Is there a necessity to allow foreign B Schools to setup their campuses in India?

It is said that India is the youngest country in the world with majority of its population between 16-40. It is also said that the country's major differentiating factor is the youth population. Having such a massive youth population necessiates the country to concentrate towards the education system.

The county which is proud to of having setup the ever first university in the world is now discussing about allowing competitors from foreign land. Is it really necessary to allow this? Are we not having quality education system in place? What are we missing to bring our industries to global standard?

Having studied in a foreign B-School, I strongly feel that our Indian education system needs basic reforms. We need to look back in history of India and have to reflect upon how we learnt in the past. We have to start reseraching from ancient period to have a clear understanding of our basic method of learning style. Also, I personally feel that the gurukul style of learning should be in place. Even from secondary schools there should not be any teachers. There should only be mentors who facilitate their junior scholars to learn. Unless we try doing this we will not be able to compete against foreign standards.

Movie Review - Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire a movie directed by foreigner having a theme of Mumbai Slums. The movie received awards for best performance in many areas of film making.Kudos to A. R. Rehman for receiving award for his originality in music.

The movie depicts the real picture of India and specifically Mumbai. The story line revolves around the hero who wins 2 Million in a TV competition. The movie starts by criticizing the organisational structure of Indian BPOs. The movie criticises the craze for Actors in India among public through the question, The next theme followed was the Hindu-Muslim revolts happening in the city, the other themes identified are the working pattern of Indian call centre and the way they attend calls. This is clearly comes from the client perspective and the director didnot miss the opportunity to register his mark of being a Scottish by including Edinburgh in the dialogue.

Another perspective to look at is the importance given towards vocational studies instead of regular engineering studies. The hero who is uneducated according to industry standards knows more than the educated professionals. This is clearly due to the knowledge gained through experience and not through theoretical education. Thus it is said that the indirect message is the need for vocational education. The country is gifted with knowledge work force and it depends on the government to utilize them properly to boost the internal growth of the country. It can even take a protectionist policy for doing the same instead of being a mere exploiter of the neo-liberal policies set by the international organisations.

Overall the movie has a very good message with a good storyline that mixes all the facts and events properly. However, the world should keep in mind that this story depicts just one culture that prevails in India and cannot generalise this to the whole Indian community.

Eic in the land of nature

Long ago in the forest of highland there lived an elephant named Eic. Majority of the time the forest was filled with white snow and devoid of food. Eic and the other jungle animals struggled to live their life. One day, Eic came across a fox who returned after touring around the world. The fox described the land to have rivers flowing through the forest without drowning. The land had right mix of climate suitable for the animals to live without the fear of famine. The land is full of trees and plants. The fragrance of the flowers filled the forest. The animals consumed the fruits available in the forest. Some of the fruit tasted sweet, while some tasted sour. Nevertheless, they tasted very good. The animals seem to live a healthy life due to the atmosphere. This was unlike the forest of highland where they had dust. Fox said that this is truly a land of luxurious life where the animals lived in peace with nature blessing them with all the basic needs of their life. Eic got very much impressed with this new found land and wanted to visit it once.

As the highland forest administration insisted on Eic’s safety he sent his administration general first to have a close look at the security features in that forest. After touring in the forest of nature the administration general returned and informed Eic that there is no safety hazard in the land of nature and all the jungle animals lived without any fear and without any security breaches.

Eic started preparing his tour to the land of nature and reached the place. He got surprised with the lifestyle of the animals and requested the academic generals who accompanied him to study their lifestyle and behaviour. The scholars started their mission of studying the behaviour of animals in this new found land. Meanwhile Eic went around the country and made friends. The animals in highland consumed a drink made of some fruits to keep them out of cold weather. Eic served this drink to the new found friends of him. The drink tasted good; however, it brought some sort of dizziness to the animals.

The scholars returned to their homeland and started teaching the fellow animals how to live and grow. Meanwhile the animals in the land of nature found these friends from highland to be very funny and started admiring them. They thought the guests were more advanced in their lifestyle and started noticing the external fashion. While the animals in highland learnt the way to lead a better life, the animals in the land of nature learnt the fashion style of highland. Hence, both the forests made transformation in their lifestyle.

After 62 years, Eic returned to the land of nature and found that the land has changed a lot post his last visit. The land was no more the land of nature he once saw. Instead it became a land of mess with animals fighting with one another and mostly confused with less confidence and devoid of knowing their own strength. Eic lost his scope of visiting this land again wrote in his diary “To lead a better life is always necessary to critically analyse the behaviour before practicing it.”

Satyam!!! - A company with wrong name

When the west is gearing up its management fashion towards business ethics, India Inc. has delivered exceptional case study to consider. Satyam!!! which means truth has forget its values and started falsifying its audit books. The factor to consider is that the company is 4th largest in India. What a tragic failure this is for India Inc and its reputation in global market.

The company's home page says that the company focus to delight its investors, assure its customers, and empower its staffs. Looking deep into the company's failure it can be speculated that the company believed in financial returns for its stockholders. The reason could be seen as greed, inability to have creative ideas to grow business, lack of strategic vision, poor leadership styles. I once read that the culture in Satyam is entrepreneurial in nature. It was mentioned that the company has built more leaders for future business and runs its business units as a separate business. With such a model followed I am wondering how it becomes possible to falsify the fact sheets without the knowledge of others. If Ramalinga Raju is the lone man to perform such a huge fraud, I question this. In my point of view this is a group activity. Without the knowledge of other leaders in the company such a big scam is impossible. However, India being a company where accepting a scam or involving in scam is considered as sin, I believe without proper investigation it is difficult to point anybody involved in this activity.

I am still wondering how bad a company goes to compete in this market. I believe that this is due to the short term strategy that the company had instead of long term vision. This also reveals that there is serious issues with Indian Corporate governance and strategic business evaluation methods. India Inc. need to have greater focus towards developing a model for the evaluation of board. The Golden peacock corporate governance model is good to adhere from European foundation for quality model, however, there is a gap in this model in terms of business ethics which is considered as the latest management fashion. Atleast now whoever be the company who awards golden peacock corporate governance can consider to include this ethics of doing business in evaluation.

Globalisation is it a modern days terminology?

Happy new year to all of you and a Warm welcome to my blog in the new year. To start the year with a global sense sounds more interesting. However, the global nature of business during ancient period and its relevance in modern terms is more suitable to reflect to improve current crisis situation.

The literature about international business and globalisation starts global trade period widely with the voyagers such as Christopher Columbus (1492), Vasco da Gama (1497). However, looking at the history of ancient Indian kingdom there is a general sense that the global trade or transnational trade is so common even during ancient period.

For example consider the pandya dynacity of India. Historical evidences says that they had extensive trade links with the Southeast Asian maritime empires of Srivijaya and their successors. The Pandyas excelled in both trade and literature. They controlled the pearl fisheries along the south Indian coast, between Sri Lanka and India, which produced some of the finest pearls known in the ancient world. According to Hiuen-Tsang, the Pandya country was a depot for sea pearls, its people were black, harsh and of different religions. This can be termed as the modern pluralistic nature of governance. Hence we can interpret that the management style followed in ancient period is pluralistic in nature which is more common in modern day's term. They were very good at trade. Roman trading centre was located on the Pandyan coast at the mouth of the Vaigai river, southeast of Madurai. Hence it can be interpreted that joint ventures and strategic alliances are more common among people of ancient kingdom in globalising their business.

Pandyas also had trade contacts with Ptolemaic Egypt and, through Egypt, with Rome by the first century, and with China by the 3rd century. The 1st century Greek historian Nicolaus of Damascus met, at Damascus, the ambassador sent by an Indian King "named Pandion or, according to others, Porus" to Caesar Augustus around 13 CE (Strabo XV.1-4, and Strabo XV.1-73).

Now it can be argued that the notion of global trade is not a new concept for India. I personally feel that there is no difference between export of software or export of pearl. Even during modern days the city of Tuticorin is called as the pearl city of Tamilnadu.

The elephant that didn't know its strength

Today I read a NEWS article from BusinessLine which says that India showed its strength during this global financial meltdown. Interestingly the writer noted a few points which attracted my interest. The author argues that the government supported its poor farmers by waiving farm loans and consumers by paving the way for low interest regime. Indeed the first package is very good. We still say that India is a country whose heart lies in villages. Its majority of population depends on farming. The country is blessed with mother nature for its natural resources.

Hence, I can confidently say that the country's core competence lies in farming. Its long term sustainability depends on how well the country encourages its public to take part in agriculture. Mr. Gandhi noted this point in his views. The same is now being reiterated by Mr. Abdul Kalaam by saying that we need to bring in more value added services in agro based products. The famous rocket scientist is of the view that the country can grow by improving agriculture and diversifying horizontally in a concentric circle without affecting the growth of other industries.

Interestingly in my previous blogs I had mentioned that the liberalisation policy of IMF and World Bank forces one country to reduce subsidies to farmers and health care there by reducing the governmental expenditure. If India is following this then the country is spoiling the growth of its core competence. Consider western powers they do not have abundant natural resourses where everything grows and delivers productive outputs. They can reduce governmental expenditure by reducing spending in agricultural subsidies. But a country like India which is proud of its nature cannot afford to deviate from its core competence. This can spoil its competitive advantage among global nations.

My Journey towards South

As the world is ready to embarrass west in many senses such as language, culture, management, etc. I made a turn towards South from western country. During the start of 2008 I was not aware of the fact that the year has lots of turnarounds. Collectively the Santa Clause’s gift of year for me turned out to be excellent. Nevertheless, forget not that I am looking at it from a realistic point of view.

So what is all about my journey? I travelled from Chennai to Glasgow in the beginning of the year. Hey wait! Looking at the map I found that Scotland is not at south. I am not sharing my trip to UK instead I am sharing the Meta cognitive journey towards cultural orthodoxy. So how is it possible for me to learn orthodoxy from a dominant west?

Well, the answer is very simple and lies within the history. Everybody knows that by 18th century India was invaded by British. So what is the speciality of this event? History tells that the invasion was mainly due to the abundance in wealth which attracted these traders. However, I ask the question what sort of abundant wealth that attracted these people into the country? Is it the natural wealth? Or is it the precious materials? Or is it the ancient civilization? The answer is all the three and the list is exhaustive. Nobody can loot nature. Hence, the natural resource available to India is still present in the present moment. But the other two are man made. Hence there is a possibility to either lose or gain. Though I agree with the erosion of wealth I am concerned about the erosion of civilization.

We Indians are proud of the fact that our civilization is very ancient and has a long lasting history. Considering civilization as paddy crop we forget to grow the tree by managing it properly. However, the Britons took it to their country and managed to cultivate it properly. When I removed the weeds from the crop I found similarity between what is found in India before British invasion. Not to forget that US was improved by those EU people who had the entrepreneurial vigour in their blood.

So when I ask myself what I have transformed into, I get an answer which says I have travelled more than 400 centuries back in Indian tradition. Nevertheless, I have to accept that I have not left behind the scientific improvements in this current world. Hence, I claim that I have successfully adopted the ancient beliefs and values with the right mix of modernisation processes.