The Vault Of Souls

Well ,I am supposed to be Preparing my Market Research questionairre right now... but as my mind is ... it keeps me away from anything important i try to do and brings me back to things like blogging n chatting!!

So , While I was preparing the survey questions ... I realized that all that is happening in this world right now is marketing and business. Companies today rely more on the marketing and advertising than on the quality on their products. They hire the best MBA people in the hope that they can lure more customers into buying their products. And this is the reason more and more people today see more oppertunity in MBA. Even in an Engineering course , companies see the communication skill and marketing appeal of the candidate more than his technical capabilities. That is , if you do not have good communication skills , you cannot expect to get placed in a company even if you have great tecchnical skills.

Even during our UFMR( User Friendly Market Research) class ... all we learn is how to fool people into buying a particulatar product. And questionnaires and surveys are some amazzing analyzing tools which ask people ' HOW THEY CAN BE FOOLED INTO BUYING A PRODUCT ??'
A great example for this is DOVE SOAP , which , on the pretext of reducing the contact area of water and soap so as to reduce wastage of soap due to melting , gave a curved shape to its soap , reducing the overall volume of the soap in the process.And it ws portrayed as a pathbreaking idea while all the company did was to reduce the volume and increase the price.

The best example for this, though, would be POLO - The Mint With A Hole. Even the tagline shouts at peoples faces that it is again reducing its volume by cutting a hole in the tablet. But by the sheer power of marketing , the company was not only able to turn it into a grand success but it made the line - 'A MINT WITH A HOLE' a USP for the product. And to add cherry on top , they released the cut holes as another product too!!

So , no offence to marketing people , but i believe that marketing is just an art of fooling people and Market Research is the art of asking the people how best to fool them!!( No offence to my UFMR sir too...)

That is why , I believe that in today the world needs more and more geeks, who can develop the products he way they were supposed to be and sell them on the basis of their quality, not on the basis of driving the consumer's mind. And when the time comes when 'the world is run by geeks' , it surely will be a better place to live in .

Before I went to see 3 Idiots , I had heard a thousand people chant about the brilliance of the movie. So , amidst all the hosannahs and eulogies that i heard chanted about the film , all the frenzied applause by everyone whenever the name of the movie was mentioned , I went to see the film at last. And did 3 Idiots live up to my expectations...??

As a movie... YES. A perfectly made , celluloid entertainer. Every performance was exceptional for its sheer energy and versatality. So , As a cinematic adventure , Hirani and Amir hold the story together perfectly.

But , 3 IDIOTS , for all its fine comic moments , is a very dangerous film. The movie legitamizes a scorn and hatred of education. It ridicules the best education institutions set in INDIA , sanctions wilful dumbing of our own. It shows our higher education system as an arena of bad teachers determined to ruin the student's lives , suicidally pressurizing students.

Amazingly , a film whose central message is "the education system sucks", " we earn nothing at our centers of excellence" , "dont study hard jusst do what pleases you" is being hailed as the best film ever made in INDAIN CINEMA. This huge popularity of the movie shows how eager we are to embrace mindlessness and how keen we are to see education and hard work as obstacles to enjoying a good life.

We keep chanting the mantra "the-system-sucks , who-cares-about-grades , the-rat-race-is-foolish.". Yes our education system needs reforms , things need to improve but in the pusuit of educational reforms , we cannot allow standards of excellence be lowered. The IIT's must be applauded for the world-class minds they've thrown up , they are institutions that are respected all over the world.

There was a scene in the film in which Rancho mocks the Laplace Transforms (the equation written on the blackcoard) as an example of rote learning. Yet, without Laplace Transforms , Hirani's computer would not boot up!! As an Engineering student, I have never come across a teacher like VIRUS nor have i ever felt the manic stress during the 3 years of my college life.

Let's get real about higher education , and not engage in an escapist fantasy and convince ourselves that education doesnot matter. For each of us, geniuses or not ... there are no short cuts.

So , THREE IDIOTS IS A GREAT MOVIE!! BUT THAT'S JUST IT ... IT'S NO MORE THAN A STORY.