Economics & our lives till date...

One question that's been bombarded on all of us umpteen times: "What do you want to be?” While answering this question, although we limit our thought process to what each of us want to take as profession, the question in itself covers a much larger domain.

When I was twelve, Ravi Shastri fascinated me. I love rasam (a spicy South Indian dish) till this day (not that I'm old!) just because my Mom used to make me consume it citing the success of Ravi Shastri who's supposedly a big buff of this dish. I wanted to be Ravi Shastri. Atleast then.

When I was fourteen, I started liking tennis. Stefan Edberg was my hero, and I liked his offensive style in particular. I loved the game. And I wanted to be someone like Stefan Edberg. I also wanted to be someone like Sir C.V. Raman. Why? coz my parents said so. Plus, 'scientist' was a far more respectable profession to fancy off! I remember telling this in one of those school classes where teachers constantly inquire what each one of us want to become. I didn't know what studies meant till my tenth standard. There is no way I could have wanted to be Raman myself. But given the family feedings of those days, I answered that I wanted to become a scientist. I might've really wanted to become one. At this age, one never remembers old stuff.

Don't go anywhere! economics is on the way...

By the time I was in higher secondary school, I believe I started thinking about my career. Given the primary 3 choices (Engg, Medical & Commerce) that a normal middle class Indian school kid had, I opted for the Maths and Biology stream. The medical profession continued to fascinate me, till the day my final Biology result came, which sealed my dreams. I studied engineering. I loved computers. I loved Linux and Open Source. I loved all the people who were into Open Source. I wanted to be one of them.

But alas! I got a job in Oracle, and now I've landed here in IIM-I. I still have lot of options before me. These apart, whenever I visited the village side, I loved the peace and the simplicity. I wanted to be one of them. In retrospection, I wanted to be a lot of things. And I guess I'm no different from others. We watch action movies, and we want to be there, to do that. We see rock climbing, and we feel an urge to rappel. Finally we are what we are now. Those options that went off into thin air were not unachievable. But we just didn't opt for those. Why? It probably wasn't the best option to choose.

In effect, we wanted a lot. We had a lot of options. And we chose some, coz we didn't have the time/resource to be 'all in one'. In other terms, we couldn't have bit more than we could've chewed! And that's what economics is all about - the science of choice, given the infinite wants and limited resources! Quite funny, isn't it?