All posts by Priyatu

Civil Services, IAS

Sixth Pay Commission cometh…

Leave a comment

[ad]
Long years back, there was this Russian physician called Pavlov. He really loved his dog. He was especially fond of feeding it. Being grandiose, he would ring the bell each time he would feed his dog. This went on for a long time. Soon, the dog, ever the intelligent creature, learnt what the bell meant – it meant food. The moment the bell would ring, he would know food has arrived.1

One fine day the Indian Government recalled the Russian. The particular problem of Sarkar was that there were too many working for them. Of course Sarkar and the people loved to have so many servants working for them. But when payday came, the Sarkar started to get Parkinson’s.2 So, Sarkar got its own bell, like the Russian. He gave it a fancy name – he called it some pay…pay…pay what..ah…Pay Commission! That’s right. Every ten years, he would need a new bell. So far he has bought five. Sarkar tells us he is getting the sixth one.

[ad]
Now, Pay Commission is to the Babus what UPSC is to the civil service aspirants. And Pay Commission recommendation is like the UPSC final results. I recall a line from a short story I had read in my college years – “her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood”3. On the Budget Day the FM promised that the 6PC would bring out its award in about a month. Yeah, can you feel the blood rushing?

No, I don’t intend to bring out my own predictions. I would just like to point interested soul to a website that does a better job of tracking it. Go to:
http://sixpaycommission.blogspot.com/

[ad]
_____________________

  1. Stop. I was just joking. You can read the real story here.
  2. It’s not difficult to understand. Remember Amitabh Bachchan. Well, he was the Sarkar in one movie, and he started having Parkinson’s in another movie. The latter was on payday…Okay, that’s a PJ.
  3. Araby by James Joyce.

Technorati Tags: ,

Himachal, Photography

My First Panorama Picture

Leave a comment

[ad]
Manali Panorama

[Click on the image above to open Full Resolution image in New Window]
[ad]

Of course cadre means everything to an All India Service officer. Well, almost. Like what sort of bungalow you shall live in. How many ardalies shall call out your name, or whether any at all. What kind of wife you will find yourself with, and I don’t mean Homo sapiens sapiens. So, when I knew, or when I was told that I would be getting Himachal cadre (the latter of which was much earlier – apprehension dawned much before knowledge), I congratulated myself that my cadre and I are made for each other. After all, such an inveterate indolent specimen can hardly find refuge in the more hostile climes of the plains. Down below, literally. I always told myself, up shall I go. Much happened in between, and we shall have lots of occasion to go into that, but to cut a long story short, I went to Manali. It was a charming trip, and among the many unforgettable memories I carry shall be one of the glistening Pir Panjal and Dhauladhar, above the Beas basin, in Manali. At 10:30 PM I beheld a slice of what Longines long ago called ‘the sublime’. I beheld the sight, and the sight beheld me. I remember a charming line from James Joyce’s Araby: “her name was a summons to all my foolish blood”. The moonkissed slopes of snow blew a shudder in me. But the effect was quite akin to what it would have been had Mangan’s sister been there – standing close. The shutterbug that I was, I started tweaking my settings. I got some lovely snaps in the middle of the night, with long exposure. Many of them were taken with an exposure of 16 seconds. And then back home I ‘sewed’ those pictures to create my first panorama. Here is a full resolution version of my touch with sublime.
[ad]

Jadavpur, Personal

More of Identity Crisis

Leave a comment

[ad]
Long years back there was a time when the saying was ‘what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow’. That age is gone. Alongside, the age of the Bengali ‘bada babu’ is also gone. The last batch when a few bongs got into IAS together has reached the fringes of senility. And when I look back at my own university and my own city I can see the reason why. Certainly, partly so. Maybe I will discuss them, but maybe some other time. I shall tell rather tell of an intersting event that happened to me. An incident that confirmed my pity for my Alma Mater.

Those days I was working as a copywriter in Bangalore, and the Mains results had just come out. Preparation for the interview of the Civil Services can be very rigourous, and there you can get a question out of anywhere, or nowhere. Preparing your own background is very essential – background means anything with which you are associated or anything from which you derive your identity. So, you are a Arya Samaji? You should know your Arya Samaj. Are you a Radhasoami? Better know how that is different from mainstream Sikhism. You are a civil engineer? Tell me, why did you join Wipro then when you could have joined L&T and done greater justice to your education. Achha, you are from Kolkata? They tell me that the story of Job Charnock as the founder of Kolkata is all bullshit, and that a prospering and flourishing town had already been in existence when Charnock, by accident, found it? Is it true? You better tell and satisy them properly. The old men and women sitting in Dholpur House can be very fincky. Heard of that recent topper from Orissa who had to give a live Odissi performance to satisfy the curious gazers in the interview room? [Well, this is an Urban legend]. I am just assuming that you get the idea…

[ad]

That spring of last year, 2006, was a legend in self discovery for me. For the first time I tried to know about myself, my past, the meaning of my name, about my caste and its history, about my birthplace and its story under the sun, about the schools I have studied in, places I have stayed in, about Bengal, about being Bengali, about Bengali culture, about Rabindra Nath and Rabindra Sangeet, about developmental economics and where Amartya Sen fit in….long list that! Now, a student of literature, especially if he happens to come out of the portals of JU, has a stiff upper lip, a thin skin and a long nose. Even if for the purpose of throwing around names of books and authors, he must read them, or make a pretence of having read them. I remember the previous spring how I had read The City of Joy in anticipation of getting called to Delhi…[of course, I was never called – that year]. One year after and a somewhat more busy with a job of my own now, I wanted to read a few stuff on Kolkata. Now, keep in mind that teachers in JU are not just teachers. They are also enlightened citizens and most of them have their own pet areas, areas where they are acknowledged experts. Many of them have written their books and research papers on them. Kolkata also happens to be the expertise of someone in my department. But if you know the rules of existence in JU, you must be knowing that there are students and there are students. And yet, I needed to get some material on Kolkata. However, not much time back I had my tryst with my own identity about which you can read here…and once bitten twice shy, I did not want to venture into the same folly. As Bush is fond of saying, “fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again“. So, I wrote a mail to a rather close relative of this gentleman, a lady who is herself an illustrious faculty member, and who, I had reason to believe, knew me by name at least. I knew from other people that this lady uses her email as other people have also written to her on this email. As you have second guessed me, I did not receive any reply…

[ad]

Now, you must be wondering what is the big fuss about not getting a reply on email. After all, so many emails go unanswered – there are the questions of being net savvy or not, having proper access, server jam, etc. Probably, the mail got lost in transit, a phenomenon I have not heard of so far, but probably technically feasible. Probably, her spam filter deleted my mail before it was scanned by her eyes. Probably there was some mistake – her mouse accidently got clicked while it was hovering precariously over the ‘delete’ button. Probably her inbox was full [yeah, let’s assume that she had filled her 1 GB or 2 GB of inbox, which would mean she was very much net-savvy, or else she won’t be getting so much mail in the first place]. Well, as you can very well see in this paragraph there are too many probabilties we are relying on. I very much fancy a much simpler explanation. The mail reached her email. It did not get deleted accidently. She read it, all right. And she did not reply. Chances are that she was receiving a letter of this kind for the first time. In Jadavpur it is not everyday that a student gets called for the UPSC interview. And I would have expected that my email would find a rather welcome reception and some importance.

Now, as luck would have it there was not a single question on Kolkata. If there were, I am sure, I could handle it easily. I had done my own reading. I never bothered to collect much of knowledge or wisdom while I was in JU, but once when I did try to collect a little bit of it, while I was out of JU, I had this curious misadventure. As you may well expect, it left a bad taste in the mouth…

It is not a surprise why so few make it from this province. Why the IISWBM IAS coaching centre was wrapped up – no successful candidates. Bengal deserves this drought.

Technorati Tags: ,,

Jadavpur, Personal

Identity Crisis of an Alumnus

Leave a comment

[ad]

STOP. For an instant, take in this information:

  1. When you search for “jadavpur university alumni” on Google, you get this.
  2. When you search for “alumni association of jadavpur university” on Google, you get this.
  3. When you search for “how do i become a member of jadavpur university alumni association” on Google, you get this.

If you have got the drift of my endeavour, I am trying to learn how to become a member of the Alumni Association of Jadavpur University. I will assume the following:

  1. Warts and all, alma mater is alma mater – it means “nourishing mother” in Latin, and mother, however lousy or great, is mother still.
  2. And when you leave your nourishing mother, you want to be in touch with your nourishing mother.
  3. Every institution should have some form of association for those that depart from its portals.
  4. It is a shame and a great loss if it does not.

As inquisitive students of JU, I remember the thousands of trips we must have made around the central ground (god knows what is it called; if you are god, you can email me with the name here). And invariably the thousands of times we must have wondered what is this board, saying ‘Alumni Association’, doing here. Does anything happen inside? Who comes in? Who goes out? For years and years we saw some ghastly concrete structure being made right in front of the Ashirbaad canteen, a structure that encroached on the yard in front of the popular joint. For years and years we were told that the new building shall have accommodation for the Alumni Association. If and when it comes up. I think some building did finally come up in that yard. I vaguely remember having seen some board put up in one corner (or was it some other building that I am mistaking for). I don’t know if the Alumni Association has any building of its own. But regardless of any physical infrastructure, if the Alumni Association has any presence, it is felt through its absence – winds rush in to fill the vacuum. Thus, many who leave from JU enquire about it. I remember many of my friends asked this question. I am presuming on their behalf that most, if not all, would like to become a member of any Alumni Association. That they would like to have some reunions every few years, meet up with old fellows, check out who has got the most beautiful wife or girlfriend, and what not. If and when they can afford, they would also like to make some contribution towards the nourishing mother, monetary or otherwise. If only someone told them how to go about that.

[ad]

If you check out the official website of the nourishing mother, you will find the following:

  1. There are five pages under Alumni section, three of which are dead links (they don’t lead anywhere, as no pages have not been built. The webmaster, very thoughtfully – or is it thoughtlessly? – has added a Magazine page, but alas! there is no magazine!).
  2. The Activities page is an essay in poverty, and jubiliates in the vacuum of unaccomplishment (my dictionary says no such word exists; well, I can certainly coin one).
  3. The Membership page seems to be from Shakespeare. It must have got mislaid when the Bard was composing the character of Shylock. I cannot help but reproduce it here:

“The Alumni Association by its very constitution survives on its members. If membership dries up, the Alumni can not remain functional. For the last few years we have noticed a decline in membership. Since the Association does not belong to a select few but to all past, present as well as future students, the functioning of the same becomes troublesome. We sincerely hope that things will improve or we as students of Jadavpur University would lose a body that should ideally be a part of our makeup.

If you wish you can donate to Jadavpur University.”

So much for Alumni Associations. But then grouping up is a natural instinct. Whether it is through fora like Orkut or Batchmates.com, people team up. Resourceful (in both senses of the word) people from US of A, who are invariably from the Engineering Faculty, have made their own tinpot arrangements to cater to their own little interest groups [Bring up your Google and check out for yourself – there are more websites on JU communities than you can imagine]. Thus, instead of a community of all ex-JUians, we have clans spread over the wide wide world and the other www. I have also come across scores of other fora, on Orkut, on Blogspot, many of them being manned or wommaned by my heriocal successors in the institution. A year and a quarter back I floated a suggestion through a fellow JUian who has his way with women and children that the present JUDE fellows can make a database of present and past members of the Department and then fill up data on a continuing basis, which could later be turned into an online and self-updating database. Last heard, NASA was also planning to go to Mars.

Technorati Tags: ,,,

[ad]

Media

Marketing strategies

I received this illustrative lesson on marketing strategies in the form of a chain mail. I do not claim copyright –

A Professor at one of the IIM’s ( INDIA ) was explaining marketing concepts to the Students: –

1. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: "I am very rich. Marry me!" – That’s Direct Marketing

2. You’re at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says: "He’s very rich. Marry him." – That’s Advertising

3. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and get her telephone number. The next day, you call and say: "Hi, I’m very rich. Marry me." – That’s Telemarketing

4. You’re at a party and see gorgeous girl. You get up and straighten your tie, you walk up to her and pour her a drink, you open the door (of the car) for her, pick up her bag after she drops it, offer her ride and then say: By the way, I’m rich. Will you marry me?" – That’s Public Relations

5. You’re at a party and see gorgeous girl. She walks up to you and says: You are very rich! Can you marry ! me?" – That’s Brand Recognition

6. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: I am very rich. Marry me!" She gives you a nice hard slap on your face. – That’s Customer Feedback

7. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: "I am very rich. Marry me!" And she introduces you to her husband. – That’s demand and supply gap

8. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and before you say anything, another person come and tell her: "I’m rich. Will you marry me?" and she goes with him – That’s competition eating into your market share

9. You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and before you say: "I’m rich, Marry me!" your wife arrives. – That’s restriction for entering new markets.