Subir Roy: How good is good enough?

OFFBEAT

My cousin sounded slightly tense on the phone. Could I come over in the evening and advise a couple of girls from the outgoing class of her school on career choices? Yes I could, but why should they listen to me. I knew nix about engineering, which has been the flavour of the decade. And for children of her school, it should be smooth sailing. They produce more toppers than they know what to do with.

Yes, their scores are excellent but the problem is everybody seems to be madly trying to top everybody else. Ultimately, what matters is your relative position in the merit list. And that's where the whole nation is defeating itself. A phenomenally aspirational generation is seeking to achieve the impossible, fit into more positions than there are in the top institutions.

Hence the heartbreaks. So there I was trying to tell the youngsters that since you have maths why not look at economics or even mainstream mathematics. Then at the end of three years you will have so many options open and campus recruiters from investment banks and the like will be offering you what an earlier generation would consider astronomical salaries.

If this was an impersonal taste of what the country was facing something closer to the bone awaited me at home. The sombre look on the face of our daughter told me things had gone wrong. Scoring over 90 per cent had not enabled her to realise her dream of entering the portals of one of Delhi's top colleges. Having been born and brought up in Delhi, that was the college she had set her heart on. I tried to argue that there were any number of good colleges in Kolkata and Chennai but that did not wash.

The heartbreak over the Delhi college was bad but the redeeming feature was that you fought and lost on a level playing field. The same could not be said about another leading college, this one in Kolkata. Anyone who knew the reality said those marks should be enough for anyone to breeze through. But the first list had a big hole where our daughter's name should have been.

I then did what all decent Indian parents do, started contacting people who mattered. A couple of impressive ones emerged and I zeroed in on one. He was most obliging and said he would be happy to speak to the powers that be but they were simply not taking phone calls. Eventually he got through. So that's done, I thought and relaxed for the next few days. Then as the day approached for the release of the second list I called my powerful friend to rehearse the point that it was as good as done. Of course not, he retorted. You have to keep trying till the last moment. If suddenly someone with more powerful backing comes then your daughter gets left out. The people who decide ultimately have to bow to the source from where comes the maximum pressure. So do try to marshal as much of heavy artillery as you can, he advised.

I was ready to give up. Then our son, back home for the end of semester holidays, delivered his verdict. His sister should have got the scores that he did, which were nearly 20 percentage points lower. Then there would have been no tension and eventually she would have found a place, as he did, in a decent institution pursuing a discipline she liked. Maybe he had a point. The problem was that we had become a nation of over achievers with fixed targets that missed the wood for the trees.

sub@business-standard.com