Sissyphus is Thrilled... 'cos something he wrote actually got published to a readership greater than three! On an editorial page, to boot :)

It's at http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1913833.cms on the oft flogged reservation issue that I've been working with a group of alumni on now for a while. So, the real text, prior to the edits is below (Tra tra traaa, pa-ra-pa-pa-pa-pa-pum-paaaa [sounds of trumpets and other cool band baaja]) Hurrah!!! :)

Key learnings from the exercise are:

• Never bulletize stuff that you send to the press. The end product looks ultra-wierd
• Keep it short - but this was not a "short" letter , and nobody wants to hear what I have to say in say a 3 part series! :)
• Talk is cheap - what do we do next?

so here's the text of the letter - slightly abridged version of what we sent to the PM/Prezzie, which also included some other proposals that we thought might better serve the goal of Aff. Action.

An Open Letter to the President and Prime Minister of India

The Pan-IIM Alumni Council, a body representing alumni of all the 6 Indian institutes of Management recently wrote to the President and the Prime Minster of India to convey their concerns on the policy of reservation currently under consideration by the Govt. The PanIIM Alumni Association also submitted an alternative set of actionable proposals to help serve the cause of affirmative action in higher education


Excellencies,

The PanIIM Alumni Association representing Alumni of the six Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), was recently formed to communicate the entire alumni community’s strong concerns regarding the Government’s proposed initiative to create reserved quotas for OBCs in Institutes of Higher Learning.

As all other right thinking citizens of the nation, we are strongly committed to the principles of a just and equitable society on which this nation was founded. We are convinced that there is an urgent need to address the issue of socio-economic inequity before the nation can take up the challenges of the new century. However, we are extremely disappointed by the policy mechanism being articulated by this Government to address this issue.

We do not believe that the proposed System of Reservations is the correct approach to solving the problems of socio-economic inequity and strongly oppose the proposed creation of reservation quotas for OBCs in Insitututes of Higher Learning (IHL) including the IIMs.

While the underlying concerns of ensuring a just and equitable society remains laudable, the manner in which this entire issue has been handled, both in the definition of the problem and the proposed solution to it, is a serious cause for alarm for the citizens of this country. There has been a systematic attempt to politicize the entire issue and ram through the policy without even a passing pretence of due diligence or fair procedure.

We firmly believe that a carefully considered and efficiently administered alternative affirmative action policy can and must be created to benefit genuinely deprived sections of our nation’s society. Such an alternative policy would necessarily be:

• Based on demonstrable evidence
• Transparently designed and administered
• Sensitive to the multiple dimensions of disadvantage including but not limited to caste
• Designed to preserve institutional excellence in IHLs
• Non-prejudicial to the fundamental constitutional principles.

It is unfortunate that these points, which should normally be de facto assumptions of policy-formulation procedure in a progressive civic society, should require active reminder. However, it is a telling indictment of the current proposal that it satisfies none of the above criteria!

The current Reservation policy suffers from several serious flaws that form the basis of our opposition to this initiative. They are as follows:

• The Reservation policy is targeting the wrong problem in our education system - Low representation of groups in higher education has a strong correlation to poor quality primary and secondary education. Poor educational facilities at primary and secondary levels also have a clear causal relationship to success in higher education. The systems for delivering primary and secondary education in this country are in an appalling condition. We believe this problem needs to be addressed and corrected first, before reservation in higher education can play out its stated role.
  
• The real disadvantaged are those who cannot even dream to acquire a college degree, (and they belong to all castes), because they cannot afford education. Given that only 8% of all Indian youth (17-23 years of age) attend institutes of higher learning, quotas in higher education clearly will not serve to address the fundamental causes of socio-economic inequity. Quotas in IHL are therefore, a poor instrument to ensure participatory growth.
  
• The basis of the Reservation policy has not been transparently or objectively reached - No reliable, current data has been used or presented to make an objective case for OBC reservation. The data that has been cited is not contextually relevant, it belongs to a different era altogether and linear extrapolations thereof are an unscientific basis for such a significant policy initiative. What is disturbing is that more contemporary data sets from the NSS Series 1999-2000 and National Family Health survey,1998 appear to contradict the most fundamental assumptions on which the policy has been framed ( i.e. the proportion of OBCs in the overall population, their grouping as one homogenous disadvantaged set, and the extent of their under-representation vis-à-vis share of population in higher education).
• The policy is socially divisive – The Constitution enshrines the right to Equality of all citizens under the law. It is the fiduciary responsibility of the state to create policy interventions that do not distinguish between its citizens on the basis of caste, creed, religion etc. particularly when objective, non-discriminatory and feasible alternative means of identification and targeting exist. In this instance, we believe that the Government has betrayed this responsibility by resorting to a socially divisive mechanism for affirmative action that unfairly distinguishes between citizens suffering from the same socio-economic disadvantages, simply on the basis of caste.
  
• We believe that meritocracy and excellence should be the guiding principles in implementing reforms, including those in the education sector. Implementation of affirmative action should not come at the cost of institutional excellence or undermine the primacy of merit in public life. The manner in which this policy is being implemented will greatly weaken the strength of our institutions, and thereby seriously jeopardize the future of our country.
  
• The policy does not clearly enunciate the requirement of minimum merit standards/entry criteria in IHL- This will create a situation where candidates enter educational environments where a certain minimum proficiency is assumed in pre-requisite areas, without basic skills. Mandating a fixed quota also deprives institutions of the autonomy to define minimum student proficiency levels or entry mechanisms and negatively affects the overall classroom experience (e.g. advanced topics may not be covered as some sections of the class may not be able to cope). Over time, this negatively affects institutional quality.
  
• Quotas encourage a ‘once in, permanently in” syndrome that seriously damages the cause of institutional excellence. Disadvantaged groups should be challenged to raise their standards instead of being dependant on quotas forever. The policy does not propose any sunset provisions.
  
• Arbitrarily lowering the admissions standard/criteria for one group over others is unfair as it treats equals unequally and offends the idea of a just, merit based society. It is discriminatory to candidates in the general pool. Demand for quality education is set to grow as we enter into an increasingly knowledge-driven economy. Creating fixed quotas discriminates against candidates in the general pool by artificially constricting or limiting supply when the need of the hour is to increase overall access.
  
• IIMs today have won worldwide recognition because of thousands of brilliant students of all castes, creeds, and linguistic/ethnic groups and a dedicated and knowledgeable faculty. This reputation has been hard-won, based on these institutions’ unwavering commitment to excellence and merit as the sole criterion for admission and success. We urge the Government to preserve and enhance these great institutions by continuing to respect their autonomy, particularly in defining their selection criteria viz. the rigorous selection process currently in place. Any dilution of the admission process will have disastrous consequence to the culture of excellence cultivated over the last four decades.
  

We urge the government to constitute a Judicial Commission to look into the entire issue of affirmative action including imposing reservations in IHL and to advise the Government accordingly. Members of the Pan-IIM Alumni Association would be happy to be represented on this Commission and to help design/implement fair and equitable affirmative action program, in cooperation with Government and Industry.

Sincerely,
R. Jayaraman
President
Pan-IIM Alumni Association representing alumni of all six IIMs.

KANK your stars if you ain't seen it yet!

As a self-proclaimed Anti-Hindi-Movie (AHM) Type, I was kinda surprised myself when I found myself at a relatively "newly released" movie last week - Karan Johar's KANK. The interesting thing about the movie was that it was (along with "Corporate") one of those movies that was so extensively marketed or hyped (who can tell the difference these days!), that even I had heard about it.

So, what, you ask, can get you not, one, not two, but a gaggle of five cine-stars of repute interested in a movie? well, as it turns out, not much! :)

KANK is, to put ye dear readers out of your collective misery, a largely atrocious movie. Like most other hindi films in the "Ugh!" category, nearly every one of its 180 minutes is completely unbearable. but then, perhaps that's being a bit too harsh... almost every moment of it is atrocious, but it does have some redeeming features that unfortunately fail to justify forking out a good 100ish bucks on watching this at your friendly-neighbourhood multiplex.

So, what were the things I liked about KANK?? Well, for one thing, I thought its theme was pretty damn progressive, path breaking even, for traditional hindi cinema. "What happens if you meet the person you love after you get married?" they ask, and the answer is not, as one typically expects to find in a good, bharatiya sabhyata protecting Hindi Phillum. No venerable father or mother figures pop out of the woodwork to tell erring youngsters that in the end, ye to janam janam ka saath hai, or... "This is a one way ticket dude" (you'll understand the usage if you ignore my advice and watch this film!). No sanctimonious characters preach how this just ain't done in Indian marriages, and Amitabh at one point even tells the offending party to go ahead and find their happiness (gasp). No bent-out-of-shape, mind-numbingly inconsistent endings to salvage notions of the good Indian marriage here - not one, but two couples get divorced in the film! We even have a scene that depicts adultery! All in all, a truly out-of-the-box story theme at least in the sense that these guys seem to have had the balls to hold on to a logical ending despite showing all signs of succumbing to the typical bharatiya sabhyata protecting instincts that plague most aspects of Indian cinema. Apart from the theme, this movie has two good songs, Mithvaa and KANK, that are pleasant to hear. I really liked the Mithvaa concept as its a fusion of a folksy indian song with some less inspired western rock, but an interesting song nonetheless. Finally, there are two scenes where Abhishek Bachchan impresses with his acting skills... this guy seems to be bringing together the best of Amitabh and then some, an will definitely be an interesting person to watch in the days ahead.

So given the paeans of praise I've just sung, why do i still say I hated ... HATED KANK? To keep from ranting endlessly I've decided to adopt Guy Kawasaki's "Top 10 reasons" style... so here goes... the top 10 reasons why you should avoid KANK like the plague

1) Amitabh Bachchan playing Pimp Daddy - it's true... I kid thee not. In this movie, AB wears a pimp fur coat, a series of outrageous pimp glasses, glugs down champagne, courvoisier and other genuine pimp-drinks, ravishes at least one new woman a day, and lives in a pimpin' big motha'-offa-howse-mon... all of which shout out his genuine, "made in NYC" P.I.M.P bona fides. Which brings us to "What Karan Johar got wrong in this movie" #1 - AB's name ought to have been "Sugartastic Bachchan Trump". Y'see doll, I pimpafied his name at http://www.playerappreciate.com/pimphandle.asp. All ye AB fans and sundry readers might want to get yourselves some good Pimp names - mine is Macktastic sissyphus Large. Plis to be posting comments with genuine pimp names wonly. Really, the guy can afford to be a bit more selective in the roles he chooses, and needs to start setting a higher bar. So you were a superstar 15 years ago, but get with it... dude... stop making an ass of yourself.

2) SRK cannot act to save his life - this is, sadly true... so help me God (and yes, Mitey M, please forgive me too). He has atrophied(?) into this "I can do this one thing" actor who needs to do the right thing and retire. He doesn't seem to have developed any skills beyond this "I'm a boyish cool-dude and I have a carefree attitude and you have to love me" manner... hellooo saar, you're wayyyy too old to be doing this. It's like a shoe that just doesn't fit any more. So for the better half of three hours, we oscillate between his two for-moolah pharmoola acts - a) saying "I'm obssessed by you and i HAVE to get you" with rabid intensity ad nauseum and b) "Ooooh i'm a cutey li'l kid who cracks silly jokes all the time... umm... do you love me now??? .... now??".

3) Atrocious Kaamedi - yes, I can't spell it, and neither could they. It's the kind of stuff that really wants to make you cry... WEEP hysterically. And it is inflicted on you for almost half the movie.

4) The "What do we do now?" syndrome - clearly a script that was written through a democratic show of hands between a bunch of people who've systematically raped the initial concept to make it suitably "philmy", interspersed by the right quantities of everything that "defines" the romantic-hindi-phillum blockbuster.

5) God-awful dialogues - I just don't get it. These guys spend a few crores on each of these actors, a few crores on the music, another few crores on the sets, location, production, and then they get their 5-year-old nephew Bunty to write the dialogues for a lollipop or two. Why skimp there!!? What did we do deserve this!?

6) Bharatiya-sabhyata-protecting-adulterous-sex scenes - Hello, the dudes are screwing non-spouse types, and they aren't even in India, and you do these weird allusion-only sex scenes because... why exactly? Why not focus on a rose, or a lamp for a few seconds and be done with it? I mean that is classic sabhyata-protection-strategy and atleast it isn't forcing you to stay in the theatre for an extra 600 seconds than you need to (because your friends are refusing to leave... fyi). This has nothing to do with my personal preference for healthy doses of nudity in movies, but this was a movie where a few minutes of porn would have actually been a redeeming factor. I mean, by this point in the movie, the audience has endured so much, it deserves a good dosage of porn. And so, we were left lamenting that Tyler Durden wasn't in the projection room splicing porn into the reel.

7) There are not enough morbid accidents - So somewhere 5 minutes into the movie, SRK gets slammed by a car going at 60 mph, and drat it, he survives. Mebbe KJ was super pissed with him that day, but it looks like the producer didn't like the idea of forking out a few crores for 5 minutes work and had him resurrected. This is one of those movies where you're cheering anonymous Mad Max types, praying that they materialize from out of thin air and slam the bejeezus out of each of the characters at different points of time. sadly, your prayers are never heard, because, the scriptwriters, like God, abandon you for the duration of the movie, and no one hears your prayers, or your screams.

8) Pretty Preity and the Sista Act - Just so we have all the proper disclaimers in place, let the record show that I think PZ is super hot, and one of those people who consistently comes across as being a genuinely intelligent person with an opinion of her own which makes her wayyyy hotter. But I think (and maybe I'm in a lone minority), that she's really taking this "Feminsim rocks" thing a bit too far. So in KANK, we have seemingly contrived scenarios where she gets to stand up bravely for her rights as a woman and make cutting statements about how she has a right to work (Aye!), be successful(Aye!!) and how she's the one with balls between her and SRK (no doubting that either! :) ... but you didn't have to say it as such!!! and then again, maybe SRK took it as a complement). I'm tiring of the grandstanding, and I think she should actively choose roles that are meant to be feminist statements, rather than morph generic roles where a strong characters are called for into opportunities to grandstand. But then again, this is probably the minority vote on this...

9) We don't insist that movies should last no less than 180 minutes - There's a billion dollar hollywood movie machine that churns out movies in a 90-120 minute format. You don't HAVE to stretch out stories to last 3 hours. We will forgive you, understand that you didn't have more to say, enjoy your movie and go out for dinner or ice cream.

10) Not all of us carry insulin shots - and don't deserve this hyper-glycemic dose of good-shweeet-Indian-ness that insists you crucify yourself endlessly, not to mention the audience while you figure things out. Keep it short, keep it simple... ishtupid. KIS-ISH as us menagement types would say.

And there ends my rant, as promised, in 10 short painful outbursts... and as you can see, even i ran out of things to say, but atleast I have the grace to admit it unlike certain others who shall not be named... but who I just ranted about for the better part of an hour anyway! :)

Fare thee well, dear reader, may the gods be with you!

Au Revoir... I hope! :)

S

And then Sissyphus Jumped...

It's finally... finally, done. I sent in my resignation a couple of days back. Sissyphus jumped...

My future plans are not exactly crystal clear, but I do know I want to give myself a chance to create something meaningful, and that I will be able to figure my way through this.

Now that the moment is passed, it's quite interesting to observe the kinds of emotions that one is subject to when the notion of not having a salary handed to you every month starts to dawn on you. For an entire day before walking into my boss' office to break the news I fretted about it. And then... poof, a wierd sense of relief in the immediate aftermath. And since then, an interesting combination of what-if scenario building, hope and raw fear.

Finally, in the last days leading up to this particular jump, my sweetheart parents and my dear sis pretty much gave up on me :)... anything to stop me bitching anymore about my job or throwing wild ideas up for consideration! So now, they're keeping a bleary-eyed watch on me, with this cool combination of a "go do it" look, a "ayyo rama, this silly boy" look and a "see! i told you so!!" look all in different stages of expression!

It's been a year since I first thought I should take the plunge. I really thought I should give the corporate life a fair chance and evaluate entrepreneurship having experienced the pros and cons of working in a company.

Having spent a year at Cubicle Farm, I've learnt a few things about myself that helped me find the gumption to take that first step in what is bound to be a long, hard road ahead.

Sissyphus (in some random order):

• wants to do something meaningful - make people happy and be able to see it! I'm not seeing how I can do that here and get all kicked up about a sub-sub-sub-system that hardly any non-geek, non-buried-in-enterprise-IT types will EVER use.
• has got some generally acknowledged (good) qualities/capabilities apart from the generally acknowledged evil ones - sarcastic giggles at this point of time are not welcome... Thank you.
• is fanatical about doing stuff that HE thinks up/ thinks is cool/wants to do - this is a very dangerous and silly thing.
• is tenacious about making others come around to doing what he wants (or mebbe he's just been darn lucky thus far that it was something they wanted to do in the first place)
• is not tenacious when it's not his baby and someone just told him to "do it".
• is appreciated for good work when he pushes his pet projects through.
• HATES having to listen to people when he doesn't think they are doing the right thing/speaking something sensible/being constructive
• isn't motivated by "good boy" compliments, "bad boy" reprimands... super important for regular workplace survival
• wants to be obscenely rich but at the same time is a pretty frugal tam-bram types (okay... maybe my definitions of "Frugal" are wayyy off the board!), but obscene wealth (and the ability to do kinkier and wilder experiments in life), ain't happening on this get-a-job-ticket.
• does not like what he has to look forward to in doing this job thing super-well for the next 10 years or so... what the super-successful seem to be doing does not sound like a lot of fun at all !! :((
• is not really able to define himself in any other way that forms a neat subset that's already out there... he's tried... promise!!

I somehow feel I've been kidding myself. I'm never going to find my quest, or the answers to it, unless I start searching for it actively. the answers aren't around me where I stand, and that means I'm going to have to let go of this boat and swim a while as I try to look... and hopefully, hope floats!

So... time to get a-thinkin'. My ideas are still kinda shlushing around, and I'm hoping the time invested thus far will actually bear fruit and result in a tangible business plan that I'm going to be able to run with in a month from now, when I leave. If not, I'm at some level, reasonably at peace with the notion that I'm going to have to figure something out.

So there ends the latest installment... it's been an eventful few weeks since my last update... and yes.. this was a cathartic core-dump type of session... and yes, I did tell you (hallooo?? anyone??) that I started this blog just so i could rant.. so there!

On a more random note... what do you think about a blog where people write about their startup experience? A bunch of us are on the road now, so it might be interesting to just set up something and see what folks have to say. Might even get us some investors, what!??? :) Methinks itsakewl-kewl idea... predictably :)

wogay, now i am going to do random cleaning up stuff from my workplace. plis to be leaving comments (and money :) ).

S