Fr Casimir Raj SJ is the founder-director of the Loyola Institute of Business Administration (LIBA). A Jesuit, Fr Casimir Raj has been associated with education for the past three decades in various institutions. After founding LIBA, he was the director of the Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, and the director of the Xavier Labour Relations Institute, Jamshedpur, among other roles. In the interaction with FE?s Vikram Chaudhary, he shares the journey of the institute, and his own. Excerpts:

It?s been almost 32 years since LIBA was set up. How?s been the journey?

In 1979, I was allowed to start LIBA in the Loyola College campus. When LIBA was set up, the mission was to have an institute of the standard of XLRI in the South. But, somehow, to reach those levels, we took a bit longer than we ideally should have. Although we started in 1979, it was only in 1995 that our full-time programme began. And it was by the turn of the century that we took the real growth path and LIBA started getting national recognition. Since then, our growth has been quite commendable. Where we still have to grow is in infrastructure, and and good news is that now we are building a new auditorium, a new library, and some other necessary infrastructure. But in terms of faculty, we are among the best in the country. I must admit that we, in India, might not have very good researchers but we have very good teachers. I feel proud of the fact that today LIBA has given opportunity to so many, especially the poor, to make a mark in the industry.

You have been a professor of marketing, but isn?t marketing?especially modern marketing where you are essentially selling your product by any means?against the Jesuit principles?

You see there is a big difference between marketing and selling! Marketing essentially means to understand the needs of the people and to meet those needs. A marketer is basically the one who serves consumers. To understand people?s needs, you have to listen to the people. Marketing means offering tools for a better life. And that?s what we inculcate in our students.

What else do you inculcate in them?

We inculcate in our students that studying at LIBA is just the beginning and from here on they should keep moving up. It also means inculcating in them that they should increase focus on research and do what is relevant for the industry as well as society.

So you inculcate in them that business is not all about money ?

What is business? It is doing a task for a profit. The profit is the reward for the risk one takes and for the labour one puts in. At the same time, business is also about developing an economy, to offer a better lifestyle for human beings. Without business it is hard to think of human development. A scientist will come up with an invention. The business will make it available to people. Only then that discovery will benefit humanity. Our students learn business ethics and social values. When they pass out of LIBA, they truly understand the role of business in human development?that business creates wealth and offers employment to people. You see, we train managers in such a way that they make use of the scarce resources in the most effective manner and add value to whatever they do.

Tell us about the CK Prahlad centre at LIBA?

Last year we inaugurated the CK Prahlad Centre for Emerging India in the memory of the visionary Prof CK Prahalad. This centre will promote social entrepreneurship by focusing on research in the areas of strategy, innovation and entrepreneurship appropriate to the base of the pyramid and will primarily work towards addressing the current gap between idea generation and scaling up into viable business opportunities.