Beyond Masters:My Unfloding Voyage 48

Towards the end of the Masters degree program, the youngest professor made it compulsory for some of us to present in a class seminar to be presided by him on an economics related issue of our own choice. One day, it was my turn and I had about seven days' notice to write out the paper and present. There was a requirement that one has to complete his presentation of paper in 30 minutes so that there could be a question and answer session. Those days we did not have in the Department the facility of slide presentation using  projector,  PC/ laptop or Microsoft Power Point: we had to learn these in the management development programs at employers' staff training colleges or Institutes of Management. Presentation was basically reading out from the manuscript of the paper one has prepared. I do not exactly remember the issue that I had dealt with in my paper. But I had carefully chosen a topic on which the probabilty of classmates asking a relevant question was very low (no one would take the risk of getting embarrased in the class by asking irrelevant or inadequately framed question on a subject on which one had not read adequately). The topic was related to Indian planning and efficiency of resource allocation, and was in a sense arguing for proper use of market mechanism. These topics were not taught in the class: planning models and techniques were taught, general equilibrium models were taught, growth and development economics were taught, failure of market mechanism was taught and social choice problems was taught. But failures of national economic planning was not taught in the classroom. India had by that time experienced nearly two decades of State-dictated economic planning: national economic had become an addiction for Indian economists. But there were literature available on indicative planning in France, failures of economic planning in India and other countries, and gross non-performance of public sector companies. There were some champions of free enterprise still left in India. They gave sppeches and wrote articles on the serious adverse effect of economic planning on allocation of resources, on inefficiency of public enterprises, on wastage of national resources by the State, on deletorious effect of high taxes on economic growth, social justice and entreprenerial innovation.  The failure of agriculture and industry to grow adequately despite  planning was so evident. We were in the midst of an industrial recession: growing unemployment and high inflation were two bu-bears of Indian economic performance. So, I had chosen these issues as the subject, write and rewriting the article in a manner that I could read out the article in 30 minutes, skipping certain portions of the article that I had marked to adhere to the time limit. I had been a natural fast reader and speaker. This would create problems for me later and I had to change. But at that time I had to use this natural property to my advantage: most of the class would have difficulty in following the meaning of English sentences spoken loudly at a fast pace that would make them appreciative of my ability but prevent questions from arising in their minds. I had also planned the questions that I would like a logical listner to ask. After I had presented my paper, no student asked any question as I had anticipated. So, the Professor asked two questions that I had planned for. I had ready answers and read out from the unread portions of my paper. I had deliberately skipped these small paragraphs in my article that were in the form of defence of propositions/ statements mentioned in the last sentence of the immediately precceding paragraphs. By skipping reading these paras (of two sentences or three), I had deliberately caused a few logical gaps that would invite the attention of a careful listner. As anticipated, my professor got trapped into those gaps and asked the logically relevant questions that I could easily plant in his mind through my presentation. The seminar came to an end with an appreciation from the professor. But in the process I had learned to use some tricks for future application.
But soon thereafter I had trouble in filling logical gaps. In the MA examination, while attempting one question in one of the mathematically oriented papers, I got stuck just about six steps to the end of the proof of a theorem. I was unable to recall the particular mathematical transformation that I needed to use to proceed the next step. A classmate sitting behind had observed my discomfort and inquired if I had a proble. I whispered to her that I was stuck with question number x. She whispered back requesting me turn back to have a look at her answer to the question in her answerscript that she had kept open. I thanked her but could not make use of her offer: I could not see from that distance, nor was I inclined to copy. I therefore tried alternative of my own. I wrote down the last step by leaving some space and then worked backwards to the previous step and then the previous one. But the sixth step from the bottom still failed my memory. I had to leave it at that hoping that the evalator of the answercript might miss the logical gap of a step in my answer.
The MA examinations got over rather smoothly. Though after the examination of the first paper I had run high fever and apprehended that I might have to dropout. Fortunately the next day there was no examination and I had recovered enough in 24 hours to be ready to go through the rest of the examination. Some of my clasmates however dropped out of the examinations for reasons of illness or insufficent preparation or apprehension of not being able to achieve targetted marks.

With the examinations over, there was lot of time for fun. Our local friends' club, Kishore Sangha (Adoloscence's Group) formed when we were in the sixth grade or so, now had young men as members. We had by then playing cricket, football or hockey and shifted to cards. We had stopped organising Saraswati worship and shifted to worshipping Goddess Kali. We started organizing Annual Cultural Functions with music, mostly vocal, performed by artistes - some would much later become famous singers in Kolkata, dance performance from young girls in the locality and drama performance by members of the club.
This year members wanted a upgrade their drama: they selected a suspense thriller. The problem with that selection was that we needed an actress as well. Those days it was difficult to get hold of a girl to act along with the boys. However, we managed to convince one girl who had shown a signs of seeking love with one of our members. This member was not an actor but like me would normally be present during the evening rehearsals. So, there was some scope for testing romance. We could convince one elderly person to give us two rroms lying vacant in the first floor of his two storied building for our use for rehearsals. The main actor was our director. He directed very little but also responsible for organising everything else for the performance on the stage. I acted as the prompter and found that I could exert influence on the way some of the actors and the actress would deliver their script.
But soon a problem would arise. The girl cam to me one afternoon and said in tearful eyes that she had been commanded to withdraw from the drama by his elder sister's husband. This person was the General Secretary of the bigger club of the local residents. We were also members of that general club and thought our exclusive club as an affiliate. I shared the sudden priblem with my friends and they agreed that as the General Secretary of our exclusibe club, it was my responsibility to find a solution. They were all agitated and felt that the general club was unfairly and unethically intruding in to our group activity. I had several rounds of discussions with the President of the general club , a medical doctor and the General Secretary. What I succeeded in getting from them is this: there was a general objection to boys and girls of the locality doing rehearsals without the supervision of seniors, the genral club felt organising annual cultural function by age-specfic exclusive clubs as a threat to the general club and they could not tolerate this. I explanied to them that while we could take care of the sentiments of the elderly citizens' objection to girls and boys participating in rehearsals, the general club cannot threaten freedom of the members to have exclusin\ve club's own activities. We requested the elder sister of the girl to be present during the rehearsals and went ahead with the program with adequate publicity among the residents of the locality to support and participate in our Annual function. We quietly met the local police station officers and requested their presence during our program. Everything went off well. My friend appreciated my role as their leader in overconing the crisis and I complimented for showing solidarity and extending support.The girl did show signs of getting interested in me. After sharing a few romantic glances and innocous conversations for a few days, I went away to from Kolkata for three weeks.
It was time to ponder over on what to do after getting the Master degree. I planned to keep open all available options: jobs- academic and non-academic, getting into research and doing Ph.d. I was sure that I would not be getting into teaching at the University striagt away even I had topped the examination results and I was also sure that there was no way the University could get me into a third position.  I sent applications for jobs to a multinational company, a public sector bank, a public sector fertilizer company a foreign banl and some colleges for lecturership as also for admission to the Indian Statistical Institiute's program for Research Course leading to Ph.d. My elder brother also asked me if I would be interested in joing as an accounts officer in his company, though he advised that it would be better if I had pusued a Ph d program. I was not still sure what would be better.