At the
top MBA College in Greater Noida, Ishan Institute of Management &
Technology, the academicians of the faculty of business administration have
engaged in researching on new frontiers of management. Over the last twenty-one
years of running the most successful PGDM and MBA courses in Delhi NCR we have
seen the world of management evolve. Evolution never stops so watching it
happen does not suffice when it is not backed by application of insights into
business. Over the years the academicians of one of the top MBA Colleges in
Delhi NCR have realized by virtue of corporate interface, alumni interactions,
academic and business research that India does not have a management school of
its own. This piece is dedicated to the man who first laid the seeds for an
Indian school of management thought.
Civis
Britannicus Sum. Management thought in its present avatar is essentially a
brainchild of the Anglo-Saxon civilization. The raisson d attire behind this is
twofold. First, industrialization as an economic, technological and social
process originated in the womb of Great Britain. The phenomenon that Professor
Arnold Toynbee has referred to as the “industrial revolution” owes its birth to
British technocrats, entrepreneurs and innovations. The second reason is that while
globalization has been in vogue since the dawn of human civilization, the
process has gathered maximum momentum since the days of the Raj and now that we
live in a unipolar world after the demise of the Gulliver’s giant that USSR
was, it is only modest to anticipate that for the next 100 years United States
of America will continue to be the sheet anchor of globalization. The centre
periphery argument, the north south debate and theses of Syed Amin, Gunnar
Myrdal and others who have followed capitalism closely all agree to the fact
that globalization has always revolved around the economy of a super power and
smaller economies have consistently endeavoured to gain by rowing their boats
towards the super power. Sanjeev Sanyal, the chief economist of Deustche Bank
has coined this as “Triffin’s Dilemma.” Now that emerging economies are leaving
no stone unturned to rewrite the rules of the new international economic order,
questions will arise on India’s contribution to management. It is not mere
jingoistic nationalism that leads the author to investigate into this case. The
merit of this case is established on the premise of the paradigm that
globalization as an economic growth process has been a liberation to some, as a
social reform process it has been benevolent to some but as a gold standard of
economic development has lacked scalability. The truth is as Joseph Stiglitz
and Amartya Sen have argued, there has to be a domain of local management
thought within which innovations and solutions to business issues and beyond
have to be searched for. To cut a long story short a failure to develop a local
management approach directly shall translate into a failure of globalization in
the concerned country.
“Country”-the
term is both ambiguous and half baked. A country stands at the cross road
between a nation and a market. A nation is not a nation without sovereignty and
a market is only a market sans considerations of statehood and idealism. In the
context of management thought then, management gurus shall have to first define
the lens through which they see India. Is India a market or a nation? Does
India have a management thought of its own or do we still live in the cloud
cuckoo land where anything that suits Anglo-Saxon taste buds is believed to be
fine with India?
There
are important footnotes in India’s business history and the most celebrated of
all is the establishment of India’s first IIM at Calcutta. Interestingly
India’s first business school-Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business
Management (IISWBM) also came up in Calcutta. In 1961 another leaf was added
with the establishment of what is now the best business school in India- IIM
Ahmadabad. None of this is incorrect but the facts overshadow earliest
developments in Indian management thought and education. If the author be
allowed the opportunity to play devil’s advocate he shall exhibit the audacity
of calling business historians, post colonial idiots seeped in Macaulayism.
To put
the question of defining India as a nation or a market in perspective,
management academicians and students must recognize that India became a nation
in 1947 and was a market at best during the days of the British Raj. Before the
advent of the British era India was neither a nation nor a market. The author
shall leave the task of defining what India was before the Raj to historians.
“Tagore
and Management Education”- a book written by Prof. Mohit Chakraborty of
Vishwabharti University points to the first attempt of an Indian academician to
crystallize India as both a nation and a market. Prof. Chakroborty points to
Rabindranath Tagore. The first attempt to draw a framework encompassing
profits, people and planet had led to the idea of a hamlet called
Shantiniketan. The first attempt to distinguish between India and Bharat and
thus recognize the scope and necessity to study and implement rural management
led to the Sriniketan experiment. The first attempt to conceive of a rural
industrial fair of a global scale was a challenge indeed. Even today many
management gurus of the Havard School would question if the words “rural” and
“global” could go hand in hand. The “Poush
Mela” at Shantiniketan has over the years blossomed into what naysayers had
said “impossible”- a rural fair that attracts local artisans like painters,
weavers, sculptors, cobblers, photo artistes, singers and blue chip corporate
houses on the same footing. These are just some of the few firsts that Gurudev
has to his name. The rest of his contribution to Indian management thought is
covered under the establishment of Vishwabharati University.
It is
common knowledge that globalization has many dimensions-economic, social,
political, linguistic and cultural. While it is fashionable for academicians in
top MBA Colleges in Delhi NCR to present globalization as a process with
possibilities, the challenge for business leaders and executives is to premise
globalization as a paradigm for a viable business model. Who else other than
Nagavara Rao Narayana Murthy (N.R. Narayana Murthy) of Infosys fame can be more
befitting to draw reference for the afore said purpose. The founders of Infosys
including Murthy himself had in the infancy stages of the company envisaged the
now legendary Global Delivery Model (GDM). While there is literature abound on
GDM, it always makes sense to hear it from the horse’s mouth. N.R.Narayana
Murthy’s “Better India Better World” accommodates the best possible definition
and practical illustration of what is GDM, how it can be applied and why it is
scalable. Going by the illustration that Murthy puts forward, i,e. procuring
labour from where it is best available, procuring capital from where cost of
capital is the lowest, manufacturing where operations are most economically
viable and selling in markets where margins are highest following the concept
of arbitrage and speculation in international finance, the first successful
experiment on GDM is the establishment of Vishwabharati University. Yes, the
archives substantiate the premise. The schools of language came up with aid and
knowledge resources for Japan and China. The corpus of ready to invest capital
was procured by means of crowd funding from Great Britain and France. The
university got its first official vice chancellor in independent India in the
form of Rathindranath Tagore- a US educated scientist. And yes Americans were
generous enough to share lab equipment and transfer scientific know how in
setting up the departments of zoology, botany and chemistry. More over the
study of Sanskrit was initiated at the Vishwabharti University on the advice
given by the great son and social reformer of India- Swami Dayanand Saraswati
to Maharishi Devendranath Tagore during the former’s visit to Bengal thus
lending the university its strong Indian roots.
Despite
some of these great achievements, Indian management gurus have not recognized
Tagore as a management guru. The obsession with Anglo-Saxon and American
management thought has unfortunately deprived India of the same footing as the
Japanese, the Germans and the South Koreans who all have developed local
management thoughts to make globalization work better in country specific
contexts. At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, one of the top
PGDM Colleges in Delhi NCR, we have designed an academic curriculum that has
India roots and can scale global heights.