PhD - Poor, hysteric and Deluded ?

‘What happened? You still haven’t managed to get a job?’ This is probably one of the most frequently encountered questions by PhD students everywhere in the world. From the time of joining a PhD programme till the time the degree is awarded the struggle is on for giving satisfactory explanation to the rather perpetual curiosity of relatives, friends and often times the ‘met only once but I am still your well wisher’ types whom you meet on social occasions. Keeping in mind their common traits I am taking the liberty to label them as ‘Curious cases’. Most of the curious cases seem to suffer short term memory loss as they keep repeating the same question in the same tone every time they see you.

The moment your well wishers realise (with shock)that even after completing the Masters programme you don’t have a corporate tag around your neck that proudly announces your allegiance in the corporate world, your merit goes down in their material scale. The rating by these judges, who are very vocal of their opinions, gets further degraded when they brand you as an over aged and deluded student trying to get ‘another degree’. Now do these ratings matter? Well... sometimes they do. Thanks to the audacity of the curious cases in garnering the required moral support and sympathy for you in your inability for not having managed to get a job when your friends and cousins draw five figure salary and have flown to the US at least once for an onsite assignment, on family get-togethers and social gatherings you become a helpless witness to the downward flight of your social pecking order travelling at an unbelievably pernicious pace.

Typically by the time you are half way through the PhD programme, you would have perfected the art of dodging questions about why you haven’t found your way into the job market. By the time one is in the final stages writing the thesis the student would have developed strong linguistic defence mechanisms, armed with technical vocabulary capable of warding off the onslaught of malign commentators and console the concerns raised by benign inquisitors. Trust me when I say that it makes a difference to tell someone that you are ‘trying to examine the structural incompetence in the social fabric of India to implore the policy makers to see reason in the need for initiating customised policies capable of addressing the perils of outliers in our society’, instead of simply saying that your PhD is about the problems faced by tribal communities in India.


Things are fine as long as you are in the comforting company of fellow scholars who express solidarity with your plight and share your view to seek retribution at an opportune moment for the comments, concerns and commotion about the delayed but socially much desired entry into the job market. They request the pleasure of your company in being part of the endless discussions, which gets labelled by casual onlookers as unproductive verbal exercise by insignificant souls, which start at the University coffee house in the dawn and gets stretched to the nearby church of Bacchus towards dusk. Forced to live on a shoe string budget (this was especially true until recently in the case of PhD students in India) and conduct the head scratching exercise in front of parents to obtain financial support for a much needed conference attendance, I am sure that a large proportion of PhD students in India would find themselves in the lowest quintile of the most unhappy persons on planet earth. Astounding irregularity in the receipt of university fellowships, tedious paper work associated with obtaining the sanction orders and indifferent attitude of the administration, though not necessarily in that order, have significant roles in making life miserable for those who aspire to obtain the highest earned academic degree.

The long hours spent in front of the monitor, the tired eyes giving the image that you are a big time ‘Grasshopper’, fingers that always move as if tapping on invisible key board, skipped meals and the wretched and ragged attire; all work against PhD students in their social life and get themselves branded by the uninitiated (the non PhD students) as hysteric. Albeit the penury in material comforts and social life, most of the students do not back out from the race for 15-30 pages in a high impact refereed journal or give up their effort to put together some three hundred odd pages as a monograph or as a collection of essays with a title and their name on the cover page or shy away from the Toms and jerry game called ‘Open defence of the thesis. I say Toms and Jerry because in an open defense the student (Jerry) is expected to shield the shower of arrows from the experts and audience (Toms), where suddenly everyone in the room gets curious about what you have been doing in the last four years and yells “I have a question for you”.

Now after considering these aspects if someone believes that the acronym PhD could mean to indicate Poor, Hysteric and Deluded humans I would not blame them. However, disregarding the dexterity demanded in the demeanour of a PhD student, the next time I sense a diatribe from the curious cases I would try saying “No I still haven’t managed to get a job.... Does that bother you?”

Smile, Politicians and Sarkari Babus

Most people have happy feelings about smiles, care to return smiles even from strangers and will feel bad if their smiles are not returned. However there are certain sections in our society who are outliers to the general feeling associated with smiles. Let me introduce two such sections. The following sentences are strictly from my experiences and are based on people I knew/know.

One of the most abused facial expressions from the time of declaring an election, be it to the local bodies or to the parliament, is smile. The versatality in the candidate's smile, which could range from a minor tweaking of the lips to an obnoxious expression where the corners of the lips touch the ears, and the vigour with which they sustain the stretching of the facial muscles leaves one thinking whether they are participating in a competition and waiting for the MC to announce "and the first prize for the best smile goes to.." Perhaps the teeth parading at such massive scale could explain the existence, if any,of short term spikes in the sale of tooth pastes, brushes and teeth whiteners after the declaration of an election. Even better the political parties and members in the 'we take care of your smile' industry could think of reaping benefits from possible synergies out of though short term but certainly symbiotic association.

The voters of the great Indian democracy, who for most of the time are forced to choose one among the equally deplorable and completely clueless aspirants to lead our billion member polity, stay wonder struck when a group of fellow homosapiens approach them hailing some name at the top of their lungs and squelching some others with vocabulary alien to the dictionary all in an attempt beg for the mandate to rule them. (It is a bit ironic that the mandate to rule is begged for!) The happy victims of this obsessive compulsive smiling disorder usually clad themselves in white clothes and move about in a pack of fifty or more chanting nonsense.

Now seriosly.. whats with these people?

Are they trying to tell us that the smile is their constant expression? Can you remember the last time you saw a politician or the member of a political party smiling at you other than the time when they put on the robe of a vote beggar? It gives me the impression that politicians are a rare breed of Indians capable of smiling only once in five years continuously for about a month on end, unless there arise an interim need for conducting the 'painting the index finger exercise' in their constituency. Ofcourse on a day today basis we see these guys jeering and grinning at the Indian polity through their dumb to the core and incorrigibly insensitive behaviour that ridicules the ones elected them.

Sarkari Babus are another section in our society whose attitude towards smile needs special mention. It is very unlikely that any one in a Government office will smile at you when you enter the office premises, unless you have already done business with them to their satisfaction, immediately giving you the feeling that you have landed in hostile territory. This is despite the fact (and I emphasize the word fact) that the monthly household bills of Government servants are funded by our tax rupees.

The nature and quality of smile received by the common man who visits a Government office varies. The initial smile from the common man to the officer goes totally unnoticed as the officer would not even acknowledge the existence of such a person near him, leaving the applicant think that he has a better chance of winning a million dollar lottery than getting a smile in return. The second smile offered by the applicant, after receiving the much awaited glance from the officer, is usually returned with a derisory glance along with a short, powerful and ready made explanation as to why a trip to the moon is easier than attending the submitted request. The facial expression together with the verbal exercise acts as a smile wiper for the applicant and this triggers a series of patronizing gestures from the officer including a smirk which gives the applicant the confidence to smile again. Having communicated the idea that ' I can make or wipe your smile' the officer together with some other cronies will now use their vocal cords to mimic hyenas that found a carcuss and gleefully declare their committment to get the job done for the applicant at 'any cost'. Whether the officer will smile again will depend on the voltage in the smile of the applicant after he is told about the inevitable costs associated with operationalising the request.

Politicians and Sarkari Babus are necessary evils in our system capable of exerting considerable influence in the lives of common men. It is time that full time politicians and Sarkari Babus who form less than 1.5 percent of the Indian population consider the popular request to stop smiling for business and start smiling for a reason. And I believe that about 1.2billion smiling faces in India or roughly about 17 percent of the total smiles on planet earth is a good enough reason.

NB: I wish to acknowledge that I have also come across good politicians and bureaucrats and seek their forgiveness if I have hurt their feelings.