Placement Diaries- Day -1

Day -1 Indus Insights
Test- Written, mix of DI and LR.
Process- Guestimate interview, Case study, HR

After a long and grilling semester, topped by a sequence of events including the end term examinations and CAT, followed almost immediately by daily placement tests, and the whole process of moving to Roorkee from Saharanpur(that last bit was a rather nice change of scene) my first interview shortlist was at Indus Insights, a consulting firm. The test was conducted en-masse in the Convocation Hall, of all places, and there was no Pre Placement Talk to tell us anything about the company. There were three company representatives dressed impeccably in formals, and who seemed to take themselves very seriously. The test was conducted with the same seriousness, and one thing strongly in my memory is the steady and confident crunching sounds made by the company representatives’ shoes as they marched purposefully back and forth, to ensure a fair administering of the test.

 This firm was notorious for having a reputation of recruiting hardly anybody. After some decent preparation for the guesstimates, things were complicated by the test schedule for Snapdeal coming out on the same day as the interview. The Snapdeal test was a 12 minute test (cue raised eyebrows) scheduled at 8.00 am. And my Indus Insights interview was in the first slot- 8.45 am to 9 45 am. 

Getting up in the morning at 7 in the winter is rather unpleasant in itself. Having to bathe and get dressed in the cold, with the thought of the a back to back test and interview on your mind, then, is best described by a variety of adjectives that I cannot use here. The bruise of the experience was somewhat tempered by the effect of pulling on my armor for the battle. There is something about the business suit that exudes confidence and authority, and recognizing this fact is a big confidence boost for the wearer as well. An interview is rather like a joust of minds, and to stand your ground it is essential to be as properly equipped as your opponent is.

Following this, I rushed to the Computer Center for the exam right on time. The Computer Center was locked. Yes, the exam was scheduled at 8.00 am, but the center was still locked at that time. Surely, it would only be a couple of minutes delayed? After a rather tense half hour of waiting, I was able to give the test which had around 50 easy questions. Buoyed by the confidence of acing the test, I ran to the TPO where the interviews were scheduled by around 9 am, fearing I was late, only to find that the company officials had not even arrived yet. I was soon to realize that this pattern of sloppiness and outrageous delays was routine in the placement process.

Ultimately I ended up waiting not for an hour or two, but until 1 30 in the noon, as other people who had to give the Flipkart Software test were prioritized ahead of me. Before the interview, our group was made to sit apart in a conference room at the TPO. All phones were kept outside, and we were asked to finish our interviews, collect our things, and leave immediately.

After the long wait, I was led to the interview room by an alumnus of our college, a man whose long hair and trimmed beard somehow went well with the business suit he wore. The interviewer was a tall, bespectacled intelligent looking young man. We shook hands, and he apologized for the delay. Then, very elegantly, he explained to me that we were going to go through a guestimate, which we would be solving together in a conversation, adding the caveat that of course, he would be constantly judging me. I was to think aloud and make it a conversation.

The question was to estimate the revenues of the Taj Hotel group in India. It was a rather straightforward question, which I approached in a pretty effective way- I had prepared for guestimates and case studies from the book Case In Point and the Internet earlier.
I estimated the revenue from the supply side, by considering the total number of hotels, the rooms per hotel, the different classes of rooms, the occupancy rates in different months, and also the income from the restaurants. The interviewer was extremely encouraging, ‘uh-huh’-ing all my statements. In hindsight, where I erred was in being quite untidy in my approach-it’s important for a consultant to be organized-and also leaving out revenue that could be earned from parties and functions organized at the hotels.

 Because of the untidiness, I struggled to add up the multiple components. Finally the interviewer noted down the value I got just for the rooms. I did not manage to calculate the final compiled figure. The last thing asked to me was for any other sources of income not considered in the model- bonus points for creative thoughts! I mentioned catering services which would add up in the restaurant revenue, and revenue from tie-ups with tourist organizations, which the interviewer duly noted, but could not come up with anything else. The interview lasted for around 15 minutes.

Upon leaving, I went back to my room for a quick rest. The results arrived soon, at around 3 in the afternoon, and I discovered I had not been shortlisted. Relieved to some extent- I was exhausted- I began preparing for my interview at EXL, another consulting firm, for which I had a day free to prepare.

I heard a little bit about the further stages of the process for Indus Insights later, and the feedback I received confirmed the rumors that they were very picky-in fact they gave a distinct impression of wanting to hire candidates who could go straight in and start doing the job, and not just those with potential, as evidenced by their stringent judgment of the candidates who made it to the second, comprehensive case study round. 

Thank God for exams!

Thank God for exams- no, seriously, thank God for exams! This assertion might seem to fly in the face of the general opinion, but it is valid, nonetheless.
It is said that routine is lethal- now, one may not completely agree with this statement, and rightly so, since routine is essential to manage all the different things one wishes to do, in the time available. However, the statement is correct to the extent that routine makes time seem to run faster. This may perhaps be explained by the fact that life becomes predictable, once you know, more or less, exactly what you will be doing at a certain time of the day. Predictability therefore makes each day seem the same, so that it seems as though time is not really passing, but repeating itself. It takes a shake-up, a change in routine, to really make us realize that time, is in fact passing, and oftentimes passing us by.
It is here that I believe exams play a vital role. Exams shake up our regular schedule starting at least a week prior to their beginning. Now, while the extent of time spend revising varies, one week before exams is the time it enters the public consciousness that a significant event that requires preparation is coming soon. Some might start preparing at this time, others might look for notes and material, and still others might have started prior to this, but the fact remains that the average student's schedule undergoes a significant change at this time.
Now, once the routine is disrupted, we sit down at our tables and open, often for the first time, our books. It is here that the second significant benefit of exams is felt. Clear of all distractions, and petty sources of procrastination, free of our electronic masters for once, our minds are freed. It is akin to a pond that is very muddy and dark during the long monsoon, but one fine day when the rain clears up, the sediment is allowed to settle, and the water becomes clear. Through this clear perspective, we are able to come to terms with some of the thoughts that were swimming around, unseen but nagging. For once, we get time to think, and sort out our thoughts.We remember what we meant to do when the year began, and what we have or have not done. The things which have fallen by the wayside are picked up and dusted off, and restored to their intended position.
Conversely, this process is also comparable to the churning of the sea of milk in Hindu mythology. Just as the churning of the sea of milk threw up great wonders, exam time is when most of us are at our most creative. We have wonderful ideas during this period, about things we want to do, poems we want to write, or words we want to say.
The last most important thing about exams is the fact that they better help us appreciate and enjoy the simple joys of college life- the movies we see, the parties we attend or the clubs we work in, are nothing special when done on an excessive basis, but after the high pressure situation of exams, these are extra sweet.

What is the key takeaway from all this? It is perhaps that we should, once a week, break off our schedule, sit down, away from all distractions, and simply take some time to think. This could help us in a hugely significant way.

The Telangana issue and its eerie resemblance to the Partition of India

A much quoted adage is that history tends to repeat itself. While the veracity of such a statement in our complex world seems doubtful, every once in a while we do come across an example which reaffirms it.

The Partition of India was a painful event in our nation's history. A comparison to Telangana seems fallacious at first glance, but there are quite a few eerie parallels, as demonstrated herein:-

1) The call for a separate homeland- The first basic similarity, is that the partition was preceded by a 'Pakistan Movement'. The struggle for Telangana has been christened the Telangana movement.

2) The leader who switched sides- Jinnah was once a Congressman. He was forced out because he disagreed with Gandhi's methods of civil disobedience, resigning because he felt that the Congress had no space for Muslims. Further, he decided to go all out for Pakistan only after the Congress refused to form Coalitions with the League after the 1936 Elections. In a similar manner, K.C. Rao was once a member of the T.D.P. , a supporter of United Andhra. He resigned after being denied a Cabinet seat, claiming that there was no scope for people from Telangana to get influential posts in a United Andhra Pradesh. 

3)The legacy of a lost empire- The major factor leading to Partition was that the Mughal Empire had once ruled over large swathes of India.The Muslim community that had once ruled  felt insecure once it was out of power. Further the skills and education acquired under the Mughals became irrelevant under the British.The community began to lag behind. The Mughal Empire and its glory were cultural rallying points for the supporters of Pakistan
Likewise, the Telangana region was once part of the Hyderabad princely state, which acceded to the Union after the so called Police Action by India in 1948. The educated populace conducted business in Urdu, which, again became irrelevant after annexation. The peasants of the region had risen up, under the CPI, in a rebellion from 1946 to 1951. These peasants historically felt oppressed by the landlords who were mostly from Coastal Andhra. There was an alliance of interests between the Asafjahis who ruled politically and the Hindu landlords and merchants who ruled financially. It is a shadow of this same resentment that is seen today against people from coastal Andhra, who own a huge amount of property in Hyderabad. The differences in culture too, relate to the fact that they were once part of Hyderabad state, and not Madras province.

4) The call to recognize cultural differences- Jinnah claimed in his Pakistan resolution that the Muslim and Hindu communities, which were so alien to each other that they could not even interdine, were in fact separate nations.Today the people of Telangana, too say that they have a different cultural heritage and history.There are vast differences in linguistic accent, culture, customs, food habits, festivals and even the deities they worship.

5)Excellent use of fear psychosis- In the late 1930s the Muslim League launched a massive campaign against the Congress, claiming that the Congress was discriminating against Muslims and Muslim culture. KCR uses the fact that Telangana region is economically backward as an instrument to rally people to the cause, talking of slavery and suppression by the people of Andhra.

6) Political vacuum and chaos- In 1939, World War 2 broke out. The Congress ministries resigned in protest. Later, when the Quit India movement was launched, the entire Congress leadership was jailed.
The Muslim League filled the political vacuum and launched a renewed struggle for Pakistan.
Y.S.R. , the popular leader of the Congress in A.P., died in a helicopter crash in 2009. In the ensuing chaos, the ruling Congress was weakened as YSR's son broke away from the party(He was later jailed on a corruption charge). The TRS took the chance to reiterate the Telangana demand in a major way.

7)Bone of contention- In the case of British India, Punjab and Bengal provinces were the provinces with nearly equal Hindu-Muslim populations. Ultimately they were partitioned, with the biggest cities-Lahore in Punjab and Calcutta in Bengal, being major points of contention, both communities having major stakes in them.Today Hyderabad is a major bone of contention, for very similar reasons.

8)Chaos in legislature-  At the time of Partition, parties refused to cooperate with each other, leading to widespread chaos and even separate sessions for separate groups.Compare that to the chaos in the AP assembly, as well as the pepper spray incident in parliament.

What's different?- Ultimately the creation of Telangana is the bifurcation of a State. Both states will remain within the Union of India. Thus the mass migration that marked Partition will definitely not occur. Also, there thankfully has been no violence perpetrated by either of the groups on the other. However it remains to be seen how the people from the two new states will treat each other after division.

Ragging vis-a-vis the Stanford Prison Experiment

Ragging vis-a-vis the Stanford Prison Experiment

It has been far too long since I wrote anything, and perhaps the thought has been nagging at me from within for quite a while now, although my mind, distracted by several other things, failed to notice the persistent tug on its sleeve by this particular one. Things finally came to a head when I, not understanding why myself, shunned company and shut myself up in my room, with a feeling of having left some task unfinished, the specifics of which came to me only after a night of sleep.

Moving on then, from personal notes of self-indulgence, the purpose of this post is to discuss the parallels between the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment(SPE) and the phenomenon of Ragging.

The SPE, conducted by Dr. Zimbardo, aimed at studying prison conditions, and the behavior of prisoners and prison guards. A mock prison environment was created, and guards and prisoners briefed. What emerged was a shocking degree of conformity by the participants to the roles assigned to them. Guards became sadistic and mentally harassed prisoners who broke discipline. Prisoners became either docile or rebellious, and came to accept the treatment of the guards. One prisoner had a mental breakdown and had to be released early.

For a general overview of the same,  go through

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

Now, the SPE demonstrated the phenomenon of de-individuation- a process where an individual loses his uniqueness and blends in with the social conditions he is put in. In simpler terms this is the mob mentality, documented by Shakespeare in Julius Caesar. The mob acquires a life of its own, the individual views no longer matter, everyone is carried along in the flood of opinion. This is also observed in incidents of brutality like lynching and gang-rape.

Now, notice the similarity with ragging. Ragging occurs in colleges, when students arrive as freshers and are subjected to humiliation and activities leading to mental distress, sometimes even extending to physical assault. The point to note here is that the groups are arbitrarily decided- outside of the college environment, the raggers and the ragged are separated only by a year of age, and often less than that! Once they are in the environment however, the juniors automatically become docile and submissive, and consent to the orders put forward by the seniors, although they know perfectly well that the seniors have no authority over them. A social system is created which encourages the seniors to be authoritarian and even cruel to the juniors, and the juniors to be submissive to this. Everyone is distressed by the kind of experience they undergo, however, the level of opposition is extremely limited.

It is also amazing to note how normal, good natured young people turn into seemingly sadistic monsters, putting juniors through several creative forms of humiliation. It is also striking that the very perpetrators of the act were, less than a year before, victims of the same themselves. While the practice has been outlawed by the Supreme Court, those who complain are penalized by being ostracized from campus life. While the practice seems to be dying out, it is certainly dying a slow death, showing how powerful social pressures and structures can be, even when they go against simple logic and reason.

Perhaps a deeper investigation into ragging would assist us in better understanding the infinitely more complex social issues, of which there is no dearth in our nation.

On the dual nature of Emotions

On the dual nature of Emotions

We’ve all heard of the philosophical theories which tell us that there are positive and negative emotions. At a very simple level, emotions like happiness, confidence, and kindness seem to be, de facto, positive- by this it is implied that these emotions have an inherent quality which ensures that the possessors of the mentioned or those who interact with the possessors of these will be benefited in one or the other way. Of course, on the other hand, we have their direct opposites- sorrow, depression, and malice, considered negative. However, it is my personal observation that few things are black and white. Every case is unique-circumstances, background and results all play a part in the final judgment. It might seem ludicrous to suggest that this applies to emotions. How can sorrow be positive? It can, in the case where it is channeled into something productive. The Taj Mahal, was, ultimately, a product of sorrow. Yes the sorrow stemmed from love, but love is a condition, rather than a simple emotion. Had Shah Jahan allowed his sorrow to reduce him into a dejected and inefficient ruler, had he turned to excessive drink and jeopardized the running of the empire, then that sorrow would have been a negative emotion. Now you must be thinking-‘Come on, happiness is always positive, right?’- wrong! Happiness definitely makes you feel good; but I can give you quite a few cases when being happy is definitely a negative emotion. What if you are happy about the miseries of another? What if your happiness is a meaningless thing, a gaudy veil that you use to cover up the reality of the rotting cadavers that are your deficiencies, a drug you use to excuse yourself of your inability to succeed? Then it is but an illusion, something which pulls you back, deceives you- a negative influence, then!  Everything is relative. It would be easy now, to extend the analogy to the other emotions. I do not bore you with them.

Every emotion, then is like a thread handed to us by life. It is how we embroider them into the tapestry of life that in the end affects the overall beauty of that tapestry. You might not like the color of a thread individually, but the whole is more than the sum of the parts. That same color, set in the backdrop of the other colors of your life-tapestry, woven properly, in the right direction and design, will always give you a beautiful whole.

Detachment is cited by many as the path to emotional equilibrium. However, from personal experience, too much of detachment can lead to too much of contentment- yes, there is such a thing! This is particularly in the context of the Advaita theory. If you can accept the fact that all is one, and all is God, it makes everything seem so trivial and meaningless. This of course, can lead you into trouble, handled improperly. It did, for me, when as a JEE student, I never had much motivation to strive harder! Perhaps I did not follow the philosophy in a proper way. Perhaps true detachment does not mean lack of action, a loose and weak construction of the tapestry, but the strength of will to see the tapestry as a whole, to acknowledge with an impartial and critical eye the beauties and defects of it, and to direct the emotional strings which emerged in a productive and optimal way. Perhaps, but it is certainly very difficult to mix karma(action) with complete detachment. Everything in moderation!

Then the way forward seems to be a strategic use of detachment when there is no profit to be gained in being emotionally involved, and to indulge in a careful dipping of toes in emotion when detachment seems to be stalling your progress. Then, pick an emotion to serve your need- and you will find that, when it comes to achieving a goal, the so called negative emotions are actually your best friends. Of course, have the maturity to direct these emotions inward! Get angry at yourself- beat your lazy inner self into action, scold yourself! Make sure you really feel downhearted and depressed after a failure- direct that sorrow towards creating an urgent recovery plan. Within bounds, be jealous of others, again in a positive way- feel bad that you lack some good quality they have, and ask yourself what you can do to attain that.

Perception and reaction are everything. In a final summary that is rather cliché; Be the master of your emotions, do not let them be your masters!

It's all Greek to me!

The phrase, “it’s all Greek to me”-courtesy (as are several other phrases in English) William Shakespeare-is often used to indicate that one did not comprehend something. Greek was widely perceived as a tough and incomprehensible language-the main reason being that it had relatively little similarity to any other European language, which in the main stemmed from the Latin spoken by the Romans. Owing to recent heated debates in our humanities class about the Indian education system and its various defects, as well as about the cultural dilemma faced by every Indian today(with respect to language customs etc.),I could not help but notice a strange parallel in the aforesaid phrase with the problems of our education system.

 If you would pause for a moment and think, this very article is being written in English, a language which, for all its versatility and beauty,is after all an alien tongue, foisted upon us by the British rulers. Yes, we have produced Booker Prize winners like Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai, and yes, many Indians today speak impeccable English, but for the vast majority it represents a significant hurdle on their path to good education and understanding. The Indian education system has long been lambasted for its various flaws (such as emphasis on rote learning)-not always without reason.

However, if you think about it, the root cause of every single defect attributed to our education system is in some way linked with poor language skills! Everywhere in India, children learn at school a new language which seems in no way connected to their mother tongues. Then they proceed to learn all the basic lessons about the world in the new language which in most cases they did not learn properly. People raise up a hue and cry about having to “memorize” definitions. But what is a definition? -  It is something which is supposed to comprehensively summarize the meaning of something. Why then would someone have difficulty in rewriting a definition-unless the person did not understand it in the first place? Sometimes people criticize definitions for being in very tough and complex language-however, it is sometimes difficult to simplify things beyond a point without distorting the meaning somewhat. As the great Albert Einstein said-“Things must be made as simple as possible-but not simpler”. In fact the debate in the West is often about textbooks oversimplifying things and not achieving the ultimate purpose of the lesson.

Even if you accept that definitions are in tough language, is not the whole point of being taught at school, rather than teaching oneself from textbooks, that one may sufficiently understand what the definition means? If onedoes do that the next logical step would be just reproducing what you understood on the examination sheet. It need not be in the exact words given in the textbook. However that would require a reasonable vocabulary and skill in using the language-something which sadly most children lack today in India.

A common fear expressed by students by way of excuse is that the answer written in their own words might not be awarded full marks. Again this is either because of the inability of the student to write an answer in his/her own words without distorting the meaning or leaving out points or worse, because the person correcting the paper is not proficient enough in the language to interpret the answer as standing for the same concept explained in the textbook! This is a key point-the teachers of today are the students of yesterday and the victims of the same process! Thus this is a vicious cycle of successive generations having their knowledge acquirement process impaired by poor language skills. It is because both the examiners and the examined lack proficiency in the language that the culture of rote learning without emphasis on understanding has developed.

English is a foreign language with its very grammar and alphabet alien to Indians. Paradoxically, it is also the working language of the country. To investigate into this paradox would lead us to the legacy of the British Raj, as would the investigation into many modern Indian paradoxes, and would require another essay!

However, English is the modern global language. Removing English from its well-entrenched position in India would be retrogressive and astoundingly difficult. Does not then the best solution lie in embracing English and learning it as well as we can?

Vote for me now! Blogomania 2013