Why everybody wants to do an MBA?

When I was at kgp, in our final year, BLACKI was a cool term. It meant students who had successfully secured an MBA seat in Bangalore, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Calcutta, Kozikodhe and Indore IIMs. Students who belonged to this group, had their eyes gleaming and there chests upright. They spoke with a swagger, interspersed with a little dose of humility so as to sound human. I never appeared for CAT in my final year, had no intention of doing an MBA. I also never understood why there was so much enthusiasm for people choosing this as a career after slogging for engineering and science for four to five years.

I have been listening to Thomas Picketty’s Magnum Opus ‘Capital in the twenty first century’. And now I realize why the rush. Managers are the nuevo landlords of this generation. People whose income, except a few big capital owners, who still rule the roost, have skyrocketed in the last three decades. Income from the super managers and managers at high position holds the maximum share of income in most of the developed and developing nations. They sit on the upper decile of income earners like a span of ministers. Some of them have their presence in the upper centile as well, in the race for the throne.

Engrossed in movies, research, classes and few other things that cannot be talked about, I had no idea of this transformation which had taken place in the economy, while I was in the final year. Everybody wants to climb the income ladder. Money is power and the more you have, the securer you would feel, in your den. All students who had their eyes on climbing higher in the income race knew that it was an MBA from a good institute which could give them that. And they made all preparations they could.

I, on the other hand had no plan. Going with the flow, like a man rushing into the Mumbai local, without even making an effort, I sat for the placements. And got selected in a consultancy firm. I applied to some Universities, and got selected in one for a PhD, which I eventually decided not to go for. Even while working for the firm, I could not decipher this secret which was widely well known. Then bored and angry at the shallowness of the world I was in, I decided never to work for people who controlled wealth. Maybe it was a feudalistic outlook that made me think that most of my friends are going to work for people who own wealth. That is they are the warriors of the super rich who use them to proliferate their wealth. I think I may have been a little wrong here.

Managers who are successful create their own wealth. And they own a part of what they create. I may sound naive but this simple fact was not clear to me in my final year. Not that the intricacies are crystal clear now, but it seems that one can become super rich in today’s world if one is a manager. Few steps higher than the other professions like professor, teacher, engineer, and so on, something which was not true before the 1980’s when this phenomenon started.

So would I have been a different person had I known this earlier? Probably not much. I instinctively knew that world is not for me. And after one and a half years at a corporate firms, my instincts were assured. Life is much more than money. And power can come through other ways. But a sense of peace prevails when you understand a little bit of your past. I am not sure with so many other IIMs coming up, if BLACKI is still in use. But one thing is for sure. With money pouring in the bank accounts of the managers, the eyes are still gleaming, the chests are still upright and the swagger is still swagging around.