The McKinsey Moment

Like most other third years, I have been vacillating this year. The future is uncertain and my preferences are incomplete.  I have been mostly clueless about what I really want to do after this year. Not that I don’t have choices, but that I have a plethora of choices – in short, I am spoiled by choices. I can go for a Masters in Economics – in D-school or ISI or abroad at LSE, I can go for a job – there are plenty of recruiters coming through the Campus Placement Cell or I could make long term plans and plan to sit for civils or still, I could go for a PhD in an area of interest and choose to teach (I would love to do that!). To decide what I want to do next, I need to be clear about the long term plan. I wish I had constraints of some kind – that would help me eliminate choices and zero down to one or two. Well, I ought to be happy about that, you would say. Anyways, read on.

The pre placement talk made me feel as if McKinsey was looking for me. I had all the qualities they were looking for (I thought) – and better still, I liked the job profile. I have been recently entranced by the world of psychology and counseling. A little bit of practical exposure to counseling (and success at it!) made me feel as if I really liked solving problems. So, McKinsey I thought would be the same. Just the way I counsel a friend who is all forlorn and gloomy and make her see her own strengths and weaknesses, I would be here, consulting big companies who would approach McK with all their financial, organizational blues. Relationship problems would have similarities with financial problems, I presumed and the approach adopted to counsel the client would have some resemblance. Also, the profile of a Business Analyst would give me both – hands on experience in practical economics as well as that in practical psychology, since they mentioned in the talk how ‘inter-personal skills’ were crucial to the life of a BA.

The initial process was smooth, I got through the CV shortlisting round and was called for interview. I also got a taste of luxury through one trip to the McK office in Gurgaon for the case interview workshop. It was a different world – a secret world where crack teams were assigned sealed cabins to brainstorm and reach solutions to real life cases. (I was more wonderstruck by the slew of jhuggis in the plot adjoining the gargantuan building, where construction work was in progress and dark, nude kids roamed around in piles of sand in the morning sunlight – construction sites never fail to evade me…anyways) A walk inside the huge, green office with the spacious gym and soothing lawns made me fall in love with it.

The interview was scheduled for 8^th October and I was diagnosed positive for dengue. I sent a mail to the Recruitment Officer describing my circumstances.  I got an instant reply and then a personal call from her side. My dad attended the call and I could hear the female voice telling him – ‘Please let her rest and let her know that we would take her interview later, only once she recuperates completely.’ I was even more touched and became more determined. I had once more reason to go for the job – they valued the quality of lives of not only their employees but even prospective employees! So, profile, office, and people. I now had three reasons to seriously consider aiming for it.

Its November now and I have recovered from dengue. I was called for interview with McKinsey and Co. on 8^th of this month. I didn’t really prepare hard for the case interviews, apart from watching some Victor Cheng videos and reading his long email tips. Somehow, the idea of ‘preparing’ for the interview vexes me. All through the Victor Cheng videos, I felt as if he was trying to train people to a certain way of thinking. People who are really desperate about it supposedly go through his LOMS program multiple times just to start thinking like a consultant. It then becomes a drill, you walk through the framework, let the client see the state of things and then synthesise and conclude. Probably it suits them, but I would rather prefer a job where I don’t have to change myself for the job – I would like a job which suits my way of thinking. Not that I have a better way of thinking – in fact, I discovered how chaotic my initial attempts at solving cases were. They got more structured and clear over time with a bit of practice. It helps if you can calculate with clerical accuracy and speed and handle astronomical calculations of client turnovers and profits. Overall, I discovered on the way till 8^th of this month that a considerable chunk of my skills were disjunct from the skills they were looking for and that I would have to institute real changes in my ways of thinking about issues and yes, that I wasn’t that comfortable with exponential number crunching. They look for people who have an appetite to handle ‘ambiguity’ they say – so missing data, ballpark calculations and uncertain results were part of the lives of consultants. I also discovered I would have to overcome my level of ambiguity aversion till the 8^th.

The D-Day and the H-Hour came. And went.

I am a bit less uncertain about future now. Guess what?

I have decided I am not going for it.

The two rounds of interviews with the Engagement Managers made me conclude two things about myself:

One, I don’t really ‘love’ solving cases – they are interesting, I can handle them with ease, I can think about things logically and rationally, but I don’t really enjoy doing them over and over again.

Two, the most interesting part of the interview was the personal part.

I was asked about the ‘self-driven’ study I had done with regard to RSBY (Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana) in the summer (as my CV put it) – I could go on and on about it, in the interview. I started with the story – of how the DG Labour Welfare had delivered a talk in college about the construct and design of RSBY and how I was amazed with the whole idea of health insurance for the poor via smart cards and how I had then gone to the office of the DG at Jaisalmer House and got encouraged to conduct an independent assessment. The enumeration team, the interviews with migrant laborers, the travails to the far ends of my city – I described each and every aspect. For a moment, I was transported back to the summer with my peers – Harshpreet, Ganga and Gurbachan veer. I found I gleaned more joy out of those scooter rides to empanelled hospitals than the Innova ride to the McK office.

I had to wait for long at the office on the D-Day after the Problem Solving Test (PST) for my case interviews. One was in person, and another was via video conferencing. I could rant about the waiting time – how I had to spend one and a half hour in a posh steel and wooden chamber with modern art paintings on the wall, but in retrospection, I think it was ‘reflection time’ for me. I didn’t like the silence that hung in the corridors, it was as if all conversation happened behind closed doors, in confidential cabins. I didn’t like the luxury of the world here. Something strangulated me, as I longed to get out and fly in my world. Something told me, we were just not meant for each other.

And there I am. Much tranquil and calm. I have one less choice now. I am nearing my focus. I would probably try considering civil services (something I started abhorring after I spent a day in the office of a District Collector) – if I could design and implement such ambitious schemes like RSBY, the way Anil Swarup did, I would give everything else for it. For now I see, the civil services are also about problem solving – just that the context is different. The paycheque is smaller and the world is a bit more humble and a bit lackluster.

But I am still not sure about the civil thing – please don’t ask me the next time you bump into me, ‘how’s the prep going?’ I just added it in my preference spectrum.

I like this ambiguity of life, I guess. Each day life unfolds itself to you and you discover new things about your own self. I will always remain grateful to McKinsey for providing me some of its silent consultancy services in the waiting room and during the case interviews, about the case of my life’s career and that too for free!

Hey Reader, 

What's new?

A book is out! If you are a second year student of Economics Honours and EHI is haunting you - here is a relief. A book by 3 students of St. Stephen's College for preparing EHI for your Semesters. 

Price : INR 100/-

Place your order here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGc4Q25fNG5DVlZEX1BUSmR0eW1XMmc6MQ#gid=0

Here's sneaking some look at the preface, written by the authors!!! Happy reading :)

www.eurekawow.com

PREFACE

If you think the paper ‘Economic History of India’ in the course of the Economics Honors is a monster, something that an innocent economics lover has to grapple with, day in and day out in his sophomore year, and that things could be made much simpler, then you are the person this book has been written for.

We have consolidated, crystallized, summarized and organized the material to be read in a friendly format. The book will provide a heavenly respite from the spiral reading and in some probability act as a perfect substitute to the reading, as far as the examination is concerned.

The authors are third year students (rolling in the annual mode) who went through the ordeal of the paper and felt an empathy deficit in the system when the market would have no worthwhile help books or notes for the students. This is a humble attempt to share our knowledge that we gained over the entire year and the notes that we individually made for our personal reference.

However history lovers are strictly warned against the shallowness of the text. Probably you could search for some extra references on Indian Economic History in the library for strengthening your knowledge and then get back to us for helping write the successive editions of this book.

How to Study? 

1. It is advisable to read the prescribed reading to get a feel of the time period which has been described. 

2. Then check out the corresponding chapter in your EurekaWow help book and go through thoroughly. You will find that the chapter in many places may be a repetition of the original reading but that it very elegantly puts paras and paras of useless babbling in the text in perspective and arranges them in neat paragraphs. 

Since most economics students are not adept at the art of writing long digressive answers, we offer you enough material to remember for writing your final answer in the exam. Since the material is structured, you would be able to have the twin qualities of length and structure in your answer! 

A word of advice - shh…please don’t tell anyone

Logically thinking, that appears true since any sensible individual would get tired of reading sheets after sheets of cursive writing blurting out the same thing. The trick here to score is – product differentiation. Make your answer different from a clichéd one. Write the same material, don’t digress much, but write it in a manner which pleases the eyes of examiners. Leave enough spacing, margins at the corners, give a lot of sub headings, try making little flow charts here and there just to put your point across and be sure to extract a decent score for each answer 

P.S. Any opinions expressed are those of the authors. All errors are our own. 

Sincerely, 

GP, JK, DB

Of life, onions and novels

Now I know why people write novels. That’s because little stories are unfolding around us practically all the times. The past few months have been quite a revelation for me. Characters, natures, dispositions somehow came to the forefront and I discovered how every being around had his/her own way of dealing with things. Of course, that is not something new. The fact about the diversity of human natures has always been known.

Probably it’s a part of growing up. Monali – my roommate, has been my tutor in this regard during the last year – I have to some extent learnt over this year how one should read between lines, see beyond the surface and learn to look at the real intentions of people around. Not all that is said in this world is true and not all that is promised is necessarily kept. In the end, probably simpletons can find it very tough. You have to be vigilant and diplomatic lest you are duped. In fact, the name of this blog was inspired from that very thought long time back – the fact that all of us are nothing but human onions but probably for a while I found exceptions to the quote and sidelined it. But now I am convinced.

Right now, I feel as if I am living in the world of a novelist. Umpteen little stories are unfolding around, not without a reason. Things I couldn’t have dreamt about are transpiring and there are another umpteen stories which are making sense to me now, stories that unfolded way back. Probably that’s why people write novels. Actually what they are actually writing is nothing but an autobiography but just wrapping and packaging it as fictionalized accounts. Those little real stories which transpire are just tinkered a bit, bits and pieces of fiction are then injected and then the novelist simply threads them all into one big account in a single volume. Isn’t it strange, the novelist then signs the novel as ‘his’ creation, whereas his creation is nothing but a replica or a microcosm of the Real creation.

Some time back, I stopped reading fiction because I actually felt that I had outgrown it. It irritated me when the novel would come to an end and I would jump back into reality suddenly. I would get the same feeling in a movie hall at the end of three hours. The immersion into the reel world would abruptly come to an end and leave me dejected. Every time it was like receiving a hard blow on the face in the end – after all, all that was mere fiction – a lie.

My views have changed a bit now. There are elements of truth in that big lie. Even the lie is not unadulterated!  And probably that’s why I have decided I’m gonna write short stories, touching ones. The soul of the stories would be the same as I witnessed in the real world but the names of characters and places would be fabricated. This is because my characters would then be living persons and so that my perceptions would not in any way cause any harm to them. But the lesson would be intact. And I’m surely going to share those stories, in the near future some time. 

On Attaining Equilibrium

I found something! Amazingly beautiful. Probably you already discovered it long time back, but my moment of discovery came just now and I have been ecstatic since ….hmm, not ecstatic exactly because that would contradict the essence of my discovery…but certainly elated.

I have seen two of my professors remaining at an unusual calm with themselves and yeah, they spread it around – that slowness in their voice, that peace in their words, that stability in their lectures. I find it contagious – I find myself unconsciously revising their notes at the same pace as they were taught by them in the classroom.

It struck me one day while writing my diary, that the word ‘sehaj’ in my language could describe it all – that stability and stillness. But an all capturing English word for that – I groped for the right word.

It had the same meanings as ‘thehraao’ – you would have noticed distinguished classical music singers – when they would take the alaap at a fast pace, although it would be a flurry of notes, but each one of the sur would come with clarity and with a certain stability in itself.

And then, I am reminded of the example that my dad always gives me when my mood is upset and I would nudge him by his side. ‘You see that toy – ‘Hit Me’, you hit it and it rocks from one side to the other. The harder you hit, the longer it rocks and then after a while the oscillations become smaller and smaller until it comes to rest again. So are we human beings, little ‘HitMe’s. Trials and tribulations of life hit us and then we rock from side to side, sometimes for days and weeks and months until we finally discover our core and come to rest.’

The other day while reading Sukhmani Sahib from an English translation – I found the word. Guess what?

Equilibrium.

The word would be so common and close to my life – I had not expected.

The discovery has given me a new perspective of all the equilibria I study in my course. The fact that someone could be at an equilibrium with oneself is just so captive for me.

I have seen myself going through periods of volatile moods and emotions – just ecstatic one moment and inexplicably sad, the other. At the end of the day, I find it a zero-sum game as if the sadness simply eclipsed and canceled the happiness of the morning. What is the use, I ask – of such ephemeral joys and sorrows?

So I took a decision – I vowed to myself. As far as possible, I am going to maintain an equilibrium with myself. Basking in joy should not make me forget the transitoriness of it, right? Similarly for difficult moments.

I have been doing 'Sehaj Paath' since school time and now I have realized the real meaning of it. Attaining sehaj that is, equilibrium.

I have a nice time now, doing the 'Equilibrium Paath' every night before going to bed and true, it stabilizes me!

Of prose and poetry

Hello Reader

You might have noticed a sudden rush of poetry on this serious prose-ey blog here. I have to admit that I have been influenced by somebody lately and the poems that you see are the output of that influence.

I have figured out that there is something exceptionally beautiful about poetry - it is something that lends it a certain kind of creative 'freedom' - freedom to embed every word with a plethora of feelings - dense, intense feelings, and yeah it is much more malleable unlike prose. It can be open to as many interpretations as there are readers and every single interpretation has a strange quality of making it personalised.

Some moments, some feelings get so beautifully frozen in time and space through a poem. And I see an element of cryptography there - because at the end of it you could get to the person who you are writing it for without making it completely transparent too - while others get a different personalised flavor out of it :P - you get what I mean, right?

Do check out my senior Rasagya's blog that is the fount of inspiration for my poetry, - here's it www.rasagya.blogspot.com

Happy reading!!!

Catharsis

I love the way you do it
That annoyance, that toughness
Which take the smile off my face


And catapult me into
Another world
Of silence, emotions and distances
Of dampened joys
Of ghazals and sad songs
Which ignite a different me
And inspire poetry
And voyages into self
Away from all power and pelf
And detachment above all


I'm so glad about this barrier
That keeps you from understanding my poetry
For if you did
Your eyes would go moist over it
And then I wouldn't have liked to see
The catharsis that would have followed

Of Hands - Visible and Invisible

The drooped flower had blossomed again - and I had gone and kissed her goodbye and asked her a favor.

'My letter which was signed by the dean is with Khurshid didi who is apparently out and I need to get a photocopy of it and give it to the mess' --- could you do that for me please?' I had asked with a bit of hesitation.

She smiled reassuringly and said aloud 'Sure!'

'Thanks...'

' - now that's what I don't like --- why do you have to say thanks for little things...???'

'...I guess I don't like asking favours - it makes me feel dependent - I have always been independent'

'...hmm' she moves her eyes in a reflective manner and enunciates, 'Markets cannot always work independently - they also need intervention.'

It reminds me of a supply- demand cross diagram and market failure that occurs when efficiency and equity see a tradeoff.

'Yeah, that's correct...you are my Government', I quip.

With that beautiful realisation, we part.    ***

NANDINI’S LITTLE TALES

‘You know, that teacher at my school?’

…Which one? I ask.

‘The one who takes her hair like this from the side and then puts a ‘chimta’ at the back…’, she tells me with a lively movement of her hands describing the hairstyle of her teacher. ‘I don’t know how she does it though’, she continues. She looks up from the drawing sheet she is coloring to find my face unsatiated by her detail.

She continues with her description of the lady who teaches her everyday in the classroom, trying hard to remember her name which I happen to enquire. Nevertheless she is determined to make me form a mental picture of her teacher’s appearance in my head. ‘She puts ‘lalli’ (lipstick) on her lips before going back home in the afternoon and then some person comes to pick her up in a car’.

…Oh! Waah,  I smile at her with an exclamation as she gets busy coloring the house she had drawn with the pencil. A damp smell of mustard oil spreads in the room. Her grandmother must have lovingly oiled her hair in the morning before sending her to school.

‘Paper acche se karke aana – fir hum bahut si parhaaeee karenge aur bahut khelenge’, I hear myself telling the little girl building castles in the air before her, of days ahead full of fun.

Every time I come home, these little kids are excited and they blush and do all sorts of movements to express their love. I know they miss me. I miss them a lot. And then we have a nice little fun class in the park. These classes come to end very soon, as I leave for Delhi everytime, to jump into another world – a fast paced world with lots of deadlines, a place choked with competition and ambition.

At last, I always smile back at myself for short-lived moments like these, at least I could treasure them for a lifetime and see the fruits of a little effort done two years back maturing every time I come back. Nandini is enrolled in an English medium school nearby. Her mother and grandmother work as maids in the colony and her dad is a painter – the one who paints real houses. It had taken persistent and pressing effort to convince her parents about sending her to school. The ladies in the colony had contributed a share in her school fees. Unlike kids of other migrant laborers, her parents have not yet migrated from this place from two years. Settlement has somehow ensured the continuity of her education.

Doormat

Today
Her gait is different
Devoid of gaiety
She walks ahead slowly
Gazing down with gravity
At the floor patterns below

Was it wrong
To stoop so low
In the ambition to attain
That exalted stage?
Oh that is the way
They treated her behold
Like a doormat
Of a bygone age

Where do you draw the line, she asks
Between ego and self esteem
For she has reached the nadir
Of the latter
And now looks up to see

The dust of their hubris
Covering her face
Her soul left behind
In that maddening race...

...melting moments

The shyness of my being
It so happened
That I tried to discover them through mere glances

Glances that met
Some were answered
Others were overlooked

As if I was a transparent figure
And the figure behind would pre-empt
The space I would so covet

And now some of those lovely
Gazes have mellowed
Into avuncular, cheering smiles

When I would greet them in silence
I would be greeted back
By sparkling eyes
And melting facelines

And my faith in life
and persistent smiles
Would grow strong and stronger

Justice

I have been thinking of writing about JUSTICE as I see the concept influencing my life and those of people around.

I define justice as ‘rightful quid pro quo’ – I get back what I deserve. If I contributed 50% to a project, a test or in organizing an event, I should get back AT LEAST 50% of the credit.

Credit, I understand can be a subjective term subject to individual egos and expectations of rewards. But I guess it would not be wrong to say that assessment of an individual’s worth, if transparent can turn out to be more acceptable and less debatable.

I had high opinion of the World Lung Foundation and its DU arm DUSFI (Delhi University Smoke Free Initiative), may be because of the creative names and the impact it would leave on a first time listener, until yesterday. At the essay competition organized under the initiative, a series of events and organizational mismanagement left me with a bad taste about WLF.

Surprisingly the judgment criteria at the Essay Contest reminded me of those old school head masters, one often reads of, who exist in backward schools in remote areas. Consider the marking scheme at the contest which was supposed to be an ‘essay writing contest’ – 30 for written essay, 30 for summary presentation of the essay and 40 for an interview with the candidate. Impressive!

Now consider how the latter category induced such level of subjectivity into the judgment criteria to the extent that the ingenuity of the essay received no credits at all.

Although the essay dealt with ‘the social, economic and environmental implications of tobacco consumption’, the interview related to none of the aspects. Neither did it try to assess the degree of sensitivity of the candidate to the issue. The kind of questions asked at the interview were the following:

1.       Name some of the chemicals that tobacco is composed of.

2.       What is the Green Tobacco Sickness caused by tobacco? How can we prevent it?

3.       Give me the date on which this act on tobacco was passed.

4.       Why is eucalyptus planted along with tobacco crop in farms?

It is precisely these kinds of questions which reminded me of those boring school EVS textbooks which we were encouraged to learn by heart to vomit out in the exams at school. The very difference between knowledge and education is that the latter is composed of stuff that cannot be googled. Education of a person is a cumulative sum of years of experience amidst knowledge.

I fail to understand how the real worth of a person would be gauged by mere factual interrogation which even a parrot could recite without hitch. Not to mention, the experience brought old school memories back.

                                                                 

I expected the initiative to be an eye-opener for students, something that would elicit our opinions on tobacco control and assess us on our ingenuity to think BEYOND the obvious! That is what most college level initiatives are supposed to be.

Alas! The school-headmasterly clichéd mindsets were hard to change, I realized – in fact, when I communicated the above views to the Director present there, he told me, “Everyone has copied the essay from the internet, so this interview is actually gauging how much you have actually retained” – he enunciated as if he was on the lookout of worthy parrots who could recite dates, figures and facts.

Strangely, at my interview I was told in candid words – ‘Miss Kaur, let me congratulate you at the outset because you are the only candidate who has written the entire essay by herself – rest all, as we have read, are fascimiles’

I felt as if I had bumped into a wrong place, being congratulated for the mere fact that I had composed an essay of my own and not through a ‘Ctrl C - Ctrl V’ act!

As it turned out in the end, the interview had greater weightage in the sum total i.e. factual rote learning was given credit over ingenuity and people who had shamelessly copied stuff and signed their names off it, were crowned as the 'best'.

What I argue here, is that the parameters taken into account compromised justice. Different people can give differential weights to different parameters - but the same if revealed beforehand in a transparent manner, can confer greater likelihood on the fairness of decisions.

I participated in my first British Parliamentary style of debate in my class 12 at school. The thing I liked the most here was the way in which adjudication was done. After the candidates were done, the judges would come to the podium and justify - 'you get x credits since you mentioned a, b, c, and d arguments which no other contestant could refute'. And usually the credits would be proportional to the number of arguments so that the question of subjectivity would not crop in. Each argument thus was given a default weightage of 1. An additional defense of the argument could attract another brownie point.

From a variety of experiences, I guess it would not be wrong to conclude that injustice happens behind closed doors, windows and curtains. It is corrupt practices specifically which undermine the fairness of decisions taken - be it in the bureaucracy too. The reason why people protest against corruption is that it compromises proportionate rewards to an individual for his effort and levies undue penalties on those who do not even deserve them - say waiting in line for days to get a simple work done in a public office.

And that is why RTI is so dear to us. It makes things transparent, makes the stakeholders conscious of public gaze and ensures speedy and effective justice. :)

Election fever

This short visit to Punjab was a novel experience. Had a chance to see some live campaigning by candidates from parties of all shades.

Attending a GD at the head office of Sukriet, a local NGO – I had a chance to engage into conversation with a PPP candidate from my constituency. I had a high view of the People’s Part of Punjab – not because it was headed by a Stephanian but because of the fiscal consolidation policies that I supported. I have been critical of excessive populist subsidies to large farmers back home – I call them populist because the subsidies do not serve a definitive purpose, I still get to see huge disturbing statistics of farmer suicides in a quick scan of the Ludhiana Tribune. Subsidies like humans should be mortal and should have a limited life span during the course of which a community can be supported and brought to a requisite starting line.

And so this short one-to-one meeting with the PPP candidate turned out to be flip-flop as the candidate ducked questions, knew little about the economy of Punjab as  a whole, and turned out to be someone who had joined the party just because no body else would give him a ticket because of nepotism within other long established parties.

The Story of A Driving License

"A simulator? Wow!"

I look at my friend wide eyed as she spells forth her experience of applying for a driving license.
She tells me how she was instructed to drive a perfect 'eight' on the road and was tested for her knowledge of road signs and that she was even made to drive on a simulator.

That is how things work in Bangalore, and in Hyderabad as another friend tells me.

Guess how it works in Ludhiana?

On a chilly winter morning, I accompany my dad to the Mini Secretariat. There is a new Suvidha Centre at the furnished place with a line of window counters. The system is efficient - you get allotted to a window number from outside, you seat yourself on the elegant bench and watch the Plasma TV screen while waiting for your token number to appear on the little red neon board above the window.

Your number appears, you get up and submit your documents, the DTO - probably experienced in the art of physiognomy looks at you and signs on your papers which say ''This person is found fit for driving and has cleared the driving test."

You pose in front of the webcam, you sign on the swanky electronic signature device and there...its done!

And there I got a call from my dad last week, ''We just received your driving license by post!" Just on time - you receive the laminated card.

No tests, no simulators, no screening - probably you'd call it a hassle-free system, but yeah at the end of the day - I miss the simulator.

"Ludhiana roads must be really unsafe then -- with such people driving?", my friend asks me after hearing that little tale.

"Hmmm...not really, I guess - Its the Darwinian survival of the fittest that makes all of us move on the Ludhiana roads..."

Afterthoughts

Probably I can write a blog every day at 9.35 am since this is the time I am flushed with all sorts of emotions - anger, rage, sadness, helplessness and a desire to turn all of them productive. 

                                                          

Ms Poonam Kalra had told us the first day, how this paper - Indian Economic Development since 1947 is a very pessimistic paper. It loads you with all the data and gruesome figures and facts about what all is wrong with Indian economy. Unfortunately, it does not provide any solutions, because YOU are expected to look for the solutions.

Solutions, I don’t have to even attempt to start thinking of them – I’m taught in a way that rouses the rebel in me…and solutions have to be crafted by none other than the youth.

This morning’s lecture was about comparative growth and development analysis of states within India. We set out to identify the reasons why Kerala and a state like Himachal Pradesh outperformed every other state. Two reasons that stood out apart from education was provision of PUBLIC UTILITIES and PUBLIC ACTION as an essential democratic process. Democracy, as I see, is not only about going to Ramlila Grounds and protesting with the crowd. There is much more relevance at the individual rather than collective level. How an individual deals with corruption at his level, when HE is faced with a bribing officer is the real test. Does he protest, does he raise his voice, does he use the public facilities, does he report, does he complain to the police, does he sting the scene or does he passively acquiesce and pay the bribe as a one-time quick fix solution?

What lacks in most states is this ability to protest.

I remember how heavenly excited I was when Mam Kochhar, my political science teacher had introduced in those powerful, soul-stirring words the chapter on RIGHTS in the constitution.

‘I have a RIGHT to something!’ and she had banged the desk and enunciated in a very demanding tone– I had never encountered such a bold description of the Articles 19 to 22.

The fact that people are not aware what to do, when they are faced with injustice lies at the core! The complexity of the procedures, the multiple levels of hierarchy end up making ‘justice seeking’ a time consuming and inefficient process.