“Hurray, I’m off for POINTS training, it’s gonna be fun”, was the very first thing I said when I had my movement letter in hand. For the non-DRDians, POINTS(acronym for POst Induction Training School) is supposed to be a 5-month long “enlightenment” course for the inglorious ignorant nerds that join this premiere institute of science and technology and research as scientists, or atleast so are they called. The future could-be/would-be pioneers of defence tactics and strategies are supposed to be trained here with classroom lectures detailing various aspects of defence research being handled (or made stagnant) by the organization. Scientists are supposed to learn about ships, missiles, fighters, weapons, explosives and radars, and then use it @ work. Sounds techie, geeky and top classified data? Remember I said “supposedly” ?
Getting back to reality, POINTS is best defined as “5 months of sarkari paid vacations”. It is aptly termed as the most fun-filled part of being in DRDO. Five months of no-tension, no-responsibility life with full and sufficient pay! We B-Techers like to call it the 9th semester. It all seems like college continued; wake up just 5 minutes before class, continue the sleep during the lectures, comment on lecturers and subsequently run after them for their notes, bunk after lunch and make professional proxy groups. Has been more than 20 working days now, and not a day has been completely lectured in and not a single class has started on time. Fortunately they end before time! They name a 50-paged copy-paste report as a group task and a slightly larger, generally unrelated, congregation of technical terms, borrowed from a previous such object, as a project. With studies seemingly the least important aspect of POINTS, we are stuck with no option but to rote movies and series on our blessed personal idiot boxes that come these days in so nice packages.
The course, “POINT School”, continues for a period of 5 months, over which the Govt. of India spends slightly less than 1.8 lakhs per student. With a strength of aound 200, this amounts to 3.6 crores, which is but a huge amount. The system definitely needs a revamp and a complete inside-out survey. Maybe that’s why, this batch of ours is the last in the history of POINTS. After all, why wouldn’t the Govt. want to save money!! Lolz
Love,
~~ S i D ~~
Group A Class 1 Technical Gazetted Officer
Now, blissfully ignorant
*composed sometime around the first days of June, 2010. the scenario changed a lot later.
*this are solely the author's personal views and the data may not be correct and relevant
