By: Soonya
Here is the rough story-line script for a new Airport reading book. In the true spirit of creative commons, this plot is copy-left or the copy right symbol turned around.
Disclaimer
The characters in this plot are fictional; any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental.
The Tail number 1
(Some how my computer refuses to type tale in the first instance, hence the addendum)
Take your mother’s name and your father’s name, mish mash and start a company. Promise to buy a company of a famous Samrat and Spin a story around your intentions. The King relents agrees to sell. Buy the company and strip of its resources – Teak out with roots and make money. Promise to pay, and pay a small installment. Pay it.
Further spin a story as to why the Samrat should transfer the title of the company without completing the payment transaction. King being kind trusts and relents. Strip the assets, buy yourself a new Mercedes and strut around in Elegance (Mercedes variant?).
Now you have your capital – free – and spin a web around a Yellow Fellow. Create a pipe for party funds. (Both the ones – the evening and the day ones). And manufacture fans, for the party.
You then are elevated to the Elder’s House. You speak anab and shanab in Tinglish, and the Yellow Media makes you a hero.
And one day, the Crook, oops (I wanted to type cook) comes up with a new ‘modified’ recipe – a Biryani (or is it Pilav) sprinkled with Turmeric and Saffron and low and behold there is a new government cooked.
And the wily YF finds a spot in the Union for the war-chest and pipe manufacturer who also is the fan manufacturer.
Isn’t it interesting that fans also spin and you have control of the fans?
Of course there are many twists in the tail, the readers can write their own.
Tail Number 2
The gentleman starts off at the shores of a state. As a cheater, oops I meant teacher.
He creates a Cheating Shop (oops I guess it ought to be Teaching Shop) which promises gullible parents that their children will make it to the hallowed portals of the Meccahs of Technology.
Initially he is sincere and hard working. Sees his model cannot grow and is constrained by the number of hours he has got and some of his teacher pals have.
He comes up with a brilliant idea. Self-selecting Success. Or SS in short. It has nothing to do with the Nazi SS, please!
He uses the new mushrooming media, which is ever hungry for lies or otherwise known as ads (otherwise also known as money) to propagate the success of some of his wards. They discover a new word in Telugu newspapers as Prabhanjanam!
The word Prabhanjanam is so infectious even Namaste Telangana sometimes says NaMaste! That is the power of infectious diseases.
Oops, we strayed away from the Plot.
The Plot
Now he masters the technique. Take a large number of students – say a lakh of them. Do some straining and sieving to find the brightest and the most motivated. Segregate them like Apartheid Regimes in the world, and compart-‘mentalize’ them into ‘special’ sections, appoint good teachers, paying them some out of the world salaries and keep working on them. Rest you pay pennies.
Obviously out of a lakh or two lakh students about 1 percent will be brilliant, self-motivated and most likely make it into top schools of engineering on their own merit. Now gullible and loving parents believe that their wards have it in them (whether they have it or not) to make to the best schools and keep paying into the hands of the Plot.
Every year this drama goes on. Every thinking person knows. Even the media knows. Everyone plays along – cause many of them have their hands in the till!
So this person writes his own story – Na Katha.
Now there is another one who finds the Plot. And probably must have read Jack Welsch of GE. Who famously seems to have said ‘Be number one or two or mend it, sell it or shut it’!
So every industry has 3 spots but 1 and 2 occupy much of the market. And this person seems to have like the art of Tai Chi and is influenced by Feng Shui, decides to call his institutions (mental asylums are also referred to institutions) Chi.
Growth Story 2
Not happy with the plunder of the intermediate market, he decides to backward integrate (some people call it as disintegration, but jealous people are like that, aint it?).
They find yet a new set of gullible parents. This time around those who produce the market for the intermediate market.
He also finds the madness for computers among Telugus as an opportunity, and as a true opportunist (read entrepreneur probably for the politically correct?) decide to plunk the TECHNO word into a school name. Then the E-Commerce world explodes. And he decides to add E-Techno to the names of the school.
My processor belongs to an earlier generation, so I do not understand words such as e-techno, email, e-commerce I guess I do comprehend, but e-techno? Na. Nada!
The Saga continues
As they get older, NCDs (non-communicable diseases) such as CVD (Cardio-Vascular Disease), Arthritis, BP and Diabetes take their toll.
They decide they ought to give the ‘business’ to their next generation.
Like the soap opera Dynasty, the education industry dynasty comes up with a nasty (should have spelt as natty) twist.
Like the wars of colas in India where a brown color fizzy drink manufacturer gets to win competition by either buying all bottles or destroys competition’s bottles during summer, our friend being a quick learner uses similar techniques to stop other education entrepreneurs who were good teachers and wanted to emulate him.
So that Jack is vindicated. Like they say ‘he cares a Jack’!
They wonder at better ways to Plunder!
They take inspiration from the growing power of the Dragon and the annexation and mergers in the political domain. Like East and West Germany decide to merge their ‘institutions’ – low and behold CHINA is born.
Cut to a different scene
Now that there are pots of money, much of it in black, the only laundry to wash it is politics for many black-money holders in India.
So the our protagonist of our Na Katha and part owner of CHINA decides to take the plunge into the yellow waters of politics with a pot inverted. Now do not think I lost the plot and started typing the plot with a pot missing. There is a story behind it.
Many of my friends from rural areas, learnt swimming by inverting a pot and holding it to swim in a pond/tank/well.
That is the power of the pot, especially if it has money and you invert it, the money flows into the yellow river and you are kept afloat with the pot – hope you get it!
Empty pots keep people afloat, is the moral of the story!
Mad Media
In the absence of good training, and always seeking to create new words – the media creates a new word for these education industrialists. Educationists! Or in Telugu ‘Vidyavettalu’ – Vidyavartakalu might be apt.
Such words are more respectable than – owners of teaching sweat shops, or teaching asylums or owners of education poultry farms.
See the nexus?
The Chickens come to roost
Now that our EDUCATIONISTS have transformed the education world by their large scale, scaleable, replicable poultry farms or CAFO’s (stands for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), their success is continuously tom-tommed in our Paid News Papers.
Obviously the political class ever hungry for war-chests for elections creates a space for the protagonists from Plot 1 and Plot 2.
And since our hero from Na Katha knows how to rubbish education the committee for scientifically selecting ministers recommends him to deal with what he is good at.
Disclaimer
The author had to struggle with a uncooperative key board which seems to have its own mind. Any typos are incidental and are not intended.
Image Courtesy: Outlookindia.com