal Sir for continuing splendidly with the traidition of housie… not to mention the fabulous way he directs the game…

So then when I praise the crowd for the elecrifyin atmo around… and read them out some of the most beautiful quotations of some of the best philos in business… they decide to give it back… “sutta” from pakistan had just gained popularity in this part of the world… and they decided to throw it at me… Till… I actually suggested a group of muggers to actually come on the stage to sing it for the rest of us…

Anyway… the items were all fantastic… I mean… considerin you dont get much time to prepare them… and with the costumes and stuff they managed to arrange… it was all really cool… huh… cool for the audience I guess… things backstage were a lot different… Most of the shows exceeded their previously recorded timings… either spontaneously or deliberately… Which meant my estimates given to PK Bansal sir went all haywire… and he was almost on my throat for this… The drummer had his own tale… he wanted to leave early… and wanted all the song items first… Our sweet mausiji wanted to have some people performing before the others… and no one can certainly ignore her requests… she hardly makes any… So, when I did that, the other performers were furious… Personally for me… there was sutta on the stage as well as backstage… No one was even willing to fill me my bottle of water (which emptied like anything in the scorching heat)…

Hmm… and the cycle went on like that… PKB remindin me sternly about certain punctualities… Sameer Sir wantin me to add substance to my text… Mausiji wantin certain performances beforehand… the audience wantin sutta (without a mention of matchsticks or matchboxes)… backstage performers repeatedly askin me about their turn to show up on stage… My text which I was not sayin at all… yeah… I could only manage to recite about a fourth of what I had written… rest was all stage fabricated… without substance though… and then the hot sweaty noon… and my leather jacket givin me no respite… PKB–punctuality–Sammeer sir–performances–night-out before–sweat—anti-cheerin–sutta—give-up–lack of substance—poor comparin–blaah blaah blaah….. All this and more… not to forget my continuously ringin cell phone… with ppl from all over the country callin to wish a new year…. wish luck to a scapegoat….

Anyway… after all this brunt… finally the teachers came on to the stage… singin dancin or watever… Till then it was sutta and my new nick Maggie all around… new year… new dawn… and a new name… And this name went on to create history… Ever since then, half of Bansal Classes called me by that name… and even here in IIT… ppl hardly know me as PrateeK…. its maggie all over… Hmm… the party endin on a high note… coz the teachers were always entertainin… and also coz half the people didn’t get any food to eat… while the other half couldn’t arrange for a means to get back to apna vigyan nagar… But somehow… things got over… hush…

Lessons… never take english seriously… never think of things formally… and never underestimate ur audience… the numbers are lethal… and what they can do to your day is…

Cheers mate… Its time for Maggie…!!