Old Age: a Curse to Mankind

OLD AGE: A CURSE TO MANKIND

Ageing is a natural and irreversible biological phenomenon. It is survival of a growing number of people completing their worldly and traditional adult roles. Normally persons above sixty years of age are classified as aged persons or senior citizens.

A salient revolution has occurred in the last 100 years- unseen, unheard and yet so close to reality, the biggest achievement of the century is longevity. All over the world, life expectancy has risen, leading to a sharp rise in the number of older persons. In India life expectancy has gone up from 20 years in the beginning of the 20th century to 62 years during 2007. It is expected to be 80 years by 2025. Similarly the number of older persons in India in 1951 was 19 million, but in 2001 it sprang up to 77 million and it is speculated that in 2025 it would be a whooping 177 million.

While the numbers have gone up, the quality of life has gone down drastically. The erstwhile joint family and the natural support system have totally crumbled. The fast changing pace of life has added to the woes of the older persons. The reasons behind India’s fast growth of elderly persons are:

a)advancement in medical health technologies, better medical care and low mortality

b)consequentgradual fall in mortality rate

c)increased awareness.

d)better nutrition

e)increased life expectancy

A study of graying problem in India reveals the following statistics:-

(a)90% of the older persons are from the unorganized sector with no social security at the age of 60.

(b)30% of the older persons live below the poverty line and another 33% just marginally over it.

(d)73% are literates and can do only physical labour.

(e)55% of women over 60 are widows and many of them with no support whatsoever.

(f)There are nearly more than a lakh people above 100 years of age in India

Today the concept of joint family system in India has collapsed giving birth to the ideas “we are two and ours two”, encircling the family bondage amongst only 3 to 4 people. The older persons of the family are sacked as unnecessary, useless and disturbing elements. Many elderly and sick people have no place to go and thus suffer a miserable death on roads. Their unclaimed dead bodies often satiate the hunger of stray dogs. What a panic and heart-throbbing sight! Even in some highly dignified families, we see how miserably and beastly the elder people are treated. Certain people even hide the identity of the head of the family just because they are illiterate and not properly dressed to match the gorgeous drawing rooms of their children. On many occasions, it is practically seen that the parents are humiliated in the family due to old age.

Every year the world elder’s day is celebrated to honour and respect the aged citizens. But in reality how many of the real needy are benefited? The theme “create a favourable environment and protect aged persons through improving their quality of life” is not implemented in letter and spirit to ensure social security and social justice for these neglected persons. It could only be materialized and ensured through a more caring, nursing and affectionate world.

Prof. Simachal Panda, HOD, Dept. of English

JOINT WORKING: A FORCE OF UNITY TO RECKON WITH

Joint working is the key to success of any organization. It is a force of unity that reckons with. There are quite a number of values that leave a special impact on joint matters for smooth functioning of an organization. Some of the important values having great impact in joint matters are enumerated below:

I)INTEGRITY: It is the corner stone for building trust. All disciplines must be able to rely on each other regardless of subject they are involved in. They must individually and collectively say what they mean and do what they say. Commitment to the overall objective is an important ingredient of integrity. Integrity inspires confidence in others to carry out assigned tasks and is a fundamental requirement for building effective teams.

II)ATTITUDE & COMPETENCE: Attitude and Competence are the most important factors to achieve success in any profession. Competence consists of skill and knowledge. Those chosen for the joint planning must have positive attitude, skill and knowledge for conducting joint planning and utilizing available resources to achieve optimum results. Competence is the core of the profession and relationship of the profession with the people. Competent performance includes both to perform the relevant task effectively as well as the ability to integrate that skill with others. Building service competence is an intense and life long affair for the dedicated professional.

III)MORAL COURAGE: Moral courage is essential in all activities particularly for a constructive joint planning. This includes the willingness to stand up for what one believes to be right even if that stand is unpopular or contrary to conventional wisdom. Other aspect of moral courage involves risk taking and tenacity making bold decisions in the face of uncertainty, accepting full responsibility for the outcome and holding to the chosen course despite challenges or difficulties. Competence is an essential foundation for moral courage. Morality should not be a matter of legality, but of conscience. Moral behaviour is essential for gaining and maintaining the positive reputation as well as the confidence and support of the students and other supporting staff especially in an educational institute. The students are the basic source of an institution.

IV)TEAM WORK: Team work is the cooperative effort by the members of each discipline to achieve common goals. From highest to the lowest level-are a team. Deterring all adversaries, winning the success is the teams’ goal that is achieved through team work.

V)TRUST & CONFIDENCE: Trust and confidence are central to unity of effort. A highly effective team is based on the team members having trust and confidence in each other. The trust does not result from good feelings or devout wishes. Trust is based on the mutual confidence resulting from honest efforts to learn about and understand the capabilities each member brings to the team. Trust and confidence are built by hard work, demonstrated competence and planning and training together.

VI)DELEGATION OF AUTHORITY: Successful team work requires delegation of authority commensurate with responsibility. This is a necessary part of building and maintaining the trust based on competence that characterizes the successful team. Over supervision disrupts teamwork. Delegation unleashes the best efforts and greatest initiative among all members of the team.

VII) CO-OPERATION: Successful team work also requires cooperation. Cooperation among team members compete successfully with the adversary. Cooperation requires team players and the willingness to share credit with all team members.

Though the points are not exhaustive, they are the essential ingredients to bring great success to joint planning of a team In order to sustain unity, joint planning and joint working will go a long way to achieve result oriented success in any organization.

Ashutosh Tiwary (1st Year, ECE-1)

IS AN INDIAN MANAGEMENT DEGREE AT PAR WITH GLOBAL STANDARDS

Does one still have to look abroad for a quality education? As far as higher education is concerned, the educational scenario has changed dramatically in India in the last decade. It is believed that an Indian MBA scores over an International MBA on several counts. The main advantage is the cost. An MBA from any good B school in the U S or United Kingdom costs anywhere between 25 to 50 lakhs. Whereas best reputed Indian Management Schools charge much less nearly 10% of the same amount. Secondly, when living abroad you spend far more than you would in India and as a result need to work there for at least a few years to recover the amount. This severely hampers the prospect of returning to India after completion of the degree.

On the other hand a student from a reputed Indian B school always has the option to work at either place, since all premier B schools have a significant amount of foreign placements taking place each year. Also India is a vibrant economy and today corporates all over the world value the pool of talent that exists here. In fact people opt for positions in India to be a part of the growing economy. Of late, there has been an increase in the number of NRIs coming back to India.

In this thriving scenario, it makes sense to get your degree from an Indian B school. There has also been a steady increase in the number of tie ups between Indian and foreign universities. Thus with more and more premier management institutes of international repute education is on its way to Indian shores. One can experience the benefits of international education at a lesser cost. Also Indian MBA courses have been experiencing and growing significantly in recent years. MBAs from Indian B schools have proved their mettle in the4 global working environment and are offered top positions in several organizations. Considering the purchasing power parity, initial expenditure, initial placements and growth in salary, it provides inputs to arrive at a decision. Multinational companies do not have to think twice before coming to India in search of middle and senior management talents. In every Indian B schools, participants with two to five years ofIT industry experience always fill a certain percentage of batch. These students often have international exposure. Their multi-cultural experience adds value to the entire batch and programme as a whole. It also compensates for the rich diverse cultural experience that is associated with a US or United Kingdom MBA.

Finally Indian B schools are more open to non-experienced candidates than International B schools. Thus Indian B schools prove to be advantages to most people. Therefore, keeping in mind today’s scenario, it is believed that an Indian Management is certainly the way to go rather than seeking studies abroad.

Sindhuja Debabandya (1st Year, CSE)

MANNERS

Good manners sweeten the general atmosphere of life. We win our worst enemies to our side by sheer courteous manners. Courtesy costs nothing. Rough and rash remarks create resentment. People avoid those who have no good manners.

Like bad manners, good manners are also infectious. Using words of courtesy like ‘thank you’, ‘sorry’, ‘please’ etc. costs nothing, but matters a lot in life. They can help in making the complete atmosphere genial and affable. Service with a smile is a good manner, whereas irritation is boring and tiring. Bad manners always prove to be cumbersome.

Bad manners make an adverse impact. The person having no table manners becomes repulsive when eating voraciously, licking his finger tips or swallowing the contents of food in gulps. Such bad manners can be overcome through series of learning and practice. Good manners are learnt at home as well as in the hostels.

Manners are not alone confined to eating and speaking. General behavior determines tenor of life. Sometimes students block the passage when their teachers, seniors, and ladies do face difficulty in passing. So educating manner should be a chapter for students. Sneezing without handkerchief, spitting here and there are few bad manners. Manners must be taught to children from very early stage to respect to teachers, parents, and elders. They should be made to realize importance of courtesy and humility. Manners are closely linked to discipline. Ill-mannered child grows into an indiscipline student and a bad and irresponsible citizen. Bitterness of tongue changes friends into foes. So let us learn to be sweet tongued.We should not be duped by a blithe and oily tongue. People often use courtesy to cheat simple people. We should identify such people and deal with accordingly.

Therefore manners go a long way in determining personality of a person and leave a greater impact on the life of the people.

Aastha (1st year, CSE)

MANAGING LIFE

God has given all the precious things to human being to make this creature the best creation of Him. Really human being is distinguished from other creations like animal, plant mountain, sand, river because of its personality, intelligence, sociable behaviour, thinking capacity, management capacity etc under different situations.

Man is confronted with three different situations like managing his life at individual level, at group level and at structural level or organizational level. At individual level, he must understand the basic concepts like perception, personality and motivation. To understand these concepts, he must be well conversant with learning.Because learning is a process of modification of behaviour as a result of training,practice and observation.The better the understanding of human being,the better will be the self management. Actually most of the problems of management starts at individual level. So it is better to uproot the deficiencies at the primitive level itself. For example,one organization gives a basic training programme to its new employees so that perception, personality and motivation of the employees will be acceptable. So in training programme as many information as possible is disseminated to the employees. At the same time it is expected that the employee must be a learner, responsible to his duties and loyal to organization as well as to his profession.

Next challenge comes at group level. To manage the life, the individual has to understand the concepts like communication, conflict& conflict resolution, team work and techniques of group decision making.It has been seen in modern organizations that managers spend more resources in resolving problems due to inter personal communication gap. In modern times the worker must be a good worker not only at individual level but also at team level. Sometimes it becomes very difficult to work with a team. But if the human being wants to achieve success in his life, then he has to manage his life in a team. Most of the teams are associated with conflicts. However not all conflicts are harmful. For example, at process level, a mild level of conflict is beneficial whereas inter personality conflict is always harmful for the organization which ultimately bounces back on the individuals. So, to become a successful individual at group level, he has to understand the concepts mentioned above in proper manner.

The most difficult challenge comes to individual is at structural level. For example, if somebody leads an organization, he has to face the challenges at all levels - individual level, group level and structural level. If Indra Nooyi has reached the top position in Pepsi International, it means she has been managing her life at individual level, at group level and at structural level. At structural level the biggest challenge comes from changes and Organizational developments. The individual has to understand these concepts in a proper manner to take the organization to a greater height.

It is therefore essential that man accepts the challenges and overcome them with strong will power and sheer dedication to justify that man is the best creation of God.

Bhabani Prasad Mahapatra, Dept. of Economics

RIGHT ‘????????’S

Remember Rohan, a very smart small boy wearing rounded-black-rimmed spectacles, broadcast in a television advertisement,inquisitively & incessantly posing the famous question repeatedly to a salesman: “Ussse kya hoga?”.

You are not wrong if your guess is an ad campaign for Aquaguard Water Purifier sometime during 2007. What was the best part of it?

“Questions!!”

I had always been telling this to my students that the ability to pose a good/right question at an opportune time is the true characteristic of a student. If one is not able to put across a right question, then for sure he is not even qualified to be a student.

But if one is able to do so, no matter what be one’s age, he/she still would be a great student. Trust me when I say this, I had realized this very late in my life, when I came across a person who at the age of 65 outsmarted everybody else in his vicinity by popping up the right questions, which made the moments unusually interesting and ultimately revealing or enlightening.

I can understand that nobody likes questions, no matter when it is asked, by whom so ever it is asked or whatever be the question. Because it is very true that if the questioner is not putting across the right question, it may reap unwarranted negative consequences. Every Tom, Dick & Harry with/without an iota of authority can put up a question. But not every question will bring forth a desired outcome. Therefore it wouldn’t be wrong to conclude that questioning is an art.

Note it down today and observe it for your own self, questioning is an art, an ability that is one of the most priceless virtues that an individual can possess.

Finally, remember how is it a ‘Right?’ that is worth asking, if in the process of answering it, the problems get multiplied without arriving at an enlightening solution.

Deepak Kumar Patro, Dept. of MBA