Going back to school
In a fortnight, life promises takes to a rather interesting turn for me, as I leave India for the USA to commence a 2 year Master in Public Policy degree at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. It's a dream come true for me; a dream that has been fulfilled after such a long journey.
As a teenager in high school in Bangalore, I dreamt of having the opportunity to study at an Ivy League college or Ox-bridge. I also wanted to study a subject that I was passionate about and that would excite me intellectually, like the liberal arts or something related to government, development, international relations and political economy; rather than the traditional engineering / medicine / accounting path that Indian societal norms usually drive most of us Indian kids towards. Fate did however take me through four years of engineering college which I hated. Luckily I had the opportunity to work with the World Bank as a Research Assistant for a year after engineering, and absolutely loved learning about World Bank projects in various sectors across the world and the developmental / political and implementation challenges involved. Three weeks in the villages of Madhya Pradesh reviewing a Bank forestry project brought me face to face with abject poverty; an Indian reality that city folk like me did not have to see. It was as disturbing as seeing AIDS in everyday life, growing up in Zambia. I realised that I was passionate about working on development problems facing developing countries and wondered what career path I could take. Realising I needed to go back to school and get a Masters degree, I headed to business school, where I fell in love with infrastructure and project finance - building and financing large electricity, road, railway projects, etc.
So though the campus placement process at business school led me to joining GE Consumer Finance as a Management Trainee, a year down the line I shifted to PwC's Government Reforms and Infrastructure Development consulting practice. Over two challenging years, I got to work on diverse infrastructure and government projects across the sub-continent - from restructuring Bangladesh Railways, to assessing the feasibility of what soon became India's most controversial SEZ (Nandigram), to helping India's largest agricultural bank develop a portfolio of financial products for the natural resource management sector to helping Indian Railways structure four landmark Public-Private-Partnerships with the private sector. The travel was often the most exciting and challenging part - from meeting trade unions in Chittagong to meeting villagers and microfinance institutions in villages in Gujarat and Kerala, to going to a railway factory in Varanasi to learn how diesel engines were manufactured to spending weeks in government offices in Dhaka. Government and the public sector was a huge inefficient engine that faced so many challenges from lack of resources and corruption, to lack of expertise and ideas. I realised that I was passionate enough about working on problems facing governments in the developing world, particularly in the infrastructure / energy sector, to go back to school and study public policy.
So in late November I took the plunge while in Bangladesh, and spent a crazy December in Bangladesh studying for my GMAT, writing five essays and contacting recommenders spread across the globe. On Christmas eve, I wrote my GMAT and ruined the rest of my Christmas holiday editing and researching my essays. March 15th, 2008, will forever remain etched in my memory for the mail from Harvard that entered my inbox. The initial euphoria did evaporate though, after I learnt that I had received no financial aid. Much soul-searching ensued. Would working in a well-paying private sector consulting job in the US after my MPP, to pay off my huge debt, defeat my entire objective of working in development? Was it worth giving our family property as collateral for the huge loan? After dozens of phone calls to various people in the US, discussions with so many helpful friends and senior colleagues, my family and I decided that it was worth making such a huge investment, one that would hopefully reap returns for me over a lifetime.
So I am going back to school. The last piece in the jigsaw puzzle was the rather frightening US visa interview process at the US consulate in Chennai. Along the way I had to criss-cross the country figuring out a bank loan, arranging transcripts, and shifting out of Delhi, my home for 2 years.
I also recently got to go back to my high school, 10 years after I graduated from the Bishop Cotton Boys School in Bangalore. My five years as a boarder at Cottons has probably been the most defining influence in my life. As I mentioned earlier, it was also the place where I first dreamt of studying a subject like public policy at a place like Harvard. So things have come full circle in a small way. I was also hoping to visit the other two schools I attended, in Zambia and England. The lack of financial aid from Harvard unfortunately ruined plans for a grand 23-day Africa trip cutting a swathe across southern Africa from South Africa to Botswana to Zambia to Zanzibar, including stopovers at my old primary school and a white-water rafting trip down the Zambezi river downstream from the Victoria Falls. I do however plan to visit my boarding school in the UK, en route to the USA - I particularly look forward to meeting my old housemaster Mr. Piggin who still teaches there, 15 years after he taught me how to hold a hockey stick.
I leave a lot in India - family and friends, a comfortable job, etc - and embark on a journey to a new country and what promises to be two very interesting years. I'm looking forward to it.
As a teenager in high school in Bangalore, I dreamt of having the opportunity to study at an Ivy League college or Ox-bridge. I also wanted to study a subject that I was passionate about and that would excite me intellectually, like the liberal arts or something related to government, development, international relations and political economy; rather than the traditional engineering / medicine / accounting path that Indian societal norms usually drive most of us Indian kids towards. Fate did however take me through four years of engineering college which I hated. Luckily I had the opportunity to work with the World Bank as a Research Assistant for a year after engineering, and absolutely loved learning about World Bank projects in various sectors across the world and the developmental / political and implementation challenges involved. Three weeks in the villages of Madhya Pradesh reviewing a Bank forestry project brought me face to face with abject poverty; an Indian reality that city folk like me did not have to see. It was as disturbing as seeing AIDS in everyday life, growing up in Zambia. I realised that I was passionate about working on development problems facing developing countries and wondered what career path I could take. Realising I needed to go back to school and get a Masters degree, I headed to business school, where I fell in love with infrastructure and project finance - building and financing large electricity, road, railway projects, etc.
So though the campus placement process at business school led me to joining GE Consumer Finance as a Management Trainee, a year down the line I shifted to PwC's Government Reforms and Infrastructure Development consulting practice. Over two challenging years, I got to work on diverse infrastructure and government projects across the sub-continent - from restructuring Bangladesh Railways, to assessing the feasibility of what soon became India's most controversial SEZ (Nandigram), to helping India's largest agricultural bank develop a portfolio of financial products for the natural resource management sector to helping Indian Railways structure four landmark Public-Private-Partnerships with the private sector. The travel was often the most exciting and challenging part - from meeting trade unions in Chittagong to meeting villagers and microfinance institutions in villages in Gujarat and Kerala, to going to a railway factory in Varanasi to learn how diesel engines were manufactured to spending weeks in government offices in Dhaka. Government and the public sector was a huge inefficient engine that faced so many challenges from lack of resources and corruption, to lack of expertise and ideas. I realised that I was passionate enough about working on problems facing governments in the developing world, particularly in the infrastructure / energy sector, to go back to school and study public policy.
So in late November I took the plunge while in Bangladesh, and spent a crazy December in Bangladesh studying for my GMAT, writing five essays and contacting recommenders spread across the globe. On Christmas eve, I wrote my GMAT and ruined the rest of my Christmas holiday editing and researching my essays. March 15th, 2008, will forever remain etched in my memory for the mail from Harvard that entered my inbox. The initial euphoria did evaporate though, after I learnt that I had received no financial aid. Much soul-searching ensued. Would working in a well-paying private sector consulting job in the US after my MPP, to pay off my huge debt, defeat my entire objective of working in development? Was it worth giving our family property as collateral for the huge loan? After dozens of phone calls to various people in the US, discussions with so many helpful friends and senior colleagues, my family and I decided that it was worth making such a huge investment, one that would hopefully reap returns for me over a lifetime.
So I am going back to school. The last piece in the jigsaw puzzle was the rather frightening US visa interview process at the US consulate in Chennai. Along the way I had to criss-cross the country figuring out a bank loan, arranging transcripts, and shifting out of Delhi, my home for 2 years.
I also recently got to go back to my high school, 10 years after I graduated from the Bishop Cotton Boys School in Bangalore. My five years as a boarder at Cottons has probably been the most defining influence in my life. As I mentioned earlier, it was also the place where I first dreamt of studying a subject like public policy at a place like Harvard. So things have come full circle in a small way. I was also hoping to visit the other two schools I attended, in Zambia and England. The lack of financial aid from Harvard unfortunately ruined plans for a grand 23-day Africa trip cutting a swathe across southern Africa from South Africa to Botswana to Zambia to Zanzibar, including stopovers at my old primary school and a white-water rafting trip down the Zambezi river downstream from the Victoria Falls. I do however plan to visit my boarding school in the UK, en route to the USA - I particularly look forward to meeting my old housemaster Mr. Piggin who still teaches there, 15 years after he taught me how to hold a hockey stick.
I leave a lot in India - family and friends, a comfortable job, etc - and embark on a journey to a new country and what promises to be two very interesting years. I'm looking forward to it.