EVERY STUDENT DESERVES STUDENT RIGHTS..... !!!!!!!!

‘Student Rights’, now this term may appear a bit vague or awkward at first but the term makes sense, doesn’t it? In fact, there is a Wikipedia page also on it and I did not know about it when this term suddenly popped up in my head. Anyway, I didn’t bother to read the whole Wikipedia page and what this term actually means because by then I had already painted quite a picture about it in my mind and apparently there is no such well defined student rights structure in India so I thought why not to build one right here on my blog post.

Firstly, why student rights? We have human rights, women rights, children rights, animal rights, gay rights, all kinds of rights but I personally feel that student is the community whose rights are most violated. We are not at all considered as human, treated like animals yet we have no animal rights. Even when we are children, we have no rights. Being student is like a punishment you willingly take hoping something good will come out of it, which, in most of the cases doesn’t happen. Students are regularly insulted and disrespected by almost everyone. Teachers, parents, college and school staff, drivers, shop keepers, other students. Every other category of humans in modern world considers their fundamental right to dominate and insult the students.

The torture of students starts from the first day itself i.e. when a child becomes a student for the first time, the first day of the school. Most of the children do not wish to go to school yet they are forcefully sent and what follows is 14 years of frustration, torture, mental pressure, agony, name any negative feeling and you will have that in student life. But we are hopeful, because of one lie. One lie, which always helps us to keep ourselves together, and continue the struggle. One lie, which is more of an assurance, that once you reach college life, everything would be fun. There won’t be any competition in college. There is no study, no pressure to top, and no pressure to excel. You don’t need to attend any classes. You can bunk them and roam around wildly without anything on your head. So study hard as much as you can in schools, make it to a very good college and enjoy your life as you always wanted to enjoy.

Once you reach college, you realize how your teachers and parents always lied to you because college life is no different from school apart from the fact that now you don’t care anymore. Those who care live the same life as they have lived in school. Those who don’t, roam around, bunk classes do not study a bit yet it’s not the same as they were promised. There is always a pressure of performing. You can’t live in the present as you always have to worry about securing a good job or a good PG college. It’s like same rat race again but now you know that there is no escape from the rat race.

Do we have any freedom? NO. Can we live a stressful life? NO. Do we have any rights? NO, NOT AT ALL!!

For parents, we are always careless hopeless creatures who don’t care about their future, who are wasting their time in useless endeavours that are worthless. You would always be taunted and reminded that you failed to make it into a good college (most of the cases unless you got an IIT, NIT or something.. ). You would be compared with other students who are getting good grades and an explanation would be asked that why are you jeopardizing your future. You would be nothing more than your grades and consequently you would be nothing. No matter how much you excel in other areas, you would never be able to satisfy them and to make things worse we always have some dementors hovering around our head to make things more ugly and annoying. Our relatives, who would always be counting several names in front of us and our parents. That boy got that much package in a company, that boy won competition in some institute, Gupta Ji’s daughter secured a seat in that prestigious MBA institute. So, in short, torture doesn’t stop; it exponentially increases as time goes on and so do the power of the torturers.

If that wasn’t enough, teachers would make sure we suffer enough to curse our life. I would never understand that whether it’s a coincidence or what but I am always the part of the worst batch the teacher has ever seen so far in his/her life. If I am in ‘A’ section then ‘B’ section is great and ‘A’ is worst and vice versa or I wonder it happens with most of us.  There is no good batch, it’s like relativity theorem, in all frames of reference, in whatever batch a student is in, that batch is the worst batch for the teacher. You would have to make countless futile assignments that would never get checked. You have to sit in bizarre vivas where on god knows what basis they give marks and ask all sort of random questions. You would have to run behind professors to get signs on your files and beg again and again to show some mercy on you. You would be insulted again and again and depending on the teachers mood your work won’t get done. You would have to wait for long long times and you would be asked to come again later and the circle goes on. We have no option other than to suffer all these hoping one day it would end, no rights, no voice, no platform to complain.

Luckily there are some teachers who understands students, who are actually student friendly. Some teachers indeed helps student a lot and thus restore the lost faith. Thus a few teachers get genuine respect from students. But you might not be so lucky in the case of administrative and clerical staff. Lower the position of the worker is ruder he would be to you. They won’t sign your documents, won’t give you your mark sheets, and delay your work as much as they can. These sadists enjoy torturing the students as much as they can as apparently they don’t have any power over any other person. Students are their punching bags where they can emit all their frustration. I wonder whether they ever consider that in place of us some day there would be their own children, but guess they don’t. As a mere student, we have no rights, hence we have no voice, we can complain nowhere about all these injustice as apparently no one is interested in listening to us.

If somehow you complete your college life without any right, there would come a time where you would realize that you are nothing and that is the time when you sit for campus recruitment. One feels the most insecure, helpless, and vulnerable at that time. There is no fair treatment there but you can’t do anything about it. No one is interested to pick the best chunk or to judge everyone fairly and assess on the basis of talent. There are no guidelines or system. You can be selected or rejected mostly on the basis of luck and you have to wait for long long long time again for your time to come to go for interview. You have to sit alone, hungry, tired, frustrated but apparently you have no right. No one would again listen to you that you deserve some humanly treatment. You have to answer all sorts of irrelevant and random question and on the basis of interviewer’s personal biases, prejudices and mood you may or may not get select.

The list never stops. Shop keepers won’t let you stay for long and sit and talk as you are occupying places and not paying enough. Everywhere you go in a group, people gives you look like you are smoking marijuana or taking cocaine in public, thinking students only waste time in having fun and stuff. Conductors and drivers misbehave with you as you are just student, what power you have on them. Your landlords treat you like they have rented their room for free. Seniors bully juniors, juniors disrespect seniors, classmates have group politics, mind games, back biting and stuff. So long the list of injustices and the sole reason is you being just a student who has no right and no privilege to complain anywhere.

Some self proclaimed boastful cool guys may find this post long, prolix and full of frustration. Indeed, it is, I accept I am frustrated because of  lots of things. But what frustrates me most is our own inner fear. We fear to complain because we think it would bring harm to us. We choose to remain silent and diplomatic because we don’t want to get into any mess. We voluntarily subject ourselves to injustice because we feel helpless inside and do not dare to do anything.  I have raised my voice many times, I have been in lots of troubles, I have got lesser grades, been threatened to fail, have disputes with many, got my work delay for long long time. Many a times people have told me to remain silent and let it go but there is no fun in letting things go. I have pulled myself at times when it was necessary but not always. There is a subtle satisfaction in being a rebel. It’s like implicitly fighting for the rights not provided to us so far. It’s like demanding what we deserve.

So next time when you feel being mistreated or insulted, raise your voice, complain, fight, argue, make a mess, make a big deal out of it because we deserve to be treated well. We deserve our student rights.

PS: No disrespect or offence meant to any person and my apologies if you feel hurt or disrespected by any part of the post. It's just an attempt to draw a more general picture of the things that are usually wrong and need to be corrected. It's not intended for any specific person as no person is ever good or bad in itself, it's just the system which is wrong most of the time !!

An open letter to all IIMs

Dear IIMs,

It’s a sincere appeal from me with a very little expectation that it would be ever read or taken seriously by any concerned authority. I don’t know whether I should call it an appeal, a request, a frustrated letter or something else but I want to express myself so that I won’t have the regret that I also remained silent against a system that was intended to serve me.

Every young Indian has, at some part of his life, lived the big IIM dream, no matter even for a miniature amount of time. Some continued with this dream for a long time, and for some chasing this dream became their life. The comfortable life afterwards, the fat pay packages, the great alumni, the huge infrastructure, secure future; life becomes a paradise once you achieve the big IIM brand.

People who failed to get into a good graduate college see this as an opportunity to wash their previous sins, rectify their old mistakes and to achieve what they thing they truly deserve. Many are willing to work hard to the edge of their potential and even beyond that. Many are willing to sacrifice all the comfort, fun and luxuries of their life for a while just for focusing on their CAT preparation. But the inner fire, the internal source of motivation that ignites one’s spirit and keep on pushing students to work hard fades soon when they realize that this time hard work is not the sole factor.

Many who start their preparation with great enthusiasm, quits in midway, when they realize that there are many factors that will control their admission into a good B school and no matter how well they do in CAT, there will always be some uncertainty. This is the time, when one realizes the worth of board marks and even graduation marks.

Now how many of us really knew that we will try for CAT when we were in 10^th and 12^th?? I don’t think there is much and in fact if there were, who cares at that time. No one has even a faint idea that board marks will be such a huge factor in deciding ones eligibility in an IIM.  

Now what I want to ask all the IIMs is how come board marks decides one’s ability to be a good manager. What’s the relevance?? In 10^th class we have subject like Hindi, English, and Science; how come they are even minutely related to one’s ability to be a good manager? Then comes the 12^th class, be it commerce or be it PCM, how are physics, chemistry related to ones analytical or problem solving ability? I agree that board marks indeed define a certain level of consistency and hard work but I find no sense in laying such a huge stress on them and making them mandatory for admission criteria. They can be given certain weightage but they can’t be a deciding factor.

There is no guarantee that those who secure 90+ in boards are born genius, though, no doubt they are hard working but I guess top institutes generally seek sheer genius in one and not the ability to work hard. Also we can safely assume that those who secure less than 70 can be discarded for admission just because they don’t satisfy these criteria. This is absurd, one bad day or one bad week shouldn’t affect a person’s entire life.

Now we move to the most illogical part. 10^th and 12^th usually have a common system so we can give them some weightage, but graduation marks. It’s like judging on an entire different dimension. It’s like a competition in which there is no common quality or attribute. Every university has different system of checking, teaching and evaluation and graduation percentage may vary due to many stupid things.

One needs to secure at least around 80 for IIM A and around 85 for IIM S. Now 85 in graduation sounds like a joke to me, and in fact it is. I heard that in some universities like Pune University the topper lands at somewhat around 80, so no matter how hard you try you are already out of the race for A and S, that’s height of being unfair.

Besides percentage in graduation varies according to the practical and class work marks, for which, one is at pure mercy of teachers and luck. No matter how talented or hard working one is, the major chunk of practical marks is awarded on one’s ability of sycophancy. So unless IIMs think a good manager most posses the quality of sycophancy I find no plausible reason in giving graduation percentage such a strong preference.

What I find most senseless is IIM ahmedabad’s criteria of providing points. The table is like ( a*b*c+d+e) where a stands for 10^th board marks, b stands for 12^th , c stands for graduation, d stands for masters degree and e stands for work experience. ‘d’ and ‘e’ hardly have any effect on ones selection so let us focus on a, b and c. 60 and above gets 1 point, 70 and above gets 2 point and 80 and above gets 3 point. And for sure shot call you have to secure at least 80+ in all a, b and c else you are doomed. What I find hardly irrational is that one scoring 79.9 gets 2 point while one scoring 80 gets 3. Isn’t this the height of nonsense? Why not give one scoring 79 2.9 points so the system will judge every student fairly. I don’t know why they created such a system where a student’s admission is based on luck than brilliance.

Then other IIMs also joined this non sense, some of the IIMs like Indore completely nullify CAT score in their criteria. So no matter you get 100 percentile, you won’t get a call from IIM Indore if you have sinned in past. Then what’s the sense of taking a different exam?? Making students study vigorously for 3 years and then give them no credit of scoring very high? I don’t know, maybe I am not smart enough to find the reason behind all of this. But how come a person scoring 97 in CAT better than a person scoring 100 just because he got 85+ in boards and the other one got 80+?? Guess our country wants to give a message of preferring mugging our talent.

What I don’t understand is that are IIMs only for formality? To intake certain amount of students having well past records and getting them placed? What about nation building, what about developing future leaders, what about making India a leader in global economy? Why not give a fair chance to all possible leaders and managers by setting fair and plausible criteria where everyone can participate equally in the competition of best B schools in the country. Because of these stupid, senseless and irrational criteria a majority of sheer talent derails soon from IIM pursuit. Some switches to GRE, some other manages to satisfy them by college placements, some other remains happy in the technical line or whatever their graduation field was. So at the end of the day, it’s our country that is losing pure talent which may change the future for good. 

Those who deserves to be in good colleges are wasting their talent and time elsewhere and the crowd which enters IIM, no doubt talented, represents only similar perspective and thought processes. The consistent ones they are and as such bring no creativity to class which could have been brought by the one wasting their time elsewhere. The whole country opposed when board marks were involved in admissions to IITs, even the present pattern is criticized a lot. So why IIM continues with the same pattern I don’t understand. I hope they will change this pattern soon, and give chances to the people with best potential to be upcoming leaders or else we would soon be trapped in a vicious circle of coaching, mugging and parental pressure on children, end result of which will be nothing more than slowing down of our growth and unbalance in our entire education and professional structure.