MBA Bandwagon Ahoy!!

Would wonders never cease? Its management here, management there, management everywhere. Every other Tom, Dick and Harry I come across every other day is either into, or contemplating an MBA or its equivalent. What does all this hype boil down to? A realization of how inadequate and unarmed we are, to manage our respective lives and careers? Our incapability of honor and commitment to a priorly chosen field? A dying pang to blend in with the rest? A sheer materialistic craving? - Which of these is driving our nation's youngsters to incessantly dream, money eyed, of an MBA at an premier institution and a plush office surroundings where they sit and manage somebody else's affairs! Irony of ironies? I couldn't agree more. Management is an art and a science, I read, in my very first class on that subject. Indeed. It is the science of managing people, places, situations, objects and all other such imaginables, artistically. Excuse the romanticism. Management Training, is a good thing. Its perhaps the best thing that can happen to a nation grappling with the pace at which the world's economies are progressing (or regressing) and their respective currencies are changing hands. And seeing where our professionals from the various segments and sectors are elemental and instrumental in these transactions, it is indeed important they understand how they're affecting the economy and are in turn being affected by it, to understand where they stand, in the circle, the chain. More than just that. Ethically speaking, a thorough and exhaustive and morally complete management training should equip these professionals with the knowledge of the significance and underlying potential of their respective professions to the nation. It should aid them at managing their primary careers efficiently and capitalize on their technical abilities, using their newly acquired managerial skills, to add more value, to their profession, and to the nation as a whole, subsequently. But what do we see happening? An engineer graduating from a premier institute, in engineering, sitting through a management course and landing himself a job in managing some so-and-so's finances. A doctor, spending some six odd years of his life for an ambitionhe nurtured since his early years, of healing people, sitting for management training. And consulting an MNC on revamping their strategic approaches! What is the world coming to?

In today's fast paced society, a multiple skill set is increasingly becoming a pressing prerequisite. Multi tasking is the need of the hour. It is important for us to be able to fit into multiple hats and portray those respectively requisite multiple skill sets and fit into our roles seamlessly. Agreed. But what is the justification for giving up a passion that was dreamt of, envisioned, struggled for, for years on end, for the pursuit of a relatively more materialistically comfortable living. A good bargain, is this? Isn't this perpetuation of materialism under the facade of multiple skill set acquisition? The very ideas of commitment and passion seem drab and fall flat against such shifty preferences of an indecisive youth. Then how is work ethic gaged, in this setting.

These people religiously tread in the norms laid by their former generations with a scientifically inclined zeitgeist. They manage to fulfill someone's ambitions for them. And then, halfway through something somewhere strikes them that they are not doing what they would have perhaps chosen to do, under a different set of independent circumstances. Independent in it, that they remain unhindered by anybody's opinion but the decision maker's. Then is a Management course really an eye opener, catering to one's introspective needs of assessment of self worth and one's natural inclination? Is this the right means? Who can answer..