Make an informed decision…

Time for another post. And I know that I’m giving out this wise piece of advice a wee bit late.

But then, when you are working in a project, and when one of the critical servers had crashed, only one super hero can save the day. And when people look up to him to bail them out, he can only oblige.

So while that super hero was doing his job, I was sitting and wondering if that security camera they had put up on the ceiling can be used to covertly watch that girl I dote on. The entire day passed with me staring at the camera. That’s one reason why I did not write early on. (And those of you who’re worried about the server, the super hero saved it, obviously. You can leave now.)

So, this is what I wanted to share. A couple of days back, my sister had her counselling for getting an admit into an engineering college. And I had happened to go there. And one thing that I looked out on that day was how many of them were opting for aeronautical engineering in MIT, Madras Institute of Technology, the Alma Mater of both former President, Dr. Kalam and,Ezhil,the future of the free world. Being an aeronautical engineer myself (according to my degree that is), I know a couple of things about making a career choice.

While it is a well known fact that among students ECE and Computer Science are the most sought after courses, I was appalled at the indifference that students showed towards one particular course, Automobile Engineering. While seats were being gobbled up in the Aeronautical Engineering department, there was literally no takers for Automobile engineering, even as the second day of counselling sessions came to an end.

It was clearly a case of lack of proper knowledge and awareness about the two courses. And having been there done that, I can say with some clarity that it will be a better choice if students opted for Automobile Engineering over Aeronautics. Not just because I, inspite of having a very good grades and a keen interest in Aero, am still whimpering in a software concern but also because of the present scenario that exists there in my college.

Many have this very wrong notion that Automobile engineering is a very lowly job, and involves working in grease stained khakis in sweaty conditions. This is not true at all. Please understand that Automobile engineering teaches you more about R&D and is not training you to become a mechanic (which is way better than typing codes, but people think its a measly job.) You will work in workshops, but any mechanical engineer has to work in a workshop. That’s a given. If you think your shirt should be clean at the end of the day, quit dreaming about joining any course that involves mechanics. You aren’t cut to be a Mechanical Engineer (or an Aeronautical, Automobile, Production Engineer etc as the case maybe.)

Automobile engineering in MIT is one of the oldest departments of this institute. You have some very good teachers handling the lectures, and kinda ok-ish lab facilities (lab facilities in many departments are pretty old, but they are slowly being replaced.) But everything is made good for by the placements. Automobile engineering has one of the vibrant placement scenarios among all departments in the three constituent colleges of Anna University. Nearly 2/3rds of the students are placed in core companies. When compared, all others pale away. All auto majors who have a foothold in our country recruit here. Some of them include Ford, Maruti, Bajaj, TVS, Delphi, M&M, RANE, Hyundai etc .All have students of this department working in them. A few other students opt for software companies and a few go on and do their higher studies.

It also has a very strong alumni network, which really helps when it should.

Aeronautical Engineering on the other hand is a totally different ball game. While the name itself sounds fancy and can give an impression of pride, as they say, there is more to it than meets the eye. The course found a fillip after Dr. Kalam became the President. Many starry eyed students sign up for the course straight away, hoping to design the next missile or building a new aircraft.But the real picture is pretty grim.

While Aeronautical Engineering is one of the best courses to learn, you cannot say the same about its career prospects. I personally knew what I was getting into when I decided I was going to study this. But many students have very little idea about aeronautics and its future in India.

Students have this idea that studying aeronautical engineering entails you to become a pilot, or secures you a job in one of the airlines as an engineer. Both of them are not true. While being an aeronautical engineer in no way makes you a pilot, for joining any airline you should have completed a degree in aircraft maintenance, like an AMIE in aircraft maintenance. You literally learn nothing about aircraft maintenance which might help you find a position as a maintenance engineer. Like automobile engineering, aeronautical engineering is more into R&D. You learn the fundamentals of the physics behind aircrafts. You’ll learn tools that help you design an aircraft, to make a better aero engine, to create a more efficient flight. And mind you, this is one amazing and extraordinary subject to read.

But the scope for aeronautical engineering in India as such is very, very limited. You do not have any organisation that actually designs and builds aircrafts, like Boeing or Airbus. We only have the government organisations like DRDO, HAL etc which do any meaningful work in this sector. While DRDO has stopped recruiting aeronautical engineers, HAL recruits us but with a bond period of 6 years. They are the only aircraft manufacturing firms in our nation.

On the flipside we do have many other private firms who indulge in working for outsourced work form aerospace majors like Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing, BAe etc. Most of them do not involve in R&D work but are more oriented towards carrying out the ancillary jobs , like carrying out a design in a CAD software according to specifications, performing computer aided analyses etc. There are also a few companies like ANSYS, Fluent etc who recruit aerospace engineers for their knowledge in fluid dynamics and finite element methods.

Now coming down to aerospace in MIT, those of you who are among the first 7 students to secure an admission have a scholarship from DRDO, wherein they’ll provide a stipend for all your 4 years in college and after your graduation you have to work at DRDO for 3 years. And for the rest, you have to only hope that some company turns up for placements. Hardly any aerospace firm visits the campus for placements. Nearly 2/3rds of the class is placed in software firms. And the enterprising few apply to companies off campus. Most of the firms turn them down for lack of experience, inspite of having excellent academic records (The author has a very good experience in this matter. Please click here to find a narrative. For more info, leave your mail id and your query .). You either need to have a referral or better still, apply online and wait for all eternity. (This is in stark contrast to software concerns where they pick you up even if you’ve no work ex but have an excellent track record.)

A handful of students pursue their higher studies either in India or abroad. There are ample opportunities for this. But again, where you end up after Post Graduation is a million dollar question. While there are indications that a few students abroad end up in aerospace firms, a few of them shift their majors from aerospace to mechanical engineering, bio mechanics etc to boost their chances for securing a placement.

And as far as the Professors are concerned, we have some of the best teachers handling classes. Atleast it was so for me. But of late, the standard of the teachers who are joining there, replacing the learned and experienced staff, has been deteriorating.

Cutting down to the chase, all is not hunky-dory in Aeronautical engineering. For those who are really interested in aircrafts and how man conquered the skies, this is an excellent subject. But for those of you who are dreaming of making big bucks after completing this course, do make sure you know what you are getting into. I am not saying you might not find yourself a job. Chances are you will. But the odds are against your favor.

So those of you who are planning to take, or those who have friends, brothers, sisters, relatives, neighbours who are planning to take up your graduation in Aeronautical engineering, please please have a thorough understanding about the course and its future. Make a wise decision, because it is your career which is at stake and you are investing 4 good years in it. Before signing up for a degree, ask someone who has already completed that for guidance. Maybe you can ask 2 or 3 of them to get a fair opinion. Else you’ll be at the losing end. And trust me, many of my classmates ended up this way.

Adios…

PS 1: If you are planning to take up aeronautical engineering at some other college other than MIT, I will rule that option out if I were you.

PS 2:Personally I will rank automobile engineering over aeronautical engineering, any day.

Bite The Bullet

(To read the story right away, click on the “Bite The Bullet” tab on top of this page)

After having spents months in extreme boredom in my office, I finally decided to write a story of my own. What inspired me to do this was the numerous foolish and stupid blogs that were doing the rounds in my company’s official blog site. No exaggeration, but most of them are foolish. Most of them are written by people who have too many forwards to read or people who think there is nothing else to write but a romantic story. And the comments that are left for these posts are no better.

So I decided to join the farce with my very own action thriller. Because it was designed to be ridiculous, my story will indeed be outlandish. I published them on my company’s blog and lo..

People were still reading ridiculous posts.

You know having read these kind of stories, I had all the gumption I needed to post my own story there. But for the benefit of my global audience, I reproduce the same here. It will be under the tab Bite The Bullet on top of this page. Bite The Bullet is the title for my story. Good one, I know
Hope you have a good time reading them.

Adios…

Base effect on Sivaji Ticket (in other words, Inflation)

While I still haven’t gotten over my obsession for Rajni Kanth and Sivaji, this post deals with neither. It is more related to my visit to Globus the other day and why I spent a few extra bucks to get a pair of trousers that I wanted, inspite of a constrained budget. Why the same product, which came for a lesser price earlier on, is costing a few hundred bucks extra now? Why am I being made to pay 10 bucks instead of the normal 5 bucks for a trip from my home to the shopping mall because someone else can afford to do that ?

Everyday I happen to see some incident or the other that triggers this question in me. The most prominent among them being carrots costing Rs. 50 a kilogram. Same goes with beans, onions, what not. One guy who is able to spend so much money pays that huge price,leaving others who do not have that capacity struggling to pay the same price and make ends meet.

Now this is exactly what inflation is all about.

Inflation on a broader term can be explained as the amount of products that one person can buy with a given amount of money each year. The higher the inflation, the lesser the number. So this essentially means, what you bought for 100 bucks last year may cost 150 bucks this year, and you can only buy 2/3rds of what you bought last year.

Inflation can be caused by either

1. Demand Pull situation – When there is too much money and when demand exceeds the supply of goods.

2. Cost Push situation – When there is a supply shock, a drastic reduction in available supply due to external circumstances.

The inflation percentage is calculated from a basket of commodities (like vegetables, manufactured goods, fuel etc. There are some 435 odd items included in this basket), with each commodity having a particular weightage. Manufactured Goods has the highest weightage of 63.75 on a scale of 100. So any increase in the price of manufactured goods will have a huge impact on Inflation. Fuel has a weightage of 14.23 while primary articles (viz vegetables,fruits, grains and stuff) has a weightage of 22.02.

While the rise in the price of manufactured goods is attributed to the Demand pull inflation, the rise in the price of vegetables and stuff is more complex, with both demand pull and cost push playing a role, cost push because of the supply shock that happens most of the time when there is a loss due to delay in transportation, poor storage etc etc,.

All that said, this government came into power as a government for the aam aadmi (whatever they meant by that). But whatever they had done so far doesn’t seem to augment this assertion of theirs,that this is a government for the common man. The prices of commodities are rising with ever given day, cost of living has risen by leaps n bounds, housing and real estate prices have shot through the roof..The list is endless. Everyone except the common man is able to remain happy with these developments.

While the upper middle class and the High Networth Individuals (HNIs) can get through this bedlam, what with their ever rising wages and multiple disposable incomes, it is the middle and the lower classes, the aam aadmi, who face the heat. With incomes that barely cross the 5 figure mark each month, these families are forced to spend everything they have because of this inflation fiasco, with no room for any saving or investment whatsoever.

Take this – a couple of weeks back, people blocked a stretch of the Old Mahabalipuram road here in Chennai, accusing the government of not stopping buses at the scheduled stop and replacing the fleet with ultra modern buses, with exhorbitant ticket prices which only the elite can afford. A daily wage earner there said that he spends Rs 35 out of Rs 80 that he earns everyday just on ticket fares. Given the price of other commodities, we can as well imagine his plight.

The same goes for everything. From house rentals to Sivaji tickets, the price of everything has gone up. While the government can pride itself on achieving a GDP of 9.2 % or the stock exchange breaching the 15000 point barrier, it means little to the comman man, you and me. Numbers and figures do not bother us much except when we see our monthly grocery bill and find that 1500 bucks has barely satisfied half our monthly needs. Owning a house or a vehicle already has become a distant dream for many.

The Congress led combine came to power accusing the BJP led NDA of focusing on the rich and trashing the India Shining campaign. The UPA formed a government that was huge on promises, but was a huge let down for the common man, big time. While it is keen on defending Pratibha Patil , whom the RBI has blacklisted as a defaulter, for the post of President or challenging The President ‘cos he dared to return the Office of Profit bill, it never showed that zeal when it came to the issue of inflation.

With Manmohan Singh and P Chidambaram, the man behind the 1997 dream budget, things were expected to be gung-ho on the economic front. But while Manmohan Singh tries his best to keep Soniaji happy, all PC managed to come up with was the so called “Base Effect” which was responsible for the fluctuation in the Inflation rates. Last heard, all the major financial dailies are still trying to figure out what he exactly meant by that. (Seriously, when PC made this statement, it was quite evident that the media had no clue on what he was talking about. They still do not.)

The Left parties, on the other hand, is a case of all bark and no bite. Their only purpose seem to be that of derailing any reform plan that the government plans to bring into law. While their counterparts in China and Russia have embraced reforms and globalisation and taken their respective countries to greater economic pinnacles, the ones in our country are only keen on taking us back to Stone age. While Kerala has atleast shown some development, West Bengal is yet to come out of the Struggle-for-Independence era. (I can write a whole new post on why the Left is a useless party, but I will save it for some other day). OK, but even they are remaining muted in this present scenario where their so called comrades are bleeding money. They are more keen on holding protests to prevent USS Nimitz from docking in India. Sheesh…

On the whole, my argument has boiled down to this. The government, with all its big names and huge promises, has let down more than half of the Indian populace. With a very mild control over inflation (at present it stands at 4.27 % while only 2-3% is considered healthy), the government seems to have forgetten the aam aadmi part completely. Will it do something to the effect of governing the nation rather than smear the image of The President and support some unworthy contender for the Presidency? Fighting poverty rather than fighting some unworthy bill ?

Time alone will tell…

(That also explains why Sivaji tickets were selling for such a huge price. It was a case of both Cost Push and Demand Pull Situation. Cost Push – because there was not enough tickets for normal fans after the fan clubs lapped up all the tickets; Demand Pull – because there was not enough theatres screening. And Base Effect ?? You ask me )

Adios.

[With inputs from - The Business Line, Economist, The Economic Times, Business Week, Rediff Money]

Sivaji v/s Sengupta

I had previously written a post depicting the sorry state of affairs the Indian Media was mired in. And we had more proof of it now in the form of a an absolutely inflamatory post that CNN-IBN’s Featuring Editor, Ms Anuradha SenGupta had written on her personal blog on, note this, IBN’s website.

It all started with the publishing of the post titled “Sivaji The Boss. Of Crap”. Herein, the author tries to express her personal opinion about a movie which was in a language in which she can hardly pronounce a couple of words properly. And this she confesses in her post. But immaterial of her linguistic knowledge, Sengupta actually goes on to air her opinion (or a review,as you deem fit) on a movie which she has no clue about except that it is one of the biggest and had some actor from a forgettable 80s film.

When one goes through the post, it is quite evident that Sengupta has little idea what Rajni Kanth means or what his movies mean to the ordinary movie audience. She went on to pass a judgement on the movie , about an actor whose acting skills she had no idea , about the audience whom she had the cheek to call a herd of pigs without even trying to understand their sentiments and emotions. And this according to her is a personal opinion published on a news channel’s website, so that millions will read it and accept it per se.

Now this post obviously irritated a lot of people, as was evident from the 1000 odd comments that had poured in, not because it had lambasted the movie, but because it had ridiculed the actor, pulled into question the sentiment of the general audience and for the sheer crassness of the opinion.

Now this immediately had Sengupta come up with a 9 point retort, which again showed how insensible she was when it came to receiving criticisms. She tries to justify each and every word of her post with an equally crass explanation, while comfortably forgetting the herd part and trying to be sarcastic.

Anuradha Sengupta has watched this movie with no idea on what to expect and what she should not. While she suggests that numerous other movies are equally bad, she hasn’t singled out any one of them and launched a tirade against it. So why Sivaji?

As my friend Divakar had commented on that website, and I quote verbatim

“Why is that actors from the south are always termed as “Southern Sensation” even if they take regional cinema to global level,having a fan following which even Hollywood stars envy of? Aren’t you proud that he is an Indian?Aren’t you proud that even our Prime Minister talked about Rajnikanth in the Japanese parliament amidst huge applause? Is it only Amitabh’s and Sharukh’s who make India proud?”

Sengupta does all this under the guise of freedom of speech. But little did she realise that she was not comfirming to any of the guidelines that were laid down when someone needs to even comment on a post. She not just hurt the sentiments of millions of fans around, but hung on to her opinions steadfast, even when she was pointed out the obvious flaws in her post.

Sivaji, accepted, is not a great movie. The storyline is cliched. The plots are thin and predictable. But the movie is one that was made for Rajni fans , prima facie. It had all the elements that Rajni fans have come to expect from his movies. It was entertaining, it had all the elements that make u forget the outside world and indulge in sheer fantasy, plus it carried a message, albeit a minor one. And the regular moviegoer is satisfied.

This post of hers has actually brought in some self styled movie pundits with their comments and “appreciations” for writing such a “daring” article. These fools neither know nor understand the sentiments of Rajni’s fans/audience. Many of them have neither seen Sivaji, and a few of them wouldn’t even recognise Rajni Kanth on screen. To a few of them, only Akira Kurosowa and Scorsese are the directors whose movie are worth watching. These are the same guys who will watch Keanu Reeves or Vin Diesel do mind numbing stunts without questioning its logic. To all these idiots, I say, balls to you.

And many trash us for being blind Rajni followers. Do you guys have any idea why we adulate him? Do you think people sitting in places like US, UK, France,Sweden ,Australia are fond of him for no reason ? Are you calling them fools and no-brainers? If you think that Sivaji is not a good movie and Rajni Kanth is not a good actor, you are entitled to all your personal opinions. But draw the line there. You can keep your shit about comparing Rajni with others and ridiculing his fans to yourself. Nobody asks for it. Don’t think you can garner a few brownie points just by trashing someone. You will end up being a loser when you all you wanted to prove so desparately was that you were not one.

Anuradha Sengupta did just that.

I have never had a great opinion on CNN IBN. Its nowhere in comparison with its parent corporation CNN, and the legendary BBC , which are way too refined and sensible. NDTV quite matches the sensibility that these two news channels have, but all others here are a mere farce.

Anuradha Sengupta, by issuing a disclaimer, feels that she can shield her channel from all the bad blood. But unfortunately, this will not work.Being an editor, she should have had atleast the common sense to refrain from posting something this stupid on her channel’s blog.But no, she publishes it and asks us not to target the channel, without realising that she is a part of that very channel and whatever she says or does will reflect on IBN’s image.

I, for one, have decided to stop watching CNN IBN for now. I have already done something to this effect by removing that frequency from my Tely. I maybe attaching a little emotional value to this decision, but the sheer crassness of the opinion of one of its editors makes me really want to give IBN the miss.

Adios…

(

Update : IBN is hellbent on tarnishing its image with some sicko reporter putting up another post filled with racial sarcasm. And I thought Rajdeep will be a sensible editor. Won’t these guys ever change ????

http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/sanjeebmukherjea/262/2126/rajini-the-blogbuster.html

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