The flood in Bihar has reached horrendous proportions. Anybody who is following the story is getting more and more appalled by the enormity of the destruction and the conditions of the hundreds of thousands who have been rendered homeless and are fighting for survival. It initially started as one more story of the usual floods that happen in India every year but very rapidly we realised that this is different. An entire river, charting a totally new course due to the deluge of water following heavy rains in its catchment area, it has caught the entire state or rather the entire country napping.

For my readers from abroad, a comprehensive coverage of the calamity can be found by referring this link.

This was the time to stand up, do something and be counted. Gone were the times of making patronizing statements, say the obligatory words of solace and then go on with your usual life. This was the time to walk the talk.

Some of us had stayed back in campus during the term break and they actually set the ball rolling. We brainstormed, we networked and by the time the batch had come back & Term 4 had started a concrete plan was ready. We wanted immediate action. That sort of ruled out making contributions to the Prime Minister's Relief Fund or any such other fund. While noble, these funds did not let us see any tangible benefits. It was like a case of fill it & forget it. We wanted more than that.

Some of us got in touch with a NGO working in the field in Bihar. Accredited by UNICEF & CARE, this was a reputed NGO & we could be sure that stuff we direct to them would reach the intended population. The next thing was to decide on what to send. Money, probably was the easiest thing. But these people on the brink of life & death don't need money now. They need food, they need safe drinking water, they need clothes and medicines. So what we decided was to raise the money in the campus and then buy the essential stuff. Already orders have been placed for an initial batch of medicines and we are also doing a cloth collection drive at the campus. We have also contacted the Indian Railways to book space for all the stuff we are going to ship out. This should reach the NGO in Patna who will in turn direct it to the forward areas.

We had our first collection drive yesterday. It was really really heartening to see the spontaneous response from the batch. We have not yet lost touch with reality. Even more heartening is the response people have shown to volunteer for other small activities all of which are essential to making this entire thing a success.

This is but a small start, a small drop in the ocean. This cannot be solved by 450 students sitting in a B-school. This requires monetary contribution and physical efforts which is beyond the current batch. This requires huge amounts of money & relief material. This also requires massive work on the ground to ensure that all that is collected & donated reach the needy & do not get "lost in transit".

At ISB, we are trying to tap all avenues and all the contacts that we have to get funding. Our solemn promise is that this is going to be run professionally and there would be total transparency & accountability for each & every rupee collected. If any of you out there would love to help/contribute/do anything in this regard you can drop me a mail at Sumantra_dasgupta@pgp2009.isb.edu or to Rajarshi Ray at Rajarshi_ray@pgp2009.isb.edu. Any kind of help would be appreciated.

All the best.

Long time no blog. Ya...it's kind of sad and there is only one word for it- Procrastination. So many times have I logged in to my blog & then logged out again. But anyways, getting down to stuff.

Well, Term 3 is coming to a close. Funnily, I seem to be blogging just when exams are around the corner. Seeing my grades, I sort of should know better than to spend time like this. But, and I admit this sadly....I do not know better. Actually I do know, but I couldn't care less.

There was this hype about Term 3 from even before we landed up here (courtesy blogs of the last batch). Till about a week back I thought those guys were exaggerating or that our batch was a class apart. The pressure just wasn't there. Sure, we had assignments...loads of them actually, but nothing which was not manageable. Man, have be all been proven wrong. We have 7 assignments due this week and with just a few days left for the end terms things have really gone out of control. The mother of all assignments - the entire entrepreneurship project is still pending. For the uniniated, this is a project in which the study group has to do a live project on an entrepreneur - sort of understand the why's & how's of his career & then somehow connect it to our course learnings.

Well, the problem of writing after such a long break is that there is too much to write. Too many things have happened and I'm having this thing like a slideshow going through my head. Guess I have to apply a ruthless filtering process here.
So here goes the more important things to have happened in the last few weeks:

- The Net Impact club organised Bandhan on 15th aug. This is one of the most important dates in the entire academic calendar. About 300 kids from city NGO's come to campus and spend the day here celebrating with us. Or rather we celebrate it with them. My study group went to meet our Aikya family that day. Probably that outing would have given me some cool oppurtunity to do some networking but after going through this day all I can say is that I would not have missed this for anything. It was unbelievable to see the campus that day. The enthusiasm of the kids had actually rubbed off on us and we sort of underwent a change. Some of these kids are so damn talented. Probably all they need is a helping hand & somebody to have some confidence in them. One of our guest speakers last month was talking of something he called the "Ovarian Lottery". In India, your success depends on which part of the country you are born in & who your parents are. It's so damn unfair. I mean, we were talking among ourselves & we were thinking that we easily could have been in their position, looking for happiness in things we take for granted. I don't know how this can be solved or who can solve it. I doubt if it can be done in 10 years, 20 years or probably in our entire lifetime. But it is so important that we try & we start.

- Another matter of concern we had was the amount of food that was being wasted at the Dining Hall. We are trying to find out ways to segregate the waste at the root and are looking at ways to do in-house composting rather than throwing it in municipal waste. We have got a couple of contacts of experts in the field & are pretty hopeful of pushing this through. There are a host of other things which are being done by us - the 'Green Team' under Net Impact. A very critical thing which we have already got implemented is a default 2 sided printer setting for all campus printers. In one stroke, this should drastically bring down paper consumption in the campus. There are a host of other interesting things we have got lined up.

- ISB is launching an official blog to be run by the students. Yours truly will be now be one of the official bloggers. But this will be a more formal affair & not where you rant & rave about things.

- Another very important thing. Profs apparently read our blogs!!!! I was so damn psyched to know of this. Even more scary were the circumstances in which this revelation came about. But this is MY blog....my conscience is clear. Good thing out of it was that now a very large percentage of the batch knows about my blog. I got about 200 hits that day. Ah, the trials the famous have to go through!!!! On a very very cheeky note...thank you Prof. My blog enjoys its new found popularity :)

- Recruiters have started to come to campus in large numbers now. So we had Accenture, BCG (again), Oliver Wyman, Goldman Sachs, TCS, Cognizant etc etc in the last few weeks. Got a chance to meet up with Kaustubh. At last we had some plain talk from a senior & not the usual patronizing statements....thanks dude.

Cheers....