iTS ALL OVER tODAY ..

2 years of MBA can be really long time for most of the people who come in search of greener pastures its a tedious and laborious period of life . Today we are having the convocation , perhaps one last time to meet all the friends and Junta of college at the same place . The feeling is mixed , some times I think that all the grilling due to the unending list of assignments and case studies will no more be there but also fear of much tougher time in real cruel world which is waiting for me . Traveling in Mumbai locals and coming lat every day after work was perhaps not the life I was looking to get from an MBA . But this is what most of us gets..

Life in a MBA college is very different from the engineering college , here you will have far lesser time to actually spend with friends and will be more focused towards your materialistic goals and monetary desires . You will learn lot of new things and unlearn lot of things from the past and yet think that are you loosing your innocence . Is looking each and every thing by analyzing the risk and reward a right way of looking at things . I think perhaps next few months will clarify the real use of this education ..

I dont know what is waiting for me but I am sure that I will be able to handle it .

About the Slum dwellers and the Millionaires..

Slumdog Millionaire, a tale of impoverished Indian slum dweller who goes through troubled time but went on to become a millionaire by winning the game show “ Who wants to be a millionaire “. The movie showed abject poverty and humiliating conditions which will make you say the F word umpteen number of time .It’s a typical Mumbaiya bhelpoori with emotions of anger, pity, disgust, romance, action, evil, lust, crime all mixed together with music and a happy ending, good enough to be seen once but is no different than lot many other bollywood movies. 

Bollywood has a habit of over doing things, shows stuff which seems larger than life and involves far too many coincidences which are hard to believe, this time it was Hollywood to follow our suit and people just loved it.

If we actually go to dhaaravi, the second largest slum in the world, it houses a population of nearly 2.5 million people with an average density of population as high as 17000. Life is tough there and people are living in horrible conditions but things shown in the movie looked a bit over stretched. No wonders the film is doing great in western world. They are allowed to see what they proclaim India is about and it was not surprising to see the long list of awards and recognition the movie has got since its release.

I went to many movie discussion forums to get the feel of the opinion’s about the movie, people from different parts of the world are claiming that the movie shows ‘Real India ‘ , which may be a truth for about half of India but is definitely hard to swallow.

The main issue which remained unhighlighted in the movie is about the great divide between the Slum dwellers and the Millionaires. The country which boasts about the richest people in the world also houses the poorest amongst the poor. India’s Gini Index has increased from 34 in 1950 to 38 in 2000’s; it clearly shows that the wealth is getting concentrated among far fewer people than desired, certainly a cause of concern and requires some action.

Helpless ..

26^th – 28^th Nov , Sitting at home, watching the live videos of destruction and misery of people who fell victim to the planned attacks , that strong feeling of disgust and utter helplessness which few of us had ever felt .

This is not a fact to ignore that some people actually came, killed for fun and we were just the mock spectators. It differs from the cowardly planned bomb attacks, this time they took the whole city for ransom for 60 hours, looked liked as if the freedom of 60 years evaporated in 60 hours.

After everything got over, the anger of the people came out; they showed their solidarity for the cause and wanted a swift action from the government machinery. They pledged to put all their energies together to fight against the evil.

The question remains -Are we civilians really helping out our authorities in putting an end to the terrorism. What can we people do other than candle light marches and shouting for justice? How can we make our effort count? Is it really possible? I think this case is much tougher and complex than any of the case studies we have discussed in class. Do anyone have any concrete answers to the problem. 

I believe that even the government is helpless to a certain extent. Diplomacy is not working out for us the way it works for other countries as most of the countries are looking safeguard their interests rather than seek justice for India. Starting a war in this crisis will not only weaken the country financially but it will also affect the foreign relations and image of our country. So what can the government do? 

Govind ki Chai ..

Getting good food is a big issue around NMIMS. Our canteen does not serve very good menu most of the days and most of the people have to go to likes of Cooper Hospital , Rasraaj or Dena Bank Canteen for lunch . I mostly go to dena Bank canteen where Madhav’s canteen food taste seems more palatable and the place is easily accessible as it is just opposite to our Campus in JVPD. 

When I today stopped for tea after lunch near Dena Bank, I met Govind , he has been selling tea there from past 18 years , he is a very silent middle aged person who generally don’t talk much with the customers . I just talked with him about how the business is going and what kind of issues he faces regularly in the business and I found that his replies were quite interesting.

He told me that getting a place to setup a tea stall is very tough in Mumbai as most of them are illegal and the other hawkers want to grab the space where they can do good business. He regularly has to fight with other people ‘ Bhai’s ‘ who want to get that place but since he is there for around 18 years now, the tussles have reduced. Surprisingly the tension due to internal fights for space among hawkers is much more than that of the threat from Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC) for illegal encroachment of space.

The business risk of these kind of setups are completely different from regular legal business .It cannot be easily evaluated by doing sensitivity analysis in the excel sheets. For example as NM has closed the main entrance for students from last few months, his business has reduced by nearly 50% as students don’t want to travel too far for tea. Again if less people start preferring Dena Bank canteen food, his business will again be impacted. These are some of the risks which are completely beyond his control. Although his tea tastes best in that area but there are very few students seen around his shop nowadays.

Govind misses the previous batches of NM, as per him those students were much more closer to him. They used to sit around his shop for long hours. Even now when they come to that area for some work they don’t forget to land at his place for a tea. He has lost the taste in business now as student nowadays does not interact much with him.

Bollywood Underworld Mystery !

Bollywood and underworld linkage is a mush debated topic in the past and time and again it has been found that a lot of greedy film industry people have connections with the underworld. The worst part is that these underworld people are the people who actually promotes and finance host of illegal activity in India like drugs and terrorism . 

Dawood Ibrahim who has been repeatedly accused for having direct involvement in the Mumbai blasts. He is one of the world’s biggest terrorist and has repeatedly harmed India by his involvement in various terrorist activities in Mumbai .He was No. 4 on the Forbes' world's Top 10 most dreaded criminals list of 2008 as per Wikipedia . 

The recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai and alleged involvement of Dawood in it really makes me wonder how we people have such short memories. How can we people tolerate movies made on Dawood just for the sake of glorifying him . Dawood is one terrorist who has been glorified by host of Indian celebrities. Ram Gopal Verma has put great efforts in attaching glamour to his image by making movies like D and Company . In all the movies made by Ram Gopal Verma I could never found him portraying the character of dawood as cruel.This is nothing but the abuse of freedom of expression, just because India is a democratic country and we have got rights to express our self does not mean that these directors can make terrorists the heros. Interestingly Mr Verma was also seen at Taj after the carnage, Only God can know if he was thinking of another plot to showcase the ‘ bravery ‘ of the terrorists which only he can see.

Mr Anu malik along with lot of Indian celebrity were also once reported and shown praising and performing for Dawood in Dubai , nothing ever happened to them .Anu Malik was actually singing for Dawood ‘ Sabka bhai , gareebo ka masseha , dawood bhai ‘. India might not be able to have access to Dawood but why don’t they teach a lesson such celebrities and set examples for the generations to come. 

We have suffered so many terrorist attacks in last six months that the people of the country are in a state of total insecurity. The time is ripe now for the government to take some swift actions and stop testing the patience levels of people of the country.

State of Anarchy ..

I can't remember any time when I’ve felt more insecure staying here in my country. There is a total state of anarchy. Bomb explosions have rocked the whole country into a vulnerable zone of insecurity. Now when I was travelling from Delhi to Mumbai, I can see it on my Parents faces, they were not as confident as they used to be. I told them that I’ll manage this routine travel on my own but that day itself there was a bomb explosion in Delhi and their concern was genuine. Mummy asked me to stay away from the crowded place, I was just thinking that how can someone stay away from crowded place in Mumbai where everywhere it seems like a big chaos, hundreds and thousands of people are emerging from every nook and corner, all in a state of hurry . But I told her Yes.

Thinking of blame game our politicians are playing in the comfort of their Z+ security, Media cursing Intelligence agencies for the lack of surveillance and Police blaming ATS for their inability to track terrorists, what can a ‘AAM AADMI’ do? He is just a mock listener to all of it. The real question remains “Is it actually in the reach of these different agencies to stop someone from burning their own house? “

How can the police and intelligence agencies track the action of so many citizens. They may track the flows of big explosives like RDX, but they can’t stop someone from throwing Crude Bombs in open roads on innocent kids. The crude bomb which was used in the recent Mehroli blast can be easily produced by anyone. The secret recipe of Bomb is no more secret when substandard news channels are freely showing it on mass media that how easy it is to manufacture a bomb. Anyone can easily buy these common chemicals with medicinal usage and cause the blast. It will indeed be a tough job for the police and intelligence agencies to manage this situation.

There was also lot of talks about the spirit of Mumbai in the media after the train blasts, they reported that people are still travelling by local trains, using the same affected route, their spirits are intact. But my question is “Do they have a option? “. Life in Mumbai will be standstill without trains, how can a person who travels from Virar to Mumbai Central daily manage his travel without Local Trains. Nobody wants to put his life at risk. It’s not the spirit; it’s the lack of real options!

I think the time is ripe for the government to make some strict rules and set examples by differentially treating these arrested terrorists in such a fashion that it will make the other terrorists think twice before putting their dirty plans into action. It won’t be death of democracy as articulated by so called human right activists. It will be a slap in the face of terrorism and a act to safeguard humanity itself.