Heil Joka

Studying in an IIM teaches you a lot of things. Some of them you are thankful for. Others, you would rather have not been privy to. One of the things that being at IIM Calcutta (and, based on my interaction with students from other B-schools, things aren't particularly different elsewhere) has taught me is that all the shebang about a management school being the place to develop leaders, who can think independently, is hogwash. An IIM is as great a place to churn out leaders and original thinkers as an IIT is to churn out a great technocrat. The only thing that an IIM gives its students is the basic tools for a successful career, at times being limited to a good placement.

Don't get me wrong. This is not some vindictive outburst or anything. I have liked this place a fair bit, maybe more than I expected to coming here. But there are occasions when the sheer idiocy of the people that I live with gets to me. The only respite is to shut yourself up in your room, maybe drink some beer or chat with some friend who has not been to a B-school. This might actually be worst at IIM Calcutta, which is the most engineering-college-ish amongst the top 3 IIMs. This gives it a unique culture they say. I am not sure how practical a 'unique culture' like this is.

This particular post was borne out of this debate among 1st year students that is ongoing at our internal message board even as I write this. It started off with the External Relations Secretaries, who head the External Relations Cell, a body that I happen to be a part of, posting a message 'urging' students to not write about certain aspects of this really idiotic thing we have as an annual event in our campus, called the World War. Even in normal circumstances the WW, which is an inter-hostel event (yes, we do manage to divide ourselves into three groups even in a campus as small as this), is about the most idiotic series of activities you would expect grown-ups to indulge in. It'll take more words than I care to expend on it to explain. So, just imagine around 50 men rolling in mud, with garbage and fluids, from undisclosed sources, being thrown on them, with the choicest abuses from men and women accompanying the whole orgy. And that's just one part of it.

But this year it got really bad. As part of the first event of the WW, where each hostel takes up a theme and first year students dress up based on the theme, one of the hostels, in all intelligence and concern for political correctness, chose the Nazis as their theme. They actually dressed up as Nazis, with the whole swastika and raised arms, and paraded in the campus. We are supposedly an institute of international repute, and we had two US and at least two European students on campus during the whole farce. Not much was done to stop these guys then. Some people raised their voice on the message board and, as happens very often here, were shushed with the argument that we don't actually conform to Nazism and this is just an event. If only things were that simple. Now that people have blogged about it, many people, including members of the Students' Council, many of whom were enjoying themselves that night, and in fact cheering these idiots on, are worried that media will lap up the images and sully IIM Calcutta's image.

If that is what will take to drill some sense into my esteemed collegemates, it's not that bad a bargain, is it?