Conversations with cult followers, religious adherents, or swamiji buffs can invariably turn into personality clashes that shut out possibility of any rational scientific debate. Such is the deep rooted allegiance of the acolytes to their faiths and beliefs. A similar leap of faith existed at least until now about a MBA in Finance from an Ivy League school. The three magic letters paved the way to get rich in the shortest time possible. Join an investment bank on Wall Street and lo and behold and you were on the path to paradise. Aided and abetted by an irresponsible media which kept lionizing their achievements by flaunting their placement offers year after year, the names of even the best of scientists were pushed to obscurity. Parents ran that extra mile to see their wards somehow join the sacred portals offering the magic degree. The financial pundits told us that a vibrant financial sector is the backbone of any economy and that allocative efficiency of resources can be better achieved by a well developed derivatives market which allows different market participants to offload and spread risks through exotic financial instruments. While it was and is true, greed overtook sanity and the spin doctoring continued unabashedly to the point of collapse. Those who felt that it looked too good to be true were touted as doubting thomases and cases of sour grapes. It was the natural career choice for most engineers from premier institutes to tread this path. Who would like to wait for donkey’s years undergoing the drudgery of learning and applying engineering to earn a decent living? After all there was great demand for the new breed MBAs and it was for the market to decide the hiring price be it eye-popping or gravity defying. Like all ‘good’ things come to an end, the system started buckling under its own weight of inconsistency. The flannelled suited were suddenly left in the lurch. Once used to the uber-rich lifestyles and suffering from delusions of grandeur, they unfortunately continue to put up brave faces hoping for a recovery of the sector to its ‘past glory’ which in the first place was only a mirage.
A sanitized version of the financial services sector with a strong regulatory mechanism will exist but without the magic of get rich quick careers. The Indian government plans to add at least 10 million jobs every year to sustain its proclaimed GDP growth of 9% and bulk of it must come from the manufacturing sector. The sector needs highly talented techno-commercial professionals and career growth can happen only slowly with years of effort. I suppose the Ivy League institutes would concentrate their efforts in churning out more of these and stop selling dreams of dizzy careers in the financial services to their students. Selling dreams should best be left to the entertainment industry.
