Much as all B-schools in India strive to give their students an exposure to the corporate world, it has become necessary to expose them to the country?s rural reality. Management education seems to take students away from the ?Bharat? part of India as it launches them into the ultra-modern industrial and corporate world built in and around our cities. But in the near future, there will be an ever-growing need for them to get reconnected with Bharat for four major reasons.
First, with the urban market getting saturated, it?s rural India that will guarantee the huge new market for industrial goods. Second, rural India can provide food security and quality raw material to our rapidly industrialising and crowded cities. Third, Bharat can become a source of cheap manpower and finances through rural savings. And fourth, as many big and small companies compete with one another for better image-building with philanthropic activities, often by adopting villages, their management will increasingly need the rural focus.
The new ?macro-perspective? theory has enlarged the future manager?s role by adding the wider dimension of ensuring health of the economy and well-being of society. While taking decisions to enhance a company?s net worth, the manager must watch out for the spin-offs on the macroeconomy, environment and society and this must be embedded in the student?s impressionable mind. Some top B-schools give their students a compulsory project with NGOs. All B-schools must give a winter project requiring students to stay in a village for a week and work there with an NGO.
And also, lessons from all major global and national economic crises must find a place in the management curriculum. The scope of business ethics must be widened to include all possible adverse effects of various management decisions.
Business ethics are internalised better with an understanding of macroeconomics, another important subject ignored by most management curricula. Macroeconomics teaches fiscal policy and a government?s indebtedness, and tells future finance managers why they should not evade taxes. By teaching monetary policy, it enables future managers to make wise investment decisions by anticipating interest rate and currency movements. There is no better case studies in macroeconomics than economic crises.
Management graduates equipped with rural exposure will find it easier to deal with the rural market. Suppliers, agencies and companies will gradually see the advantage of employing managers with rural understanding. As a result, inclusive development will gather momentum. The trickle-down theory tells us that high growth rate in the upper strata takes care of the bottom of the pyramid as benefits of growth percolate downwards. But the theory has failed in India due to the unequal access to opportunities, as is evident from the rising inequality ratio despite the high growth rate in the country. The emphasis should now be on the rural sector. Benefits would automatically rise up to the urban layer through capillary action, through the effects of what we may call the ?trickle up? theory.
The trickle-up theory doesn?t advocate industrialising villages, thereby spoiling the rural ambiance. But it insists on making agriculture a profitable activity by raising productivity. That, in turn, will stabilise foodgrain prices. Profitable agriculture will attract migrants back to villages, thus taking some pressure off the urban infrastructure. Agriculture can be made profitable by providing not only rural roads, irrigation and electricity but also timely loans, the provision of improved seeds and fertilisers, and better market access. This need opens a veritable Aladdin?s cave for management practitioners to pick and choose several opportunities for rural investment and utilisation of hitherto untapped resources.
As the government tries to accelerate the process of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, its direct role in economic development will rather shrink and its focus would gradually shift to regulation. So, in a way, the private sector will have to act as the primary driver of the nation?s economic development, including more equitable distribution of wealth, narrowing the rural-urban divide and poverty alleviation. This fact is already evident from the active awareness displayed by many private sector players their corporate social responsibility planks.
The new generation has the risk-appetite and courage to do something different and take on challenges. It?s for B-schools and other educational institutes to make the right imprint on the minds of the new generation students and to give them the correct decision-making powers that will work not only towards greater wealth accumulation for themselves and their companies, but also for the whole society.
The path towards the high growth trajectory and inclusive economic advancement of the country must go through its villages, and the new generation of managers can make it happen. Provided all B-schools take the responsibility towards nation-building more seriously, this can be done in the most appropriate manner. Although industrialisation has worked against agriculture, an exception can be planned at our B-school campuses.
The author is professor of economics at Sinhgad Business School, Pune. These are her personal views. Email: shubhadasabade@hotmail.com