This is an extract from my letter to Director IIM Calcutta about their Fellow Program:
I had stood fifth in Higher Secondary examination in West Bengal in 1976 and did my graduation in Electronics and Electrical Communication engineering from IIT Kharagpur in 1981. I joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1983 and after serving for 24 years took voluntary retirement in 2007. Thereafter I worked for a nationally renowned infrastructure consulting company for more than two years as Head of Eastern region and for the last three years I am CEO of a company of the Shriram Group in Kolkata. My detailed resume is attached for your perusal.
Academics had been my passion and I am passionate about Mathematics, digital Communication, Physics and Economics. I have pursues study of these subjects on my own for the past thirty years. I wanted to have a PhD but without a post graduate degree it is difficult to do so. So I had applied for the fellow program in Public Policy Management / Regional Development this year after securing 93.47 percentile in CAT. I would also like to put on record that a PhD degree would neither benefit me financially nor not having a PhD would impact me adversely. I had applied purely out of my love of academic pursuit and nothing else.
After being shortlisted I appeared for the interview on 22nd March 2013. I was expecting a stimulating intellectual interaction on my domain knowledge and the topics I wanted to pursue research. I was disappointed when the topics in the discussion went in the following order:
1. My willingness to quit my job: Obviously at the age of 53, with family commitments, a decision to quit a one crore per annum job is neither an easy one nor a practical one. I will elaborate on this issue more later in the subsequent paragraphs.
2. My psychological ability to adjust with students half my age: Since there is no age bar for fellow program, there is every likelihood that some co-researchers may be half or even one third the age of any researcher. If the Institute has any such apprehension, then it should have a priori declared through an upper age limit criterion.
3. My possible inhibition (as perceived by the interviewers) /authority issue if the faculty is half my age: I believe in knowledge acquisition not having any barrier, but if the comparative age structure of faculty and the researcher is a compelling consideration then again an upper age bar should be fixed which is lower than the age of the youngest faculty member.
4. My ability to adapt to a steep learning curve: I thought that I have proved my intellectual ability through a valid CAT score. The modality of demonstrating one's intellectual and academic alacrity to the panel in the span of ten to fifteen minutes (the time span that my interview lasted) was beyond me. I was not also enlightened by any of the esteemed faculty members how to prove that I can learn with an equal level of alacrity of that of someone half my age. I presumed that the reason for having a valid CAT or GRE score to make one eligible to apply was to ensure that the candidate is intellectually competent. Incidentally, I had appeared for CAT in 2008 with a score of 90.5 percentile and in 2010, with a percentile of 98.92. I don't have the 2008 scorecard but my 2010 and 2012 scorecard are enclosed. Or is it that the IIM Kolkata faculty does not trust that CAT score is a proof of intellectual agility!!
5. Domain Knowledge: One single question on Infrastructure development and its importance and after my reply, no attempt to engage me intellectually on the issue. And that was the end of the interview and I was subsequently rejected.
