For a brief period I found myself teaching the MBA batch of Inter National Institute of Fashion Design (NIFD Chandigarh). The course, called MBA in Design Management and Real Estate Management, has been started in association with Annamalai University.
It appears to be one of those courses that have started by institutes just to cash in on the craze of Indian students to acquire an MBA degree somehow or the other. So we have all kinds of institutes coming up with MBA courses with some specializations, in this case to trap fashion designers who want to add MBA to their names. Such institutes hire a part-time teacher or two at a low salary, and bingo! – the course is on. No infrastructure, no library, just one or two classrooms.
Students who cannot get admission into regular MBA courses find these courses a place to park themselves and to pass their time. In the case of NIFD, it seems to be a place where girls can pretend to do something while waiting for their parents to get them suitable boys to get married.
There is only one class scheduled every day. It was a unique experience for me to teach there. Arriving at the institute in the morning, I would teach girls something which they had no interest in learning. I would ask some questions to which they would look at me blankly; for some it was even a great effort to get up from their seats. None took the trouble of reading what was taught in the class. It was as if the girls would come to a fashion party and then go home and then again come the next day without reading or doing anything.
On its part, NIFD was too lax. It could not make students come on time or even attend class. It was kind of money-minded too. I organized the students to do a function at the NIFD campus. Imagine my surprise when students informed me that the institute wanted a rental for using its premises to organize the function! We didn’t pay anything but had a good time during the function. None of the management attended the function, save for NIFD founder Ritu Kochchar.
Perhaps the students realized the sorry state of their course, which I didn’t. Often I would find them standing on the roads, sitting on scooters at the time of their class. I could not understand that people should come from home for just one class and then stand out on the roads.
“Are you so fond of roads?” I would ask them and they would run like little mice to complain about me. Instead of counseling students to behave like responsible managers, NIFD encouraged them to bitch about their teachers behind their backs. That was some character building, NIFD style.
I wondered what education my students were getting and what kind of jobs they would get. Or, more likely, they would get MBA degrees and then join the millions of educated Indians who companies thought were “unemployable.” But then maybe I was wrong all along. My blank students were probably there not to learn anything but just to get a degree to improve their marriage prospects. It was difficult to see my role in this scenario.
But then there were some saving graces too. One was the NIFD director Ritu Kochchar, an elegant lady who always thought of the students and encouraged them to do their work. The second saving grace was the presence of some of the students who did indeed want to make their careers and turned out some really good work. They were also very affectionate and respectful. Teaching at NIFD was worth it, if only for these two graces. That is why I never left class without a God-bless for my lovely but blank students at NIFD.
