Wednesday, March 30, 2016

The End of Poverty: Insights from One of the Top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR

Top MBA colleges in Delhi NCR are fortunate and so are the students who get an opportunity to build careers in one of the best job markets in Asia. God be with them. Yet it is a very badly kept secret that India on one hand is an emerging economy and on the other is a third world nation. At the heart of this two edged sword that dangles over India and many other emerging economies across Asia and Africa is poverty. At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, the first MBA college in Greater Noida the academicians of the faculty of business administration have made every possible endeavour to collect data, analyze it and bring insights on the challenge of poverty and what business schools can do to eradicate it if not obliterate it completely.

Why Learn About Poverty in Business Schools?
This year when Leo won the Oscar for The Revenant, there were audiences across the world who gave him an ovation. The acceptance speech said it all. The state of existence of indigenous people, climate change and poverty are related. It is subversive if not paradoxical to assert that a country with less than 8% of the world’s population engages in more than 70% of the global consumption and generated more than 30% of the global pollution and then preaches dictums of climate change to emerging economies. First, there is a strong argument for the people living in the rest of the world (third world) to comprehend their strength and contribution to the global economy. Second, estimates of various self financed and independent research institutes show that in the exchange of monetary value between the north and the south, the south exceeds the north by more than 4 times. There is no way that the south is dependent or should be dependent on the north. It is the north that is dependent on the south. Third, the country that has been the lynch pin of trickle-down economics, market fundamentalism, free trade, foreign direct investments and nuclear demilitarization has hailed the collapse of alternative economic systems in arch rival nations. The truth is that with-in the periphery of the free market model that is worshipped by business schools in the Anglo-American tradition, 16,000 children die every day owing to hunger and hunger related diseases. An estimate by Philippe Diaz, the critically acclaimed economic rights activist and film maker asserts that if the United Stated were to slash its military budget by 4%, it shall be possible to arrange for liquid capital worth U.S.$250,000,000 and shall be to eliminate more than 50% of absolute poverty in a single financial year. 

These insights are more than enough for aspiring managers at top MBA colleges in Delhi NCR to understand that managing in the global economy mandates the end of poverty for the sake of market consumerism, investor returns and economic growth to sustain. At Ishan Institute, we have attacked the issue of poverty academically and intellectually from different directions with different perspectives. Some of the most important insights and perspectives on poverty that we have incorporated into our academic curriculum so far are as follows:

The Bottom of the Pyramid Market by Prof.C.K.Prahalad
There is a viable business opportunity for blue chip corporations that want to do business in emerging economies. It is very much possible to create both high volume and high margin based business models in emerging economies. For global corporations to do business in emerging economies they must look to solve problems of the local communities through cost efficient and effective innovations in product and process development. Low cost housing for the low income groups, financial inclusion through innovation in online and mobile banking, credit unions, self help groups, microfinance institutions, low cost healthcare models like that Narayana Hridayalaya, low cost higher education and many more such examples exist to point to the possibilities. Late Prof. Prahalad has put forward the design of such business models brilliantly in the book Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

Transparency, Equity and Accountability in Corporate Governance by N.R.Narayana Murthy
Most emerging economies that are grinding poverty have the unenviable past of being erstwhile colonies for more than 600 years in many cases. The experience that they have been through has been harrowing enough for them to have complete disbelief in corporate capitalism. While it is not necessary for corporate capitalism to breach and infringe upon the economic and political sovereignty of nations, the reality is too unfortunate and tragic to be ignored by these nations that are under conditions of abject poverty. Bolivia for example was the home to the lion’s share of silver the world had. Venezuela was and continues to have abundance of crude oil. Ghana, Kenya, Sudan, Angola and Sub-Saharan Africa were probably the richest in terms of natural resource presence over the last 6 centuries and yet the expropriation of wealth and the drain of economic surplus resemble an economic carnage of Himalayan proportions. For this trust deficit to be reduced, for people’s confidence to be won and for support from governments on policy initiatives like FDI, licensing, single window clearance of business projects and liquidity, blue chip corporations must display complete transparency, equity and accountability.

Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen
Development as freedom by Amartya Sen is more than a book. Recent development in the field of development economics and search for alternate hypotheses on economic development in addition to GDP, GNP and National Income are direct outcomes of the acceptance of development as freedom concept given by Prof. Sen and has wide implications for business schools and MBA colleges in Greater Noida. At Ishan Institute we have incorporated a few of the themes and extended tracks of human development index, gross national happiness and now the optimism index for corporations to look beyond the financial metrics of doing business. His works have also found support from Joseph Stiglitz and the UNDP.


Business need not be any less aggressive in form and content for it to maximize profit and achieve the bottom line and yet there is the pressing need for academicians, students, business leaders and blue chip corporations associated with top MBA colleges in Delhi NCR to appreciate that when more than 70% of the world population lives on less than U.S. $ 1 a day, there is a scope and necessity for doing well by doing good to end poverty. Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, is the first graduate business school of Greater Noida and the top MBA college in Greatet Noida as on date.