Summer of Social Security

Most summers begin and end with sweaty afternoons but I can never forget the summer of June 2013. On the day before my Computer Science paper I got an unexpected call from Jean Dreze. As many would know Jean Dreze is a giant in the field of development economics and has done monumental work for promoting and scrutinizing the fundamental rights that have been bestowed to the people of India. He asked me if I could be a part of a nationwide survey, which aimed to study the rights to life. Before I knew it, I attended a two-day training session in IIT-Delhi where I was briefed about the basics of surveying. We were informed how to be probing at the same time polite. We were told to blend into our environments and live the ‘village life’ in order to understand our respondents better.

My team consisted of many students from Delhi University, DSE, IGIDR and IIT-D. One of my teammates was also from China! Over the course of 22 days we surveyed over 200 households and 100 pensioners, staying two days in each village. We covered four villages from two districts each. In total, we covered eight villages and spent over two days in each of them. We lived a simple life, ate with the village folk and slept in the government schools.

We spent a lot of time inquiring each household about five schemes in total- NREGA (Right to work), PDS (Right to food), Mid-day meal scheme and Anganwadi programme (Right to Education) and the Pension scheme. These schemes form the major bulk of India’s Social Security that seeks to give to people the basic material entitlements and a primary sense of dignity. Social Security seeks to increase the capabilities of the underprivileged. I also learned about data entry and how to edit data. We spent a lot of time scrutinizing and correcting data too.

Why is this Important? From my time here, I have understood that economic growth is a shallow concept without development. Economic Growth is only a means to better welfare. We often forget this and consider growth as an end in itself. Education, Healthcare and Employment are more “real” concepts that affect people’s lives more directly. Himachal Pradesh is experiencing social transformation that is ensuring higher standards of living.

Social Security is extremely important to India, which is the world’s largest democracy. The people of Himachal Pradesh have been awake and have demanded their fundamental rights. This is the reason why the people of Himachal are richer, more educated and happier than the rest of India. This makes us realize that amid the beautiful scenery and cold weather, their lies a much more admirable force within the people of Himachal that makes democracy truly work.

                                                                                                 Pranjal Rawat,

                                                                                                 Presidency University

P.S : Here is the link to the presentation that I made on social security- LINK

Internship at Emami

What exactly is a desk job…???

Ok, before I began let me just mention this from before “I AM NO EXPERT”. This is just my interpretation on the basis of my 1 month experience as an intern at EMAMI LTD. so as you can tell I know very little.

However little I know, I will try to summarise it for you in this report.

I know that most of you must think that desk job is just a boring monotonous job of handling files and sitting in front of computer. But that is not even half true. It involves a lot of things and although it doesn’t look like but its very fun and interesting.

Desk job:

Confidence- Yes, as much as it shocks you it takes a lot of confidence to sit behind a desk and do your work.

Patience- patience is almost required everywhere and I literally mean EVERYWHERE..!! Now in a desk job you will have to maintain patience and not lose your temper.

Coordination- I know all of this must be sounding like proper textbook material to you. Well yeah face it..!! Sometimes textbooks are right. Also just wait for it. I will also tell you something which no textbooks will ever say and about coordination if you are not properly coordinated with your teammates you can’t get any work done on time.

Now the interesting part:

Prioritise: one of a fellow senior intern taught me this important lesson there. As he said it’s always important that you properly prioritise your work. There should be a clear picture in your head about what is more important and what you must do 1^st and which work you should do with what level of dedication otherwise again you won’t be that efficient.

Buttering the boss: Now to those people who will make statements like “mai to apne kaam se unko impress karunga” I will say good luck with that. What I mean by buttering the boss is not laughing at his stupid jokes or anything (although it won’t hurt you…:) )…what I mean by buttering is that you should be in good terms with him. Find out your mutual interest and talk about it. Make sure he likes you as it will definitely give you an upper hand compared to other employee. And not just that, it’s always better to be little bit informal with the boss as he can advise you personally and as a senior that will also be immensely helpful.

Catching up: lastly but definitely not the least....you should be able to catch up well…take it from me… listen to your boss when he is explaining you some work as he won’t repeat it twice and he will not like it also if you ask him to. That won’t make a good impression on your part. Also don’t expect to be patted on your back for every good thing you do. They are not training a dog. They are bloody paying you for doing that so I guess that much return is more than enough.

Now I will conclude my report. It was basically just a small picture of the fun. I hope you people enjoyed it.

-Anirudh Poddar