Freakonomics ???

It all began at 1500 HRS when the different sections of the question cum answer paper were distributed. Three sections and in each one I had to certify that I will agree to abide by the rules of the Honour Code or whatever.

So, the first thing that struck my mind was why am I writing the same thing three times. Why cant we just write one and staple it to the final bunch? Do we have a fuzzy logic behind writing the basic details on every form? Please illuminate.

The initial test was on our ability to judge whether certain conditions in the economy were believable or not. Its not like the 0 or 1 in the AND or OR gate. Its definitely much more than that.

Section B made me realise that I had better things to do in life than sitting with 50 other people inside a room and trying to figure out what the next step was. My only mantra for Economics was still working. Given any equation anywhere in the question paper, try to multiply that with the Price or Quantity, then differentiate and equate the same to zero. You will ultimately end up with some things that make sense and which might also make sense to the TA who is correcting your paper. So, by some probability you will get grace marks.

Section C was a complete disaster. Only after submitting my paper did I find out that I had to attend only one question out of the two. Why didnt someone say that aloud? How are we supposed to note small changes in typing when we are solving huge problems in a monopoly? And guess what the problem was all about - selling kidneys and calculating the demand for the same. So, in a way, I was estimating the demand for a healthcare mafia gang.

About 25 minutes to go when the TA announces that we have just 10 mins. All of a sudden, Junta got irritated and explained to him that it was a 90 min test. But what the hell guys, there wasnt anything to write in that paper!!!

In the end I was all smiles because this was comparable to the same feeling I used to get from Open Book Tests in BITS. What goes around definitely comes around !!!

So what did Junta have to say about all this? Well, most of them were zonked!!!

What is the degree of monopoly was one question - HIGH was one's answer.

Another question had a series of sub-questions and it said - answer the following if you think that some condition is YES. Well, there are a lot of smart people here. Many of them just wrote NO.

Overall, it was great fun I would say. From world prices, kidney demand, book selling and some N other effin things, we had a taste of blood.

This is just the beginning. Perhaps, the beginning of the end.