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Why MBAs buy SLRs

June 25th, 2011 Posted in india, people, personal

Every MBA I know owns a digital SLR camera. And here is my theory that probably explains why.

So this is the story…

MBAs are a privileged lot. Even before you make it to an MBA college, you’re priveleged because you obviously got to study in good schools, got admitted into decent graduation colleges. In a country where most children don’t even make it to class 10, this is an extreme privilege. Getting into an MBA course was neither about the hard work you did during college nor was it about the awesome team player you were in that college festival you organized that nobody outside of nagpur cares about. Your being an MBA had to do with the hard work, the painful savings and the big sacrifices that your parents made. To a cut a long story short, you didn’t do anything great. But yes you’re an MBA and that means you’ve had a life far more privileged than others.

Unlike our parents, we MBAs didn’t get into professions where we had a specialization or a specific line of work.

In a country where the most privileged middle class workers aren’t really working on anything specific, or have no special nation/business building skills, it’s worrisome. And the MBAs are acutely aware of the sham that their jobs are and the uselessness of their existence in the system.

Where our parents were engineers who built things, we are an educated generation of engineers who decided to not build. Psychology grads who decided to sell soap.

Our generation’s desire to create, to express, to build isn’t dead. But the 60 hours that we work a week does not allow us to build and create. We only ‘manage’ what others create. And if a majority of the educated, well-fed, well-shod, articulate workforce can only be managers, who will build our nation? The millions who are being taught in dingy school classrooms with under-qualified teachers. Our creators are there. We are just managers. What a waste of an entire generation of possible creators.

So this is my theory… since our MBA education has not allowed us to be good at doing anything specific really, we have become a generation of people looking to be good at *something* at least. And this is when we pick our hobbies and ‘passions’. We want to write. We want to be photographers. Columnists. Editors. Directors. Actors. We want to be something.

Our DSLRs are not symbolic of the over-achievers that we are, as we’d have you believe.

Our DSLRs are a symbol of our crisis that we are not anything. That we don’t create. That we don’t do. And the worthlessness of our existence terrifies us. That’s why we buy our SLRs.

 

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 25th, 2011 at 3:26 am and is filed under india, people, personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
  • http://thejinxedone.blogspot.com/ Ajinkya Pawar

    true that. :) But to be fair, i had prosumer DSC H7 for the longest time, not a DSLR :P
    Isn’t it more like, our generation is screwed up.. we seek too much, we expect too much, we do too much and in all that crowd of thoughts we get lost and remain numb. true, we are in a crisis. and there’s no resolution in sight. we r addicted to change and are too impatient to create anything worthwhile.

  • namitoj gaur

    I have a feeling, your definition of “creation” is skewed towards “something which you can touch” and the principle of “stick to the basics”. Technology made us forget the traditional ways… and to be fair, rightly so… thats why we create digital stuff. but just because we create it online doesnt make it less worthy .. and MBA, that is done, not for the academics but as a platform which gives us the access to try out various things. How we got that access and a debate about that is a grey area. coz either you can think about it as your fortune or you can call it “disparity-oh that’s unfortunate”.

    • Karan

      I think you’ve missed the point… entirely…

      • namitoj gaur

        i dont know karan… as usual Sonal has left this to our imaginations… mine worked in this direction… :P .. though, if this is the case of entirety, please take me closer… :)

    • http://twitter.com/sonaljhuj sonaljhuj

      1. in my mind the definition of creation wasn’t skewed towards only creating with your hands. perhaps the examples came out that way. even digital creation is just as relevant and important.

      2. yes, an MBA does give us that platform. But the platform is almost a by-product of what we do in our MBAs. It’s what we make of it. But in so many ways it’s like wiping the slate clean. And wiping the slate clean isn’t the best thing to happen to people who couldve been so much more.

      3. how we got to the mba isn’t so much the argument, but instead that the people who didn’t are the ones who will create. and that more attention needs to be paid to give them a platform.

  • Karan Makhija
  • Ch4

    Absolutely brilliant!

    • http://twitter.com/sonaljhuj sonaljhuj

      hey thank you. but the more the number of people who agree with the post, the more worrying the signs that it’s a generation gone wrong… almost.

      • Karan Makhija

        Well, the other way to look at it is, the more people agree with your point of view, and observations similar to this (and most of them would be MBAs), the greater the chances that they’ll pull themselves and others around them back from the brink.

        • http://twitter.com/sonaljhuj sonaljhuj

          i love the optimism karan. and this post and the general agreement with it, has made me want to change things around too. so i guess you are right.

  • Hemant

    :)

  • Nilesh Bhattad

    What about “MBAs who don’t have SLR!”.

    • http://twitter.com/sonaljhuj sonaljhuj

      I’m sure they compensate in their own way :)

  • Funybaba

    MBAs in country are just going with flow by being a blind.. they dont use even a 0.1% mind ot think what they want.. engineers doing MBA.. why? I dont get it.. if u wanted to do MBA why do Engineering?

    • http://twitter.com/sonaljhuj sonaljhuj

      karan makhija shared this with me: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/7646087/The-Case-for-Working-with-Your-Hands-by-Matthew-Crawford-review.html

      it talks of the office cubicle as a safe refuge and therefore our craze for ‘upskilling’

      i think if the day comes to save just a few ppl in the world (like in 2012 :D ) they won’t pick the MBAs :)

      • http://thejinxedone.blogspot.com/ Ajinkya Pawar

        read the guardian article. that explains my fascination with household cleaning and such chores. they are meditative and therapeutic even at times. :P

  • The Soothsayer

    What about creating a brand?

    • http://twitter.com/sonaljhuj sonaljhuj

      if that’s really something you’re doing, then that’s great. if you’re creating value. if it’s something you’re growing, then i’m sure you don’t feel the emptiness that i talk of here.

  • Arthi

    so true of the mundane big titled, paper pushing jobs that we do!!

  • Prateek Dubey

    Disagree.

    We buy into photography (and DSLRs) because it’s the most accessible, approachable and share-able form of expression today. A lot of MBAs are prolific writers and poets but they rarely get as much quantifiable appreciation (read: likes).

    If it was just about being creative, as many MBAs would be into pottery, crafts, painting and so on. Growing a business, generating employment and influencing other people’s lives is every bit as creative a process as any – if not more. Failure to see this is a failure of imagination and not necessarily that of an education system. Romance of the future (what you can do) is as potent as the romance of a bygone era (what your parents did).

    Quit chronic remorse, and in the words of Aldous Huxley:
    Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.

    • http://twitter.com/sonaljhuj sonaljhuj

      1. the argument isn’t about photography as a pursuit vs pottery. it’s about the need to fill that emptiness which is a result of the nation of managers we’ve become (vs creators)

      2. Growing a business and generating employment is a creative process. i never denied it. I only point out that most of us feel this emptiness because in our hearts we know, that that’s not really what we do 9 to 5.

      3. Also, with other arts not being pursued and pursuance of only the ones which garner instant gratification, it’s only more evident that the MBA culture is propagating a myth of value based on accessibility rather than creation itself. You need to be brand rather than a creator to be valued. the image is greater than the self.

      4. In the words of Mcluhan
      “There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.”

      Which is to say, that first we need to understand our surroundings to make them better. So this wouldn’t count as ‘rolling in muck’.

      PS: romanticising the bygone era: guilty. i have my faults :) but that shouldn’t take away from my argument.

      • Prateek Dubey

        Sonal, my apologies if my tone appeared abrasive. My problem is not so much with your argument (what you feel, is what you feel) but with the sweeping generalization involved: A few lac MBA grads does not make us a nation of managers. Post-liberalization managerial jobs are hardly representative of the country.

        Secondly, by rolling in muck I meant that if you really feel that way about your work then perhaps its time to look for something more fulfilling – AND pursue what makes you happy, in parallel. Have a look at 1x.com, a lot of those photographers in there are actually doctors, lawyers and managers. With this I bring to a close my totally uncle ji rant. :)

      • http://twitter.com/rajeevbat Rajeev Batra

        Well written! I’m a fan! :)

    • Ntiwari2688

      Hard words, big words with little understanding. I can mock you. But I think it is time for me to grow up. What you fail to see is that through “management” we have reduced human beings into consumers. Do not take things personally, she is not talking about your personal experience. You work on a job for 10 months which brings you nothing more than social survival and monetary security. The rest of the two months you indulge in hedonistic pleasures of travel or adventure sports. While at the same time the world is moving into environmental, political and social chaos. What Sonal is saying is that there is no higher meaning, there is no higher purpose, there is no vision – nothing more than “survival” and hedonistic pleasures. A camera, the way it is, is a straw’s support to someone who would otherwise drown in the meaningless world of MBA jobs.

      • AntiTiwari2688

        Hard words, big words with little understanding. I can mock you. But I think it is time for me to grow up

        lol troll level: n00b

  • Ntiwari2688

    Awesome… Just pure genius! Please also write about people working for investment banks and IT companies. :-)

  • Dilip Dwivedi

    I think working 60 hours a week, is just an excuse to cover up one’s lazy and laid back attitude. even after working 60 hours a week, a person can create, pursue his/her passion (provided he/she is really passionate, and it is not a mere affectation) if he/she manages his/her time well. Every person has with them exactly 24 hours, no less and no more.

  • http://blog.prashu.com Kuku

    Firstly, interesting that all (or most) MBAs have DSLRs. At least the ones that I know do have it, and these ones are from the cream of MBA institutes.

    So… I will build on this fact of MBAs and SLRs and go on to say that the only reason why MBAs have SLRs is that they have too much money and don’t know what to do with it, and this gives them an outlet to make their life meaningful. Additionally, being an MBA, and being in that privileged lot, means that you would have a lot of ‘Yes Men’ around you, who will appreciate what you do, no matter how crappy the photo comes out. :)

    PS: The above was a humorous take on the topic, and was not intended to cause any mental distress to anyone living or dead. :)

  • Triangularnumber

    Don’t agree with you at all. It’s a very superficial analysis. You are looking at the world with a colored glass. You probably don’t look around enough or you see only what you wish to see – a classic case of confirmation bias. Think over Prateek Dubey’s comments – it explains things much better and that too without any extreme bias. But I must say that you have put in quite a bit of thought in choosing the subject – it’s definitely appealing a lot of people.

    Btw, why do you write? Scared of the “worthlessness of your existence”?

  • Akanksha Bist

    DSLRs is a rat race too just like an MBA. Agree partly!

  • Sameer Agarwal

    That’s a very gutsy post. I’m no MBA and hence I don’t feel for these things. But I know many MBAs who know that their jobs are a sham. Great post.

  • Suchitra Sukumar

    //Our DSLRs are a symbol of our crisis that we are not anything. That we don’t create. That we don’t do. And the worthlessness of our existence terrifies us. That’s why we buy our SLRs.//

    nicely put..i think everyone i know faces this crisis in one way or another

  • Kanishkkabiraj

    Very well written post Sonal. And rather brave. I grow tired however, of how easily we reduce our need for individual identity and expression into an outlet of otherwise stifled and dulled livelihoods. Some of the most prolific creators and “builders” have also been writers, poets, painters and photographs.

    I could just as easilly reduce your angst at the state of or systems and education as the equivalent of white man’s guilt.

    Sure, there are enough idiots, including me with a burning desire to express ourselves in different ways. Is it because I have an unfulfilling, ‘inside a bubble’ post-MBA career. Or is it a larger existential question about modern urban society, the codes and expectations of an education system which far from being liberating has a sharply defined class system where ‘being most productive’ is being an engineer or a doctor. But if you have to be any kind of artist, you are laughed at or your dreams seen as hobbies.

    Would I be a singer today had my grandfather not insisted that being a ‘tabalchi’ is the diametric opposite of being an astronaut? He was a civil engineer from the Nehruvian era, and his attitudes reflected this.

    Which is the reason I am deeply uncomfortable when we have further moral codes on what might be a better career path vs another. And yes, in the face of a crumbling sham of a primary school education which desperately needs better teachers. We need to alter the circumstances which make people choose one over the other. It needs to be a worthwhile personal choice. Otherwise, you will continue to see a white collar workforce which is happy filling the coffers of the already super-rich.

    Pretty sure you won’t agree, but i just thought I’d put this down.

    Kanishk

  • http://twitter.com/theevilp Dr. Gonzo

    I have often felt the pain of not “creating”, and most of the anger that I have about my career revolves around it. Quite agree with the conclusions in your last 4 paras.

    I feel you sistah!

  • Vineet Kanabar

    I agree with a lot, and since this is a theory, I disagree a little bit too.

    For one, education was always presented to us middle class, small town kids by our parents as the path to get out of the quagmire, whatever that is. There was never a choice given to us about education, and college almost naturally followed high school for most people. The part where ‘our parents’ are called ‘engineers who built things’ reflects a time where the act of going to work and doing something great was thrust upon them, much like our education. The fruits of their labour clearly uplifted urban society from conditions more deplorable, radically transforming the environment in which you and I grow up, allowing us, among other things, the delusions of grandeur that come around with the ‘likes’ that some one on the comments mentioned.

    Also, I believe you under-cooked the DSLR angles a little. Quite simply, pictures of bangles, old folk, kids and bicycles aren’t worthy of the accolades they seek on blogs and Facebook pages. Those DSLRs are symbolic of a deep and rampant unoriginal-ity in defining the self from the work we do, and are also the newest symptom of the same peer-pressure disease that made us into engineers who don’t build in the first place.

    Colleges, MBA or otherwise, have always been a case of relentless outlier-hunting. And they never said you’re going to be happy at the end of it. Just rich, maybe.

    Also, there’s case for offence against that offhand festival in Nagpur remark.

  • http://www.facebook.com/abhishek.rayasam Abhishek Rayasam

    The pointlessness is more of a personal choice than something that an MBA makes us. And SLRs are bought because they have been brought into a much more affordable price range these days, and an expensive hobby has suddenly become accessible.

  • Onkar

    Nailed it! And my ‘passion’ is to make films :)

  • http://www.unitedworld.in/campus/Mumbai.html MHCET MBA Colleges

    Nice discussion are going on about MBA. Keep it up.

  • http://www.mbaupdates.com/FindCourses.aspx?CountryId=11 MBA Colleges

    Our generation’s desire to create, to express, to build isn’t dead. But the 60 hours that we work a week does not allow us to build and create.

  • Lakshmichndr

    The minute I finished reading this I let out a huge sigh of relief!trust me I could feel the newly formed halo around my head! So relieved that some one actually feels this way. This one year of working after my MBA degree , there is not one day that these thoughts did not cloud me however I could never find the words to express it as beautifully and simply as you did. My dad is a lawyer , mom a doctor, so this scenario could not get more real than this for me..!And as far as the SLR’s go I never bought one. What with being from a tier 75 B school but yes did buy my own Canon something camera!

  • Ameeth Devadas

    Your Blog is a symbol of your crisis that you are nothing. That you don’t create. That you don’t do. And the worthlessness of your existence terrifies you. That’s why you blog. #seewhatididthere #kthxbai

  • Saurabh Gupta

    hi Sonal, well put.
    From the comments it looks like not everyone understood the metaphor of DSLR as symptom of the crisis. It think the over-generalisation was too much. But i like the way you have grasped a deep issue and expressed in everyday terms with a touch of sarcasm. i am encouraged to read more of your posts. :-)
    - Saurabh

    PS: I am not an MBA, but an engineer who didn’t build.

  • http://www.facebook.com/SUDARSHAN0191 Sudarshan Rangarajan

    some mba grads get in due to their parent’s hardwork and money
    most get in by scoring well not just in the entrance exams but they need to have a good academic record right from their school days to get into the best ones. people who do mba from some fairly unknown or a locally ranked college MOSTLY end up enter low-middle level management

    the point where we are now, as we are now becoming a service industry rather than a manufacturing industry is something US started facing a decade back. The quality of managers produced by mba colleges is not quite upto the mark as per the industry feedback and it is agreed upon unanimously hence a strict check on their profile is done by top b-schools

    People have always done thing that pays and right now mba does
    that doesnt mean creativity it dead. creativity exists in many forms and management is one of them.
    to survive in an emerging economy like India where a no. of companies provide the same service/ product the company needs innovation
    innovation is managed to cut costs/ expenditure on fail ideas

    the poor have to be uplifted. the dim classrooms have to be provided wid proper infrastructure. The corporate India constitutes of mba grads who are doing what they can to bring them up. We are a growing nation, more dynamic than the US and a young democratic country .. it will take time for the social upgradation it would have had happened but for the corruption
    nice article :)

  • Kerishma Malik

    Assumptions I don’t agree with-

    1. We are a nation of MBAs !!! Really ???
    2. All MBA jobs are meaningless !!! Have you done/ experienced/ spoken to people who have done ALL/ MOST MBA jobs ???
    3. You didn’t do anything great to become an MBA !!! Agreed that our upbringing and parent’s sacrifices have a great contribution to where we are. but then why is it that siblings brought up by the same parents, in the same environment, with the same privileges can end up very differently ???
    4. You’re an MBA and so you’ve had a life more privileged than other ??? I come from one of the premiere MBA institutes in the country and I know people who’s lives have been anything but ‘privileges’ !!! Speak to them….and learn about their struggle to reach where they are…
    5. MBAs didn’t get into professions where we had a specialization !!! This is a mockery !!! Does the PM of India have a specialization…No, he manages a country….
    Managing something is the most important aspect of building and nurturing anything. If your parents would have just given birth to you (creation) and would have left you, would you be here writing this article ?? No, they MANAGED the most important years for you !!! If you only create and do not manage, none of your creations will never grow into something significant.

    I feel sad for people who fail to see the importance of management in their lives and the myriad of ways it touches their lives.
    6. MBAs have no specific nation building skills !!! Well, you will not see them because you take such a myopic view….People who manage brands or in your words, ‘sell soap’ create employment for a whole set of people. Everyday MBAs are coming up with innovative business ideas to help the nation. Open your eyes and look around..

    7. Managers and creators are mutually exclusive !!! Managers can also be creators and they ARE !!

    So, your argument that MBA’s buy DSLR or write or paint, do it to vent their stifled creativity is flawed.

    One last question- Did your parents who were creators (according to you) never have a hobby like photography or travelling or painting ??? According to your above article, they didn’t…….think about it

    • http://twitter.com/sonaljhuj sonaljhuj

      I feel compelled to reply to you Kerishma, because I can see that the post has angered you.

      The purpose of the post was not to pass judgement but to help people question and understand what quite a few MBAs are going through.

      I haven’t conducted a research on the topic among all MBAs since the post is not a piece of research but an opinion based on the few people in my circles I’ve spoken to.

      I’m sad that the post caused you so much anguish.

  • Wanted

    ” Your being an MBA had to do with the hard work, the painful savings and the big sacrifices that your parents made ” What about FMS ?? :P