Mandore-Another trip to the past

I have been feeling low since yesterday in spite of keeping extremely busy and doing and saying everything to stay positive.

I even thought of not writing and just staying with my thoughts.

My thoughts took me to another time I was sad about missing Sankrant in Jaipur-the first year of college, and since there were many of us missing home, we decided to do something about it and the day-scholar friends decided to take us out to celebrate, Jodhpur style.

They procured the kites and spools the Charkhis and we drove to Mandore for the open spaces.

Mandore is the old city. It was abandoned after multiple attacks convinced Rao Jodha to build Mehrangarh and the city of Jodhpur at a more strategic location.

Mandore is mainly known for its well-preserved palace gardens, a picnic spot for locals and a place to click pictures of beautifully sculpted cenotaphs/chatris for the tourists.

It was once more famous as Mandodri’s maika, her parental home and Ravana’s sasural. Jodhpur to Sri Lanka must have been quite a distance in that age. Ravana had a private plane so commuting might have been still ok, but I wonder how they coped with the cultural differences.

Ravana probably spent quite some time here (before he got embroiled in the Ayodhya controversaries) because this place still echoes with the music of the instrument he invented-the Ravanhatha. 

The war would have destroyed everything in his Golden Lanka, but the strings of the Ravanhatha continue to make their music.

That was pretty commonplace for us.

We preferred listening to Shah Rukh Khan singing on blasting car stereos and of course flying kites in that vast open space.

Once we were ready to go back, one of the local guys insisted that we could not go without tasting the ‘chunti ki chakki’. Nobody would have noticed the badly-lit shop set in the crevices of the thick stone walls of the fort, where you had to stoop to enter. A girl had to go and make the purchase. The owner was probably as old as the crumbling fort. “He doesn’t sell his sweets to tourists and boys.” He was nice to me even though I was not a local and added a few extra grams.

Years later, I went back with my husband and kids. Not to fly kites but to buy the ‘chakki’. I wondered if that uncleji would be there or if even the shop was still standing.

It wasn’t difficult to find it this time. It was bigger, had tube lights and a proper door. No signboard still, but everyone knew of it. There was a different shopkeeper-polite, courteous, and who let anyone buy his sweets. The chakki tasted the same, but I didn’t have the heart to ask about uncleji.

Thankfully, there wasn’t much else that had changed in the ten years. The chatris were well preserved and the gardens were not so crowded. This time, I stopped to listen to the guys in matted white kurtas and colourful turbans playing the Ravanhatha.

Going back does that to you.

(all pics from Wikipedia, I don't have my photos from college days)

The College Admission Project: Different Shades

My college-admission research project started as a list, evolved to become a branched tree, grew some more roots and shoots and know resembles no known shape.  One of the branches was about talking to different people, to learn about different perspectives.

One of the interesting ones was that on ‘Management Quota’.

In our times (a quarter century ago) they were called ‘Donation seats’ and people going to Karnataka and Maharashtra for Engineering and Medical studies would hesitate to name their college. They would always be forced to explain that they were going to a ‘private college’ paying the insane but regular fees in response to the inevitable ‘Oh, Donation college!’ smirks.

Now there are private colleges in every state and not getting though JEE (now there are three of the JEE tests too), does not mean the end of the world.

There are hundreds of other colleges, many of them offering better education than some government colleges. They maintain quality by admitting a percentage of students through competitive entrance exams. They adhere to legislation by keeping a required percentage of seats for centralized entrance processes. And they manage their expenses by allocating a percentage of seats through highly prized Management Quota (not Donation) seats.

And then some seats are converted stealthily from one category to another.

“Well, we have worked hard all our life. Shouldn’t our children get some advantage because of it?”

“There are no seats in those colleges because of reservation, so what’s the option for people like us.”

“Yes, we too follow the required reservations. But then how many from the reserved quota would pay these fees?”

“Yeah. It was a steep amount. But since the placements are so good, the kids can recover it in the first couple of years’ CTCs.”

There was another option which came up in ‘our times’. The nearly bankrupt countries breaking out of the erstwhile Soviet Union started cashing on the Indian parent’s ability/desperation for Doctors/Engineers.

In spite of what the financial rating agencies say, the Indian Economy has evolved much since then. Universities from all over the world are setting up stalls at ‘Education Fairs’ (and no I didn’t make up that term) to woo our worthy students; and their parents who want to do their best for the children’s education.

A Whole New World

I visited the swanky campus of one of the new trendy colleges. Not as the parent of a prospective student, but as a friend of a faculty member. I got to interact informally with quite a few students and faculty members.

This was so different from the colleges my friends and I had studied in! Or maybe, it's just me! A dinosaur who had sauntered in from another era.

There are educational consultants who specialize in setting up these huge institutes. Some of the areas they work on are: getting a celebrity board of directors and faculty members; ensuring government clearances-land acquisitions, subsidies, land-use-change permissions, tax subsidies; connecting high net-worthy investors with promised returns and of course the marketing and promotion.

The courses are suggested by the consultant. But of course they are vetted by the faculty. The faculty themselves are dependent on the popularity of their courses-decided by the number of students opting for their courses and providing feedback. All great innovations to ensure transparency-except for the situations where a Prof who insists on rigour and discipline in a finance class, may get outbid by a course on exploring the links between Bollywood Music and Math.

This particular institution had on board a famous politician who owned a big chunk of the forested hill district. Well an institution this size will need to have political connections, I was told.

When a new course was being started-the teachers started suggesting with a class size of 30 so that they could build their facilities over time. The consultant insisted on a class size of 120 to ensure the ROI. The staff prepared the proposals hoping the government body which sanctions new courses would suggest trimming the proposed strength to 60. They got an approval for the full 120.

These 120 students have been selected after clearing an over-subscribed entrance test. There were many who could not make it.

The fees they’ll pay for a four-year course is more than what they will earn in the next ten years (as per average market standards). Their average recreational spend (travelling to the nearest city, eating and drinking out, watching a movie, gifting and other items that they didn’t want to detail) is more than the monthly income of many white-collar works in metros.

Most of them are not here to get a job (that’s so middle-class). They are still figuring out what they want to do with life, and the intensive education they will receive here will ensure they will do well with whatever they do.

Maybe the emperor is wearing special clothes-it's just me....

More on Colleges: Starting another search

Since the Junior kid is on a completely different career track than the Senior one, I have to do my college research again. I started with another excel sheet, looking up colleges and their admission process.

Has anyone of you noticed this: If you google up the name of any well-known college or entrance exam-what comes up highest in the search results are the coaching centres!

Yeah. Even AI knows that to get to a college in India, you first need to get to the right coaching centre. Some of them also have entrance tests and offer discounts to high scorers to ensure that they get the right potential candidates.
They have admission forms where the students are asked to add their photos and give full rights to the centre to use their photos in future advertisements (for life). I also know of students who did not attend coaching centres, but score well, being approached by centre reps in retrospect, and offered good incentives-in exchange of rights to their names and photos.

This is education in our country!

What is the alternative?

Compared to the cost of private education in the country, education in Canada, Europe, Australia and the old favourite U.S.A seems much more value for money, for those who can afford it. As a girl studying Computer Science in U.K (and doing an internship one break and planning to hike Kilimanjaro in the next break) explained to me: It’s too difficult to get admission in the best colleges here. And then you end up slogging all the time with no other activities. And the state of education in other colleges is just too bad.

I am glad she found an option that works for her.

Again, there is no answer for those who cannot afford this option too.

Watch what you like; but study what the system wants...

The last post triggered memories and alot of angst about the school-college education system in our country.

This whole subject-stream selection was traumatic for me. From wanting to study Literature and History, I qualified as an Engineer but never worked as one.

The elder kid went through the same difficulty during subject selection but luckily, she had only two possible streams of study in her shortlist.

The younger one had to make her choices last year, but she is still confused.

It is because, unlike DTH and Cable operators who were forced by TRAI to stop making us pay for ‘bundle packs’ and let us pick and choose the channels we wanted to watch; the education boards and colleges still insist on ‘bundles’. If you like Math -but select Economics instead of Chemistry or Physics in high school-you don’t qualify for any of the Engineering or Medical entrance exams. That’s another thing that you want to go to Engineering college because the top global banks go there for campus recruitment.

I thought times had changed. I though the ‘Doctor-Engineer-or nothing’ philosophy had faded away with the last century. Now the kids have choices. Now there are so many other options.

But when we got into the college application mode and I started looking up the numbers, I realized so much that had not changed. Law and Design have got added ‘acceptable’ careers. Liberal Arts has become a new entrant-but are still being looked upon as fancy-rich-kids colleges instead of something that can change a person’s life, lift a family out of poverty kind of a career. So, lakhs of students still spend the best years of their lives slogging to clear entrance test.

Private colleges step in to provide for the burgeoning numbers, at burgeoning fees. And as for those who cannot afford them, and do not manage to grab those 0.5% seats in good government institutions, what happens to them?