The 3 Mistakes of My Life while choosing my college & course

It was the May of 1988. I had appeared for my Class XII Board Exams and was waiting for CBSE to declare the results. My birthday was nearby and the joy of soon becoming an adult was overcome by the fear of whether my result would be on the expected lines and if I would make it to a North Campus college.

The result was announced 2 days before my birthday and brought with itself an assurance that all was not only well, but quite good. At 73.75%, I was probably among the top 4-5 percentile students 3 decades ago, when marks were more moderate and the possibility of not making it to a DU College was less severe.

I applied to all 7 campus colleges – St. Stephens for B.A. Hons. (Economics) and B.A. Hons. (English), and SRCC, Hindu, Hansraj, Kirori Mal, Ramjas and Khalsa College for B.Com. (Hons.) and B.A. Hons. (Economics), B.Com. (Hons.) being my first choice. With my marks, SRCC was a far cry for me and the only way I hoped to get in was if people with much more marks than me opted for some other courses elsewhere. However, I was quite confident that my marks would get me through to one of the other colleges for sure.

St. Stephen’s cut-off was the first one to be released and presented a huge dilemma for me – I had cleared B.A. Hons. (English) and was eligible to appear for an interview. For anyone in their right sense of mind, it would have been a dream come true but it wasn’t the same for me. The only reason why I had opted for B.A. Hons. (English) was the worry that if I didn’t make it to either of B.Com. (Hons.) and B.A. Hons. (Economics) at the other campus colleges, I would then pursue English Hons., but only if I got into St. Stephen’s. English, otherwise, was my favourite subject but I was placing my career ahead of my passion. However, given that the other colleges were yet to announce their first cut-off list, I had no choice but to appear for the interview at St. Stephen’s and take it ahead from there. And so, I prepared myself for the inevitable and reached for the interview on the defined day. I don’t know what the panel saw in me, but I got selected.

This compounded things even more as many people known to me told me to quickly take admission at St. Stephen’s, and stop being a fool in trying to go to any other college, even if it were SRCC. By that time, the other colleges had also announced their first-cut off. I had made it to B.A. Hons. (Economics) at Hansraj, KMC, Ramjas and Khalsa & B.Com. (Hons.) at Ramjas and Khalsa. Hindu was out of bounds as yet.

Happily, I took admission to Eco. Hons. at Hansraj, and was even more happy to realize that 17 other students – including 3 out of 4 of my closest friends from my school – had got admitted to Hansraj. The fact that I wouldn’t miss my friends at college was also quite heart-warming and, so, the decision to go to Hansraj became a no-brainer. It is pertinent to mention here that I decided to choose course ahead of college and decided not to take admission to the most prestigious St. Stephen’s College. While it may seem to be the right thing to do, this was my first mistake.

In choosing to go for my second choice course ahead of B.Com. (Hons.), simply because I believed that Hansraj was better than Ramjas or Khalsa, I chose college ahead of the course. How confused can one be! This was my second mistake.

Life at Hansraj was quite interesting. I got selected for the college cricket team & table tennis team. I was also chosen as a part of the Debating Society as well as the Quiz Team. Additionally, being someone who enjoyed acting and dancing, I decided to become a part of the Arts & Culture Society. I was soon busy with all the affairs of my co-curricular activities and studies took a back seat. Not that I wasn’t attending classes. I attended almost every class but I also spent all my spare time into the wee hours of the evening playing cricket & TT or working on plays every single day. This left me very little time to study and, while I always managed to complete all my assignments, I was merely taking care of the minimum that required me to complete my degree.

One day, many months later, one of my seniors decided to enlighten me about what it takes to do Economics Hons. He told me that an Eco. student can have the luxury to indulge himself in only one thing throughout college – his course books. He added that even at a college like Hansraj – which consisted of school toppers – routinely about 6-8 students fail in the subject in the first year itself. What I was doing was hara-kiri, and even God won’t be able to save me from failing unless I corrected my ways and returned to studies in right earnest. Else, he advised me that it was better to change my course and pursue something else.

Now, this was something that gave me a jolt right from the skies. Being someone who enjoyed my studies but also enjoyed other things equally, I wasn’t able to come to terms with the fact that I will have to give up everything else for my studies. I decided to change my course instead and opt for B.Com. (Hons.). There was one problem though – it was already October and Hansraj didn’t have any seats left for B.Com. (Hons.). I would have to try at another college. My efforts at Ramjas went vain as they didn’t have a seat available. Khalsa also refused to entertain me. What could’ve easily been my first-list colleges refused me admission later. Desperate, I decided to somehow get into B.Com. (Hons.) somewhere, even if it meant leaving my prestigious campus college. This was my 3rd mistake.

Zakir Husain College was near my home and I decided to try there. As luck would have it, they not only had a vacant seat in B.Com. (Hons.), they were only too happy to grant me admission because of my Class XII marks which were almost 10% higher than their first cut-off list. And finally, I was only too happy to get admission to ZHC – which wasn’t considered to be a half-decent college as compared to the campus colleges – even after I had already made it to St. Stephen’s, the topmost college of the country.

Anyhow, 3 decades later, I have no regrets. God has been kind, life has been good. I made it to the world’s best ad agency, JWT, very early in my career and never looked back thereafter. What I lost in college, I regained quickly through some very good luck and a lot of hard work.

Today, 30 years later, as my son gets ready to go to college, he has been lucky to get through to SRCC. My advice to him and others is simple – follow your heart. It is difficult to choose between college and course. I made 3 big mistakes; you don’t.

The Union Budget 2018-19: a bag of tricks

My take on the Union Budget 2018... not that it should matter to anyone. Slightly long, so pick up a tea or coffee, if you will, as you read this.
Statutory Warning: Read at your own risk. Anybody complaining of dying from a heavy dose of satire is solely himself/herself to blame.
The budget presented yesterday is the last budget of the current government. I would have preferred though if this was the last government offering the current budget.
The budget is supposed to be an exercise in which the government tries to balance the earnings and expenditure of the state, and doles out some freebies to the needy while strengthening some purse-strings with those who have more than they need. The 2018 budget, while attempting to do so, seems to have actually been prepared not by a financial wizard but by a wannabe-magician who seems to have got his rabbits and saw-blades mixed up. Given the budget document, I'm surely not going to be the one to volunteer to try and pull out the rabbit from his hat, for I could easily end up getting into the saw-the-lady-into-two chamber instead and not come out alive. In any case, I have a general mistrust of magicians, and the better they are the more untrustworthy they become. So, pardon me, but I am cynical.
Let's start by taking a look at various things in the budget. Some seem quite good, some seem not-so-great, while some are clearly excellent bridal make-up trying to cover up the blemishes and moon-craters.
The most popular thing first – the income tax and the benefits given to the middle class. The salaried people have been given a largesse in standard deduction of Rs. 40,000/-. Yesterday, every minister and all side-kicks of the party in power kept harping about the fact how this means additional Rs. 40,000/- in the hands of the people. Well, either these guys can’t pass a simple arithmetic test of plus & minus, or they’re full of ignorant innocence of the highest order. While the Standard Deduction has indeed been increased, the usual deductions under medical insurance & conveyance allowance totaling to almost Rs. 35,000/- have been taken away. This is the simplest case evidenced in economic history and entire political science of taking from the left pocket to put in the right one. Resultantly, the benefit is a magnanimous Rs. 5,000/- per annum instead of the promised Rs. 40,000/-. Add to this the additional 1% Education Cess that one needs to pay now, and the income tax is actually going to increase. So, we’ll all be left with a smell of good food that we can never see, touch or eat. Ah! The joys of mathematical jugglery know no bounds.
Not that spending additionally on education is a bad thing. All governments must definitely contribute more & more towards education and healthcare. However, what confuses me is that despite this 1% additional cess, the actual allocation to the HRD Ministry (that controls education) has reduced from 3.70% last year to 3.48% this year. This is actually a 6% decrease in actual spends from last year, and if one takes the current inflation rate of over 5.5%, this would actually mean a reduction by almost 12% over the last year. Even if one looks at the total spend on Education alone, it has gone up by Rs. 3,000 crore from Rs. 82,000 crore last year to 85,000 crore this year (less than 4% increase against an inflation rate of over 5.5% and a GDP growth forecast of 7%). This means that we’ll be actually spending about 8.5% lesser than last year after taking into account the inflation and GDP growth. Huh! How does that make any sense? Also, income tax receipts FY 2017-18 were Rs. 4.41 lakh crore in 2017-18. Given a 1% increase education surcharge, this would mean an additional collection of Rs. 4,410 crore even if the income tax collected is same as last year. So, why am I being asked to pay more if the government is going to be spending less?
That brings me to the one really good thing that hardly anybody can criticize – the health insurance plan for the poor, already been called Modicare (ala Obamacare). Before you read the next sentence, I would like to re-emphasize two key-words in the previous one – hardly anybody. Having made that clarification, here goes. On the surface, this seems really great, almost as good as being told that we’re all not going to be taxed anymore ever. However, as the saying goes, the devil lies in the details. 10 crore poorest families or 50 crore people (40% of India’s population) are proposed to be covered by the government for medical expenses up to Rs. 5 lac/annum. Well, which madman could argue against that? Ahem, even though I’d like to disagree, some people do call me mad… so, I’ll try and live up to that reputation, if only for once.
Personally, I am absolutely delighted with this I-care-for-the-poor-and-the-sick approach. That is what social care is all about, which I strongly support. The expense for this medical insurance (even at rock-bottom rates) is going to be about Rs. 5,000/- per family. So, that’s Rs. 50,000 crore public expenditure on healthcare. But why do I not see an allocation for this in the budget? The National Health Mission budget has actually been reduced by over Rs. 650 crore (2% decrease over last year) this year, and the total budgetary allocation of Rs 52,800 crore for health in 2018-19 is merely Rs. 2,720 crore higher (5% increase) than the revised estimate of Rs 50,080 crore in 2017-18. So, where’s the additional Rs. 50,000 crore for this insurance (which needs doubling of the health budget) going to come from? And why is the government not willing to spend this money on building hospitals instead and providing free care to all? Who will be the real financial beneficiaries of this medical insurance? Obviously, the insurance companies and the private hospitals. Surely, with a medical insurance of this nature, no person is likely to go to a government hospital anymore, and we shall see a mushrooming of private nursing homes (most likely leading to suboptimal care) and lots of inflated & fake medical bills that earn private hospitals millions without having much impact on overall health. In fact, this would also mean an immediate increase in private hospital charges, as demand will quickly outstrip supply of hospitals, beds and doctors. Who pays for this big farce? Well, of course, the honest tax payer constituting the top 15% population, who’s got absolutely no relief from the government in this budget. I have no problem paying for this great initiative, but the government, while announcing this grand schemed, hasn’t earmarked any funds at all for the same. No marks for guessing that it is a great magic trick by a good wannabe-magician trying to charm the audience through make-believe and sleight of hand.
While we’re on the subject of good things for the poor, let us also look at the MSP guarantee for Kharif crops at 150% of cost. While this MSP benefit is announced only for Kharif crop and not for Rabi and Zaid, it still seems to be really good, given the huge number of farmer suicides our country sees every year due to crop failure or inability to get the right price for their product or farm debt repayment. Let us look at how the government defines cost to understand this better. Total cost includes the basic purchase cost including seeds, fertilizers, manure, pesticides, etc. not including the cost of labour, land rent or interest on loan. An average farmer in India currently spends about Rs. 60,000 on each crop. Effectively, this means that over a 4 month period (July-October) of the Kharif crop, an average farmer is guaranteed Rs. 90,000 for his labour, or, Rs. 30,000 income for 4 months, and he still has to pay for land rent (almost half of the cultivated land in India is rented) and the interest on the loan taken from the local money-lender (which can be as high as 5% per month). Nonetheless, it is a good initiative. Though increased MSP always means increased prices and inflation. But, we can live with that to save farmer lives. If only the farmer got that benefit instead of traders and middle-men who actually make a clean 200-300% profit on agrarian produce. And, if only, he got it for all three crop seasons instead of just one.
Before I end, let’s also look at the biggest social initiative of this government and the pet project of our Pradhan Sevak – the Swachh Bhaarat Mission. Well, as the numbers point out, this year, it sees a decrease in budget by over Rs. 1,400 crore (7.3% decrease over last year). Guess, India has become much, much cleaner over the past 3 years and doesn’t need more investment on this anymore? Why do I not see the change though, I completely fail to understand! Somebody help me.
Yours ignoramus, Shailesh Nigam