नाब हूँ

नाव हूँ

मैं बस एक नाव हूँ।

बिखरे आसमान में चुभता बादल हूँ,

चिरता चिल्लाता बिजली बारिश में हूँ।

बिखरे आसमान और पतझड़ में,

खुद-खुद ही को पार लगाया हूँ।

मैं बस एक नाव हूँ।

......

किनारे आते-जाते हैं,

पर मैं कहाँ ठहर पाता हूँ।

हर किनारे से बस गीला नोंक लिये आता हूँ।

पानी में होकर भी कीचड़ से ढोये रहता हूँ,

तो कलंकित हूँ नजरों में।

फिर भी तैरते रहता हूँ,

मैं बस एक नाव हूँ।

......

कर्म में है जो तैरना,

मैं कहाँ किनारे पर ठहर पाता हूँ।

किनारे की हर इंच से,

जो पानी पीछे छोड़ आता हूँ।

हर बूंद से है मेरा एक रिश्ता,

पर साथ कहाँ निभा पाता हूँ।

मैं बस एक नाव हूँ।

......

लोग कहते हैं,

हवा से तो मेरा सम्बन्ध है।

बोले जब हवा पाल से ही ख़फा है,

हर झोंके से दूर धकेलता है।

अब इस झगड़े में,

मैं किनारे से दूर चला जाता हूँ।

मैं बस एक नाव हूँ।

Comments

Economics of doing a PhD: An Informal Introduction (Part 1)

I often ask, “What’s expected of a PhD?” The literature suggests there are both private and social returns to pursuing one. But we must tread carefully: prestige, for instance, shouldn’t be conflated with a social return—it’s as private as the higher earnings a PhD might bring. Digging deeper, it’s clear that PhDs are inherently self-paced and heterogeneous. This is one level of education where each observation (in an imaginary dataset) is so unique that it could almost justify individual dummy variables in a regression, though that’s plainly impractical. Still, if we try to model the PhD journey, we might focus on two broad dimensions: the rhetorical returns (e.g., skills, signaling) and the costs (time, opportunity costs, mental toll). But here’s the catch: superimposing assumptions from lower levels of education often distorts findings, especially when analysing student costs. In this blog, I’ll offer an informal take on the Economics of a PhD, with a focus on India’s unique academi...

Publish Yet Perish?

Increasingly, the notion that seems to backfire is “publish or perish.” Publishing research papers in all areas of generations of knowledge (i.e., disciplines) seems to have updated its course. Lately, however, what seems to dominate the business of the generation of knowledge is the attribute of expansion. Expansion in volume and numbers; still doubtful of the quality, though. What seems to change its course is yet an obvious question that research organizations, universities, and other educational institutions increasingly face is the question of “Why fund research?”. Increasingly, private players' intervention seems to impact the existing research landscape worldwide. Looking at just the discipline of economics, the below graph from Aigner, Greenspon, & Rodrik (2021) demonstrates the irrational yet exponential growth in several journals and published research papers over the last four decades. While growth in numbers is evident, a question of perspective remains. As follows...

Problem with (not) understanding the role of aiming high

In my novice attempts to understand higher education choices during my PhD the last few years, I have always wondered what factors matter the most. Of course, there are models of the orthodox or the newer types. I have mostly relied on the orthodox ones that take a general pool of variables and then predict the probabilities. I am using " orthodox " to indicate the pool of models that are accepted but are old and honestly have less empirical relevance. The fact that these are old doesn't reduce their logical validity; it is just that they are too general to learn from and imply something without relying on stronger assumptions. These are mainly the discrete choice family models that have existed for decades. They give us statements like, " Having the per-capita income increased by X amount, the Pr(Choosing Enrollment in Higher Education) increases (or decreases in case of the circumstances) by Y%". They are more of confirmation (not useless research ...

Questions

Search This Blog