Business

The 'Er...’ In Leader

Here’s a new kind of MBA for those aspiring to populist politics

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The 'Er...’ In Leader
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Sir Cawry Academy of Management has been instituted to create a pool of highly trained young people who will be placed in political parties. All aspects of the academy, from the campus to the curriculum, has been designed to equip our students with hard-core management principles, so that they become the dealers of tomorrow.

Campus

The academy boasts a sprawling campus near Delhi, within easy access of the airport, Parliament and Tihar. The entire area is a hi-security zone punctuated by numerous metal detectors, but students are trained to bypass them. Each student is assigned a personal car with a red light on top and provided an escort detail that clears the road for them. This, of course, may result in minor problems, when more than one student is on the move at the same time. Wherever one can see, there is a mess. But that is only because we want to make sure that our students’ every desire is catered to—and at all times.

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Curriculum

Our course material has been put together by an expert team from the government. Great care has been taken to ensure the inculcation of every skill needed for a political career.

Finance: Students start off with a nihilistic look at accounting, in which they start with double-entry book-keeping and gradually remove entries till they arrive at no-entry book-keeping. They then move on to more abstract concepts like currency and are made to understand the correlation between the fall of the Rupee and the rise of the Anna. There are also optional programmes like a lab on tender management titled, “How to avoid making issues out of tissues”, and seminars on thought-provoking topics like: “If Gandhi said: ‘Be the change you want to be’, why is his photo on a Rs 500 note?”

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Marketing: The first year is dedicated to advertising and branding, with a few explorations into cutouts. By the end of the year, students will be able to precisely decide the appropriate size of the photos of the PM, the party chief, the CM, for instance, on any campaign ad or poster, on an absolute as well as a relative scale. In the second year, we cover more advanced concepts like ‘brand extensions’, and demonstrate how a single name (Rajiv, to pick a random example) can be used to cover everything from airports to stadiums to sea-links to welfare schemes. Students also acquire hands-on experience in public relations with scintillating role-play exercises like “Stay silent for weeks on end” and “Denounce an orange tree for having RSS links”.

HR: As the name of this discipline suggests, students are gradually trained to stop looking at people as human beings and start looking at them as resources. This is done through a combination of theoretical rationalisation and practical exploitation. The course includes a field-trip during which a student has to enter a random house in a village and, under the pretext of getting to know them better, eat their dinner and commandeer their cot. Seamless succession planning is taught by visiting faculty from Tamil Nadu—a six-day compulsory session in which complex issues are tackled. For example, “Who is more senior in the party? The leader’s wife’s brother? Or the leader’s daughter’s husband?”

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Other disciplines: We believe all our students have a Right to Information Technology. So, everyone is given an iPad on joining (Yes! We dare to think beyond laptops). They are then taught how to create a Twitter account and it is deeply impressed upon them to change their passwords regularly: a random example—from sonia123 to rahul123 and back again the next month. There are other optional courses like Logistics, in which students apply analytical skills to tackle real-life problems. A typical project would be something like: “How to transport three truckloads of alcoholic beverages to voters, and four truckloads of voters to a rally, within six hours, given only two trucks.”

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Extra-Curriculur Activities

Sir Cawry Academy of Management believes that any well-rounded politician (who may or may not be called Nitin) needs to explore avenues beyond simply academics. We therefore encourage our students to participate in and experience various games and societies. Some of which are:

a) Rushing the well—A team-building exercise in which students race against each other to a pre-determined area, all the while creating a synchronised uproar.

b) Dodge ’em—A simulation game which has sandals being hurled at the player from all directions. The object of the activity is to avoid getting hit.

c) Health & well-being society—A study group that analyses the symptoms of ailments like memory-loss.

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d) Art appreciation—The influence of statues on status.

Placement

Sir Cawry Academy boasts a 100 per cent placement record. The top students are recruited by the national parties, while others are absorbed into various regional parties. Any student who misses out on these is taken in by the Communist Party because they believe in people who are left.

Admission

In line with our quest to encourage the youth in our country to join the political process, we have a highly streamlined application procedure. Interested candidates need to submit only two documents. One, a cheque for Rs 1,76,000 crore. (This can be post-dated by seven years or till the date of the 5G auction, whichever comes earlier). And two, a slip of paper with the candidate’s family name. The candidate’s own name is optional. After all, the motto of Sir Cawry Academy of Management is “Aaj ka beta, kal ka neta”.

(Ramesh Srivats runs a company called TenTenTen [www.tententen.in] that creates social apps for brands.)

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