Saraswathi molested

A couple of years ago I was on a train to Pune. The era saw the world slipping into an economic recession and the markets growing increasingly volatile. The ‘economists’ and the media pacified the public that all will be over in a couple of years. The MBA colleges saw a great opportunity amidst the doom. The PR teams went around convincing the confused young graduates to drop in whatever they had been doing now and jump into the bandwagon. By the time the dark clouds pass over in two years, there would be huge MNCs waiting to whisk them off. As if the marketing wasn’t enough, the course fee was hiked and so were the application fee, which was nearly doubled.

The confused and the idiots like me were not bothered by the four digit application fee and the seven digit tuition fee. We were blinded by the huge pay packet we would be earning before the end of two years.

So here was a mad group of young people applying for any exam they could find, going for the applications and waiting for the results. The extent to which these scrupulous elements would go was obvious by the fact that the last date for application was even before the announcement of results of written examination. Even the second graded colleges made a cool 50 crores before the students were even selected for admission.

One fine day I get a mail from Symbiosis institute for Management (SIM). They were planning to collaborate with Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) into churning out successful financial experts. The best part was the selected would be absorbed into SCB at the end of the course. Still the fees weren’t monstrous too. I fell into the trap and frantically prepared for the trip.

It was the peak of the season and the tickets weren’t easy to get. I managed to find for myself a train no one would dare travel. The reason being it crossed through five states in India before reaching Pune, that too at the peak of the summer. I was assembled with a curious group of travellers. A fat lady who threatened to give me wet dreams with her huge cleavage, a spiritualist who had some strange kind of theories and a benevolent old couple. I alighted into the station suffering from a bug, thanks to the ‘train food’.

After some difficulty I managed to find the campus. Exhausted, I waited in the lobby for my turn. There was a constant stream of hot girls and cool boys walking past. I dreamed of roaming around here soon, spotting a beard and looking hot.

It was a pleasant surprise to know during the interview about the ‘contents of the course’ . I was expected to do a theory class for the first four months followed by the practicals. The practical consisted of selling off SCB products to the people of Pune. I pictured myself roaming around the hot ans\d dusty Pune trying to sell products of an unknown bank to strangers, meanwhile living on a meager stipend. I walked out of the room fuming.

The last week I came across a guy in Kurtha asking my help to draw a DD worth lakhs. I was intrigued and asked him the reason.

‘IIM Rohthak’

I haven’t heard of the place and there was an IIM in it.

The guy told me there were about 10 IIMs now with a couple about to begin. Our government is hell bent on educational inclusion and is starting up IIMs even in the unheard of places. But there is no question of inclusion when it comes to fees. The fees are on par with the costliest ones. The government has gone a step ahead and doubled the available seats.

The flooding of IIMs have totally devalued the value of the MBA course and warns us the prospective downfall. These guys today vie for jobs with which they cannot even repay the loan!

The faculty position has become the ideal hunting ground for the ego bloated, useless professors. They get in through some backdoor and then take it as a part of job to teach the outdated stuff. My bro once eagerly downloaded a virtual lecture of a famed professor. Ten minutes into it he learnt with horror that the Professor was merely narrating some passages from a text book.

When we threw out MF Hussain alleging he insulted the Godesses through our painting we had been literally doing it.