‘First Man’ destroyed my eyes

 

Man, I was really looking forward to this movie. Its a subject matter I am close to, and had high expectations from the director and studio. But all that was destroyed last week, when I watched this movie on the big screen at Hoyts.

I hated it. I hated it so bad that I walked out half way through it. The reason was not the story, or the acting. It was the cinematrography. Shaky camera. Too much shaky camera. WTF , Damien ? Its as if you just discovered the shaky camera effect. The idiotic director and cinemtagrapher chose to shoot every scene on two legs, right in the actor’s faces ! One could see the hair in their nostrills. And with the camera constanly shaking and moving, I was soon overcome with dizziness. Specially in the lauch sequences, I shrill music and shakes almost made me throw up.

I walked out just after Neil was chosen to the Apollo program.

I will catch this movie on torrents when it becomes available, because I really wanted to see his walk on the moon. But I plan to use some kind of image stabilizer software at that time.

I understand this was the perspective of Neil Armstrong, who took such a big risk for a mission guided by the cold-war politics of the time. But I didn’t want to see the actors noses all the time. I wanted to see the rest of the world too.

Space. And everyting else.

Summer’s back !

 

Something funny happened this week. It got hot. Temperature went about 20 degrees ! That means, summer is back ! Also rained ! Through the night. Just the way it should be.

I am still getting used to reverse climate trend here in Australia. Its like an exclusive club, the rest of the world are missing out on .

So here’s to summer holiday !

 

Word’s largest recruitment drive !?

 

Quick question, where could the word’s largest recruitment drive be ? No points for guessing: India. But where specifically in India. It is at Indian Railways. 23.7 million candidates applied for 120 thousand jobs. Thats a selection percentage of 0.5 !

 

 

 

I was reading this fascinating and depressing article which made me sigh and crackup simultaneously about a day at one of the exam centres. As I have mentione earlier, a job in the government, otherwise public sector, is the one thing that attracts everybody in India. It is the peak of aspirations. But actually landing the job is a tedious task , with mulitple levels of exams, eligibility criteria, further complicated by reservations and age limits. The article documents a day in front of one of the exam centres in Delhi, where youngsters have been arriving upto 12 hours before the start of the 90 minute online computer based exam. Most of them have repeatedly applied and tried earlier, and it has become something of a routine to prepare and appear for such an exam.

They come prepared.

 

Tests are held online in three shifts every day (9 am to 10.30 am; 12.30 pm to 2 pm; 4 pm to 5.30 pm). In every shift at this Noida centre, 3,450 have been taking the test — a 90-minute, multiple-choice paper, covering Maths, General Intelligence and Reasoning, Science and Current Affairs — since September 17, and will do so till December.

This has indirectly created jobs for others feeding on the exam queue. An enterprising younster has setup shop to safely store the bags of the candidate for the price of 50 rupees. Another young boy from a neighbouring slum has hit upon the idea of selling gum/glue to the candidates, five rupees for a single application ! And then there are the usual suspects, the auto driver who ferry candidates up and down the centre. Those who run the nearby cybercafes and instant photo booths. Hawkers selling food, meals , snacks and cigarettes. If it starts raining, there will be hawkers selling umbrellas.

Theres also a snippet about the kind of questions the government of India expects the candidates to know about current affairs. They actually expect them to know who the brand ambassador of makeup brand L’Oreal is in India !

The bleak picture being painted here is the harsh reality of the world’s largest democracy. For most of the candidates, landing a government job is the last hope of emancipation, of a chance of a better life. They actually believe that it is one of the responsibilities of the government to take care of them. Such a job would provide them stability, because such jobs don’t have the same requirements of on job performance evaluation, and retirement being years away. But the numbers clearly are not in their favour. With a half-percentage of success, which further decreases every year, the vast majority of applicants won’t get through to their last hope.

To wait, or not to wait

Actually, this is not such a difficult question. Those who can’t wait, should go ahead. And those who are willing to wait, well, can wait as long they want.

But should not convince others to do so.

What Young India wants: ‘Sarkari Naukri’

 

In one of the largest such exercises ever conducted in the world, millions of applicants are appearing this month for an online recruitment test conducted by the Indian Railways.

The Railways Recruitment Board (RRB) has received more than 24 million applications for roughly 120,000 vacancies in the organization. Most recruitment drives by government departments across the country generate similar enthusiasm among job seekers and it is quite common to find thousands of applicants, including PhDs and postgraduates, for low-end government job vacancies.

 

 

Data from the successive rounds of nationally representative youth surveys conducted by the Lokniti research programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) shows that the attraction of a sarkari naukri(government job) has not shown any signs of declining over the past decade. In fact, the share of youth who prefer a government job has grown slightly to 65% in 2016.

The share of youth who prefer a private job has nearly halved to 7% between the two rounds of the survey conducted in 2007 and 2016. The share of those wanting to start their own enterprises has risen marginally to 19% over the same period.

The 2007 and 2016 surveys covered 5,513 and 6,122 individuals, respectively. We compare the responses of individuals in the age group of 15-34 years.

Rural and urban youth hardly differ when it comes to job preferences. But the share of youth in big cities who prefer a government job shows a sharp increase between 2007 and 2016.

The rising preference for government jobs in big cities could be driven by a search for stability as well as the declining income differential between the private and public sector, especially in entry-level jobs.

Big cities here include the 10 most populous cities of India (Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Surat and Pune) spread across eight states and the most populous cities of 11 other states surveyed. Other cities have been classified as small cities in the analysis.

Among all groups, preference for government jobs is highest among the college-educated rural youth (82%). It is this segment that has also been at the forefront of recent agitations for extending reservation benefits to new groups. Urban youth who have studied beyond high school were relatively more likely to look beyond the public sector as compared with their rural counterparts.

Interestingly, there are no substantial differences in opinion based on economic class or social groups. For instance, 63% of respondents from poor households said they prefer government jobs while 65% from the upper middle class said so.

In the latest survey, respondents were also asked to choose between a permanent job with a relatively low salary, a job with like-minded co-workers, a well-earning job, or a job with high job satisfaction. A plurality of respondents (33%) chose job stability while high job satisfaction was the second most popular option. This explains why public sector employment remains so sought after among the youth. Almost half of the respondents who preferred governments also prioritized stability.

On the other hand, youngsters who preferred private sector jobs and self-employment mostly prioritized either job satisfaction or good income.

The sentiment on job creation has been the Achilles’ heel of the Narendra Modi government and it continues to remain tepid. In the successive rounds of the Mood of the Nation surveys conducted by Lokniti-CSDS over the past year, it has consistently emerged as one of the most important issues for the public.

Providing permanent government jobs is an even bigger challenge given that public employment has been shrinking in post-liberalization India.

The pre-liberalization wish of liberalization’s children will not be easy to fulfil.