My Rustic Journal

To Shankey, Sneha , Ramu ,  Indranil, Bhargavi , Taksali and many more who themselves have had so many such ideas! :D

A story about how a conscientious thin boy * was compelled to bribe a TTE...and why you can do nothing about it! It was the last day at college and the thin boy, like all others, was pretty excited about it. The term had been a long and hectic one and the bag packing was supposedly the last part of it. The thin boy was looking forward to catching his train to a'bad at 6:00 am next morning. Mom awaited his arrival with her own list of food items that she was going to prepare over the week. The night went on quite nicely with goodbyes and hugs all around. After all, it would be some time before he would meet his pals again. As had been his practice, the thin boy did not consider booking a ticket before-hand. The journey was a short one and the general compartment wasn't all that crowded early in the morning...and above all that, booking a ticket on the internet required effort! Feeling tired and sleepy, the thin boy decided to have a nap leaving the last part of the packing f...

Actually the story above was supposed to be a short one, but just couldn't help it. So here goes the economics... Well, the questions I was asking there is how do u stop this kinda X-Inefficiency? TTB was pretty happy paying 100 bucks as that might be his utility for the ticket and paying lesser than that would only increase his surplus. The TTE, on his part, got a surplus of Rs. 70 himself. So, when both parties involved are making profit, why wouldn't they go for it? Well the Govt. is the one who is bearing the loss here. But then are we so self less that we would consider the losses borne by a far away Govt. to let go of our own immediate profits? Or are people living in countries with a CPI Score of  greater than 9 so self-less? Or is it that they have such robust systems that prevent corruption? Or just maybe a mix of both these. Moreover, considering that TTB was just happy to not have been fined and sent to the general compartment, cud he have possibly dared to conf...

Thoughts expressed here are those of the author himself and he will not be held responsible for any consequences, whatsoever they may be, emanating out of trying to follow him in his myriad endeavors! Lessons in hygiene that i have been taking from a variety of people keep ringing in my head all the time. Initially, there were moms and teachers who told us to not to throw our socks here and there after school and now, there are girlfriends who never mind giving lectures on how to keep your room clean. But, one just wonders, what if the importance of hygiene was twisted on its head to mean the importance of non-hygiene???            The idea flashed through my head during one of those discussions about field-work that are a common exercise in IRMA. Just to give the unaware a bit of light, field-work is a part of our curriculum here where we are supposed to live in a village for two months and come out of it alive. I mean, you have ...

Another few days went missing on my blogosphere. And this wasn't because I did not have anything to write but more because i was busy coping up with a new way of life called IRMA. So we are almost into our third week of classes here and there have already been loads of things to write down. Finishing off the boring acads part first... The profs are really good...sitting in class i sometimes imagine what wud i do if i did not know this....and 'this' here could be anything about human behavior, accounts, economics etc etc. The rural part of management keeps popping its head up every now and then and at least i enjoy it :) Though quite a few ppl here who wud like to end up in a corporate job after two years sometimes hate it. So talking about people... got a chance to meet quite a few of them. Met some wierdos and some extraterritorial species as well... the sex ratio is pretty normal for an MBA school (30:110) i guess. Haven't interacted with the girls much as we have...

This has to be one of my best experiences of giving an Interview (haven't given many before :D). But seriously, must be said that the Group Discussions and Interviews were very well conducted. And they don't give a damn to your certificates or how u dress. I went in with my floaters on and no one questioned me even once!!! PS : That said, not wearing formal shirts and trousers would be going a bit over the top! It all began at precisely 9:00 am when we got our name tags. We then had a briefing session which was followed by question-answer round where the director was himself there to answer our queries.I was very impressed by him :) One thing that everyone there makes it very clear right from the beginning is that MBA at IRMA is not something anyone can do...u need to have a feeling towards rural mgmt. We were divided into three groups (instead of 4) as attendance was low...just 28 out of 40. I was in group 1 so our Group Discussion started immediately. The topic given was ...