5 reasons to fall in love with the Delhi summer.

1)      Longer days: It technically means you can do much more. Going for an early morning jog to any of those beautifully landscaped gardens or riding through the dimming evening light. These longer days leave you with so much more time to explore this beautiful city. From its architecture that changes shades as the sun retreats into its shadows, the growing hustle bustle around street food joints, the endless wide roads lined by a multiple hue of green, yellow and red. Somehow, waking up early is much easier in this season than any-other.

2)      Blooming Amaltaas: No wonder those summer dresses are mostly yellow, this is surely the colour of this season. In Delhi, when nature picks up that yellow…it does cast a spell whizzing you into that fantastical, ethereal neverland. Especially during a motorcycle ride, the lovely amaltaas leave you spellbound… when  you look up all you see is a bright yellow haze against the deepening blue… you look down and a yellow dotted carpet rides along with you…  It surely is surreal to say the least.

3)      Mangoes and Musk Melons: A day in the month of May. The mercury is flirting around the 45 degrees mark, it is a Saturday afternoon and it is too hot to venture outside. You walk up to the refrigerator and much to your delight find it stacked, heaps with those big yellow mangoes (takes you back to those  Nursery class “Aa se AAM” pictures). To top it all, the extremely juicy musk-melon. This summer is definitely all juice.. pulp... slurp and burp…

4)      Beer: Picture this! There is a steaming Football and Tennis match on Television or  ‘I shouldn’t be Alive’ or ‘Banged-up abroad’…the living room only feels warmer… what else do you need?!!! A full bottle of Kingfisher costs 65 rupees and a pint comes for 35 bucks!  Oops, if you are not a beer person…try the local Bunta or Nimbu-Soda.

5)      Spectacular Sky: Most of the hot evenings of this season are compensated by an outrageously beautiful sky. A bright noisy blue, with shreds of yellow ‘reshamy’ clouds. You can just stand in your balcony and gaze it for hours, without expecting rains. In case you love photography, this is an excellent time to capture those Mughal tombs against a dynamic sky. 

When problem solvers become 'the problem'

Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems. - Scott Adams

I read this quote somewhere, and it made me think, I guess it has a greater meaning to it than Scott Adams would have known. I have always been close to engineers, in-fact some of my best friends are engineers and some of my cousins are engineers too. My father is a civil engineer and I have seen him working on tunnels, dams, railroads and power-plants since my childhood. No wonder at a very early age I got so fascinated to JCBs and CAT equipment.  I have seen him solve problems both at work and at home, he would fix households appliances himself and also encourage me to do so (which sadly I could never pick up). As I write this blog-post my dad is working in Manipur, braving out the rains to get a few tunnels done in time for the railway tracks to reach Manipur. This is what Engineering means to me and it makes the first part of the quote very sensible and true. 

Now as we move on to the second part of the quote, I believe it has many layers to it. The first one is obvious that Engineers like to create problems and then solve those for their own joy/amusement. I wish it would just stop there… There, however, seems to be a different scenario today...

Engineers today can’t solve problems, and to put it more clearly they themselves are the biggest problem for India. Sounds really stupid, isn’t it? Maybe even oxymoronic? Engineers are known to build, to create value and off-course to solve problems. Well look around, how many Engineers are doing it? Most of the engineers from IIT become so called investment-bankers or business-analysts. Engineers in streams like Pharmaceutical, Mining, Metallurgy and Textile hardly do what they study in their engineering. In case a hand few of them ventured out in other areas (where they are still mediocre) it would have been understandable, but when everyone tries to do things which he isn’t equipped for … it becomes a problem.

How do we solve this problem, thought the policy-makers and engineers? Well thanks to their short-sightedness and mediocre abilities one of the only answer they got was IIMs. Indian Institute of Management (IIM) is the 'holy-grail' of management education in India, what it also does is bring engineers to a level playing field. It is like a huge assembly line where these inconsistent and incompetent engineers get in and after two years they come out as at least consistent – with everyone having the same degree (and almost no ‘real’ knowledge). Getting into IIMs is not such big deal for engineers, because the paper has been designed in a way that gives them an edge over others. I wish the CAT was more robust and deep in selecting the very few, thereby justifying their selection. Essays as a part of the examination could possibly help achieve that.

Statistically, India produces around 4 Lakh Engineers and 85% of IIM seats are taken by engineers. Now that is the huge problem. It essentially means around 70% of people coming out from IIMs can’t decipher a newspaper, 75% have no idea why is Indian GDP growing at less than 6%, 80% do not know why they went to IIM and around 85% do not know what it takes to be a ‘leader’.

I have spent five years in corporate India, and I have come across several IIM guys. They are 'supposed' to lead India’s corporate landscape and sometimes they even do (thanks to their strong alumni affinity). In the global business landscape however, they haven't made their mark and I know for sure that they never will.