RESEARCH

The report carrying her clarification on Rahul Gandhi's MPhil raises more questions than answers Dear Prof Alison Richard, I am a Delhi-based journalist investigating the academic credentials of Rahul Gandhi, the Indian National Congress candidate contesting from the constituency of Amethi, Uttar Pradesh, for the Lok Sabha elections 2009. I would like to get a detailed confirmation of your interview with Press Trust of India, the report of which was carried by The Times of India , IBN and Zee News . Recently, they (a newspaper and two television news channels respectively) carried an identical story (the web pages of IBN and Zee News do not give PTI the credit) in their respective websites, saying you, in the capacity of the Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, have confirmed that Rahul Gandhi (son of former/late Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi) received the postgraduate degree of MPhil on Development Studies from your esteemed university. The three web pages are...

How would you react if this man were your colleague? _______________ Surajit Dasgupta _______________ I n 1994, this writer came across a young girl who was then serving a direct sales associate of a multinational bank as a telemarketing executive. She must not have met the right people at the right time till then. For, with a PGDBM from IMT-Ghaziabad and a degree in commerce from SRCC, she deserved better. Within six months of our first meeting, however, I was glad to know she had become the supervisor of the NBFC which was also the American bank's DSA. But her colleagues were not impressed. They said she was having an affair with the marketing manager of the company. A few months later during a chat with that manager, I noticed he was visibly crest-fallen. The reason turned out to be the break up of his relationship with the girl in question. I learnt she was then seeing the area sales manager of a competing bank. Mutual acquaintances said the two were about to get married...

... on a wing and a prayer Perception, say some. Reality, say others. Recession, say some. Slowdown, say others. A few contradict themselves, moving from one question to another. What they all agree to consensually is that it does affect them. A report on the state of employment of fresh MBAs this year _______________ Surajit Dasgupta _______________ Parents of final year students of IMI waiting for hours on end, hoping their wards will be placed... somewhere I n the plush lawns of International Management Institute (IMI) Institutional Area, Qutb Institutional Area, New Delhi, this correspondent runs into a bunch of listless students whiling away their time, playing cricket, after the institute failed to place them in any of the corporate houses that turned up for the placement season. That was as of Friday, the 13th, March 2009. “We have placed 62 of our 119 students in the first round of placement,” says Prof CS Venkata Ratnam, Director of the institute, surmising, “We hope to place ...