Life @ India's Biggest IPO Issuer

Let me begin this post by telling you what this post is not intending to do. This post is not an attempt to increase the stock price of Coal India Limited (CIL), which has been on a decline for a while. I am confident that there are capable people in the company to take care of that. This post is also not an attempt to romanticize the colony life, so that those who have not enjoyed it yet feel jealous of me. This is an attempt to bring forward the little things that makes life at a colony (right in the middle of a forest, sometimes), livable and the best one could have in his/her life. And if you are asking what is the need of this post at this time? Well, you can guess that i have got nothing better to do and my MTS is rocking!!!

Well, lets begin with where the life starts. Right at the birth. In India, the social prestige one is going to enjoy in his life is decided by the caste in which one is born. In CIL colonies, it depends on the post of the father in which one is born. You are a General Manager's child, you are right at the top of the hierarchy. You are an engineer's child, you are somewhere in the middle of the hierarchy. And god forbid, if you are a worker's child, you'll have to work very hard to know your hierarchy. Thinking of it, i remember how i came to know about my caste details only in standard tenth when i had to fill up the board exam form. I had a feeling i belong to the warrior clan of the Gupta's (of the Chandragupta Maurya fame) as my surname sounded in tune with them. So to hear that my forefathers were not these brave fighters but those (smart) businessmen was a shock initially. However, this just shows how your colony hierarchy supersedes every other hierarchy atleast in the mind of children.

Another interesting aspect was the selection of tuition classes for your subjects. Since the colonies are, most of the times, located away from cities, you need to find someone to teach you the tougher subjects in the colony itself. You see, parents dont want to take the risk of sending their children outside the colony and thus contaminating them from the OTHER SIDE (read people outside the colony). So you do a search for the right class. And the criteria being. Yes, you are right. The number of girls attending the classes. It gave you a tremendous opportunity to increase the number of belts you receive on the Friendship Day.

Then there were the weekend Club Days on Saturday nights. With all the aunties busy playing Howzie (Lotto tickets) and uncles busy in discussing the break down of shovels and dumpers, it was a tremendous opportunity for us (read boys and girls) to gel together and play some cool games. The best being Lappan Chuppan (Hide and Seek).

Of course, one thing which surpassed all these was the excitement on the day of some important results. The whole colony came to congratulate you as if you have won some big amount in KBC (or if compared to the current hot shot - you have got a date with Dolly Bindra). Those are the moments you cherish for your lifetime.

Those were some days!!! Times have changed now. And so has the colony life. People spend more time on FB then meeting and playing with their friends. The charm and excitement of Club Days has also taken a back seat courtesy Bigg Boss and its inmates. The good old Ambassador and Maruti 800 has been replaced by some swanky new cars -- Volkswagen, Swift Dezire, Honda City et al. However, there is a umbilical cord that still binds the people residing there. And that is their belongingness of this great organisation called Coal India Limited. And this is the cord that will keep them binded for the rest of their lives.

So all you people who have invested in CIL and feel apprehensive about its future, take a chill pill and change the channel from CNBC (from where you will get some nerve recking analysis of CIL future) to NDTV GOOD TIMES (guess why?).

Thanks for your patience :)

IHLS -- The review (Part 1)

Well, there are no blogs on this forum for so long and im waiting for the clock to strike 6 so that i can begin my long journey back to the IRMA hostel. What can be a better combination to put on some random words which are hovering on the mind for a long period of time. Im a movie buff and had been since my mummy stopped changing my nappies. I still remember deabting with my good friend Lokesh the pros and cons of classics like Pyaasa, Kaagaz ke phool etc and dissecting every detail that we could think of. Those were some days!!!
I think thats enough self boasting for the time. To cut the long story short, writing a film review was on my mind for a very long time and today i have gathered enough courage to start with it. First of all, since you have decided to read this post, let me give a piece of my mind as to what a review should ideally be like. I feel that the review should ideally be about... the film! Some of the reviewers tend to diverge into unrelated matters while reviewing the film and try to connect past performances of the lead actors and their personal lfe to their current performances. Then there is the cost-benefit analysis the reviewers do before they publish the reviews on varoius medius. The comparison of the cost of hurting a very big producer/director whose work may not match his previous standards vs the benefit of getting into the good books of an incredibly lavish producer/director who could help the reviewer enjoy a nice weekend trip with his wife at chinchpokli/alibaug with all the facilities may force a reviewer to be mild in his/her criticisms for a film. And then there is always personal biases which hamper the truthfuless of the film reviews.
Well....i think a siren has souded somewhere and someone said in his typical baritone voice "Samay samapti ki ghosna" . This means the time has come to take leave and hurry up before my queen leaves me alone. If you are guessing something fishy, its gujarat queen i am taking about. My second home for the last 40 days. I will finish the rest of the blog at IRMA and try to present an unbiased view about the movie IHLS. Till then (if anyone still has the patience to read this), GOOD DAY!!!

Re-evaluating Ourselves

Its been a long time since I have been wanting to discuss some things and finally get some time to do so.
Last week was particularly hectic with all those MC and MM presentations. We got our grades for our MC presentations and I do not know why, but groups from Section B got poorer grades than groups from Section A. Only that this time, there weren't any mails written or long discussions about partiality and cheating as were done in HRM.
Is it that mails are written and faculty approached only when they care to hear us out thinking we have some genuine concerns. Just because Prof Nivedita Kothiyal would listen to our concerns and react, we would send her long mails while Prof K.V Raju or so many others wouldn't even care to listen.
I do not wish to pass judgements on whether students in section A (or B) cheat or not. Nor am I saying complaining against such acts is wrong.


All that I wish to say, is that we be more liberal and care to listen each other out before taking such steps or accusing one another. We label our faculty as great and what not, but do we really practice what they teach (or preach) when it really matters?
I wouldn't think so, especially after what I have been seeing in the last few months (especially in Jatra)!   

issues pestering me from quite sometime :-(

its hightime atleast to share with u on this platform n i'm happy for the same..

i dont and i cant really understand the ways things are going on..

can some1 make me understand the rationality behind grading some1 higher and giving some1 the worse?

grades r not the only concern now.. it surpassed many..

to be simple... crossed the threshold level.... :-((

main concern is:

does the rules of prm handbook applicable only to few?? (those who are not having the good image with the faculty??)

we often speak of level playin field and blah blah blah.. sustainable/equitable/equality & all the b.s..

is it only to the extent of speaking?? then wht is the need for all these things??

in the name of changin lives of rural ppl.. development....

every1 has his or her problems.. agreed.. but keep the issues and rewards equitable..

why the hell is some1 gettin undue advantage n why do some ppl suffer???

when some1 is in the position of influencin others and who is looked upon by many and holding some kind of power... shouldnt he justify the position he is holding?? shouldnt he be ethical??

i think this is hightime.. we introspect ourselves and other issues as well....

ps: i'm posting this only to vent out my anger.. no personal bias/issues/nor need any help(ofcourse cant xpect any)

only reason is to convey tht atleast try to follow wht u say or atleast try to..

Life@ whatever

As all MBA aspirants would do, I used to read a lot about IIMA aka WIMWI....And I didnt restrict it to merely the eye popping salaries they earned. It was the first year that interested me.
A lot of PGP students had written extensively about it and made it seem like hell. Average number of minutes slept was around 300,and similar statistics were bandied about. A lot of it was not really comparable or worthy similar to what is being done at IRMA (premier rural management institute....yeah...we dont compare ourselves with development institutions and vehemently deny being a management institute....so whom do we compare ourselves with??? :))
What is official is the number of case studies these guys do.300 in the first year and 250 in the second year. And a full case is something that I have read (IIMA is the academic mother of IRMA, NDDB being the financial father....pardon my gender insensitivity at making the money giving institute the father)...And if we extend the amount of time required to read the stuff, analyse it and then present it in the class 5 hours of daily sleep is something that seems believable.
I loved the feeling of being pushed to the wall.I felt the same would happen at IRMA...But alas....
All I saw was tacit agreements on going easy, quizzes being postponed and so on and so forth....
The faculty seems resigned to the fact this batch is like NAIRU...no use pushing it...and we have happily accepted that fact...
The academic rigour has been diluted...I fear...And everyone has to be blamed for it.

The one with all the sarcasm! :P

~In reply to some post, and its subsequent comment ;)

Straight and bitter are two separate words and need not always be conjuncted by an 'and'. you can talk straight without being bitter.

'Not being rude' doesnt directly imply you trying to be among the 'IN'-crowd either. 'Sugarcoating' sucks no doubt, but dude, there's a line that has to be drawn everywhere.

another misconception is that sarcasm is equivalent to bitterness.. what i understand of sarcasm is 'bringing out the irony' in a critical way.. note that being critical, being rhetorical, or being ironical are not the same as being bitter..

and trust me, even though it may "act as a stress-buster" for you, it does no good to the person who your 'bitter' sarcasm is aimed at!

theres nothing 'un-cooler' than getting in a group and trying to pelt all your s**t at one person to vent your frustration.. it may take any form.. for example there's nothing to be proud of your feat when 6 guys get together in a classroom, and do everything possible not to let some random guy speak at all, just because y dont like him!

one might come across as the hero then, but actually, he's far from it !

P.S. neither do i vow to drop my sarcasm, nor do i aim to please more people with what i speak, but getting rid of some of the harshness would definitely go a long way.. :P

Sarcasm..No More

A better friend at IRMA told me how I was not doing any good with my sarcasm. And with the prospect of my folks coming to IRMA at convocation and being introduced to fellow participants who would not number more than ten as friends made me think twice on this issue.
At the same time this conversation was being played out on IP, on another IP pop up I received a thumbs up on a sarcastic comment made on a friend outside the mess this evening. I had trouble recalling the incident. But when I did, I realised it was not meant to be a statement worth remembering..But someone did. And the advice did make sense.
Sarcasm somehow is addictive. So addictive that I walked into my Dad's hospital room immediately post his operation and joked how the next time it would be clean bowled and straight to the top for him...No intermediaries in the form of doctors.
Well, I guess its a comma if not a full stop to my sarcasm at IRMA.
Made enough people crib about it..
The stage is all yours Uphar (That was the last bit of sarcasm)!!!!
Adios

C K Prahalad

C K Prahalad was one of the few Indians who made a mark in the area of management science in the last century. He was along with Pankaj Ghemawat and Sumantra Ghoshal, the few Indians who were at the forefont of management science.
While he was always acknowledged as one of the top most management thinkers, what made him transcend the management field and be acknowledged as a great thinker was his seminal book "Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits".
Incidentally, this book was the first management book that I read five years back. The case that impressed me the most was the ITC e-choupal case. Funny that I am now writing this blog at a time when I am studying in an institution whose alumnus is responsible for creating the e-choupal revolution.
It is indeed a great loss to the field of management science. But ideas last longer than the man himself.
And Prahalad's ideas of "core competency" and "the BOP magic" will live on and help managers to demystify the complex environment in which they operate.

Ambedkar Jayanti

Good Morning IRMA. Woke up early today.HOLIDAY ! wow.. hard as it is to come by,useless it goes by..Dont know what is the matter with these HOL'(Y)DAYS that the more you procrastinate the work to be done then,quicker they will vanish :-(
If one day that has more irony attached to it than independence day is Ambedkar Jayanti. Long after he decided to stand up for collective voice of the silent majority,little would his departed soul known that the 'collective' itself was more of a 'Federation' than 'co-op' {as we IRMANS know better :-) } . His conversion antics failed to move the rock of Gibraltar they call Varna system in India. Reservations did help initially but like Jinnah/Savarkar's two nation theory, this also failed to work as a war cry for oppressed many to get fair deal out of oppressing few , or at least "SUSTAINABLY" :)

Several subdivisions within them and amongst all other religions also have contributed to this . With each divided sect wanting the biggest slice of the cake for itself. Little would they have known that this(reservation) was to be the 'trial solution' for 20 odd years.

With even the 'enlightened few' gonna be "rural managers" divided on the caste/linguistic lines... no end seems in sight..

Convocation Time For Seniors

today gonna be my first convocation ..Actually its convocation time for seniors and i will be der as a volunteer :).... And i missed my graduation convocation....So Freely enlisted for the service u see :)... And I invariably say YES to these services most of the times...We had a mock drill 2 days back where in DPM referred to some incident involving Jairam Ramesh during IIFM convocation recently where in he called wearing Convocation gowns as "Barbaric colonial relics" and "Medieval Vicars and Popes ".........I wonder what is so barbaric abt wearing Gowns and making perplexing statements... And in DPMs words IRMA's convocation stands for SIMPLICITY and GRACE and we all be witness to it tomorrow morning....May be we should have called Jairam Ramesh and perhaps he would have been proud of our practice :)

Getting it on cyber space

Yeah, so my dear friend Uphar generated this idea of creating a blog for dialogue.....
So wat used to be confined to IP and hopefully was transient (unless as the conspiracy theorists think all our IP is monitored by the faculty.....hell, most of them dont even know our names) is now out in the open and google will keep it here for perpetuity.
Funny that people who live within a hundred metres of each other have to log in to google and share, discuss issues and hopefully wash dirty linen in public (wont that shoot up the hits on the blog!!!!)
good luck and I am pretty optimistic that this blog will not run its course as envisaged by the idea generator!!!
ciao!!!

thanks...

thanks Abhijith for inviting...

hi

hi there