Pissed off?

18th November 2007, the date which would have sent shivers down the spine for at least a two hundred thousand students and would have tested the nerves of half a million others, would be known to most of you, if you do not - CAT 2007 was conducted on the aforesaid date.
I woke up with a heavy heart, a fussy brain and with a strange feeling in the stomach; I have started doing things which I would do daily and hence preparing myself for something which I would, by all probabilities, be doing for the last time in my life; writing the CAT.
I started 3 hours prior to the reporting time and headed towards the centre whose location I figured out the previous evening. The journey was tense with chill in the air of the Pune making things just worse. I reached the test centre and found that there are at least a few hundreds already gathered over there and doing all sorts of different things. The guys who are taking CAT just for the sake of it are happily chatting with their all happy female counterpart who happens to be pretty excited about lots of people looking at her. And there are these ardent Nicotine followers doing off with their daily ritual and a few who are doing last minute revision of god knows what. The whole scene baffled me rather tensed me, so I settled for something different, I opted to watch the cricket match being played at the college grounds of my center. And in no time, a bell became very happy, as it ordered at least a few hundred future managers to enter their room to take a first step towards their destination.
Just as many things in India, the things started of in a rather dramatic way when all the candidates started towards the building. There is a huge crowd that gathered at the entrance of the building with each person getting impatient to get into the building and situation similar to the traffic at Hinjewadi started developing.
Just as few people entered the building and gone up the stairs, the candidates who already entered the building started coming down and within no time there was a traffic jam kid of a situation as there are equal number of people who want to get up and down the stairs. I wondered why all the people who have gone up the stairs coming down again, and the question started tickling my conscious and grew more and more curious and suspicious over where all the male candidates are going. I resisted myself as I don’t want to deviate myself, but I could not. I followed the crowd, they all are going as if they are programmed to do so as if they are little robots who are controlled by AI and just as my curiosity increased a little board said it all “Gents toilet” and the arrow on the board pointed towards the horizon. And now I understand what caused the traffic jam.
And now I say, every one is “Pissed off” with CAT.

P.S: I screwed my CAT paper again.

The Caste System of the corporate world......

Many of you know how Casteism is born. If you don’t; let me tell you, it is a long process of evolved civilization where people, for ease of administration have divided themselves into different groups on varying parameters. That was the need of the hour and it was to be done that way. After all, man is an intelligent creature and he has to innovate something and you cannot advance scientifically unless you advance socially.

Years passed by, centuries passed by and just as the human activity has drilled a hole in the Ozone layer, eroded millions of acres of forests and increased the global temperatures, the natural and innate tendency of human activity has its effect on Caste System as well.

Now we have environmentalists doing their bit to make people realize the necessity of going green and on the same hand we have extensive industrialization puffing the lungs of earth with their daily dose of green house gases. In the same way on one side we have people saying casteism is wrong and we should get away with it and there are even more people who still believe and strongly so in Casteism. I am not sure we can get away with it or not, but we have already laid the foundation for an all new system of Castes. And I call it the Neo Casteism.

You, me, our managers, the entrepreneurs, politicians, police etc are all part of this. Yes with out even being conscious about it we have contribute to an all new casteism.

The main classes of this are:

The ruling class (old: kshatriyas/new: Politicians and the law enforcers)
The scholar class (old:Brahmins/new: Professors and lecturers )
The merchant class (old:vyshyas/new: business men, entrepreneurs )
The Workers class(old: shudras/new: frontline workers, software engineers, project leads, managers)

Now, doesn’t it seem practical, if you observe, that all those divisions are logical? But, now they make little sense and none at all, but we hang on, we still marry within our castes, vote for people with in our castes and keep on following the blind division that was created.

But, now why “ Casteism called the corporate world”? Because, the corporate world will be pretty instrumental in making the new caste system successful. How?

The caste I belong to in the new system is different from the caste I belong to in the old system. I am a shudra according to new caste system. Hmmm that is interesting, isn’t it? And if all goes well, my great grand sons or at least their grandsons will be eligible for the coveted reservation.

The present shudras, like the previous classification will be at the receiving end of the discrimination with in no time. If you see, the discrimination starts when you join the corporate world. You will join as trainee, get confirmed, become a software engineer and get stuck there ever in the web of multiple appraisal cycles, if you ever get to the next level, you will be stuck there as well and ad nauseum.

So my great grandsons will be shudras(hopefully not untouchables) whose sub class will be IT and whose sub sub class will software engineers. So, my grandson’s name will probably some SE Ranjit Kumar(SE= Software engineer) and if he wants to avail the reservations in one of the 100 IIMs (the possible number in 2500) he hjas to take my salary slip proof to the local MRO so that he recognizes him as an authentic backward class. The other authentic backward classes will be PAs, TLs, BA, Consultants, design engineers. However, all the BPO employees have higher % of reservations as they will be added under SC/ST category.
And hence, the new caste system is created!
-AKP