Showing posts with label 6th Trimester. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 6th Trimester. Show all posts

Monday, March 4, 2013

Sparsh: Development in a Trimester of rural management - 6...

Sparsh: Development in a Trimester of rural management - 6...: 1- In economics, the Dutch disease is a concept that explains the apparent relationship between the increase in exploitation of natural res...

Saturday, March 2, 2013

90th Week@XIMB

90th Week@XIMB - 24th February to 2nd March, 2013

24th February - Its not about good grades. Its about surviving the last trimester..!!

25th February - Abhijit Sen Committee was setup once to examine whether and to what extent futures trading has contributed to price rise in agricultural commodities. I couldn’t find the report on any of the government website but found the report on Mint’s website (Draft Report of the Expert Committee on Commodity Futures Trading). There was no evidence to suggest that futures trading stoked inflation.

26th February - The line between recklessness and overconfidence can be difficult to find. I crossed that line in CMD end term paper and find bamboozled by the question paper. That came as an shocking eye opener for the last trimester.

Batch 2011- 2013 at XIMB gets grand farewell with recalling success, achievements and memories over the last two years. People will be missed, but never forgotten.

27th February - Milestone Achieved! XIMB Rural Management Achieves 100% placement for 2011-13 batch today. A fabulous job done by Placement committee. Thanks to Niraj Kumar sir and Jeevan J Arakal sir for their continuous support. Great work done by Krishanu, Darren, Gautam, Rupika, Jisha, Mithilesh, Rahul, Jyoti. Heartfelt congratulations and best wishes for your continued success.

28th February - End term exam is going on. I am feeling relieved with end of each paper.

1st March - I didn't submit any assignment of either GID or G&D. That was highest act of insincerity in my academic career at XIMB.

2nd March - Baggage of rural manager has to be kept aside for a new journey ahead. I am ending this daily updates today. It takes years of self-reflection and asking some really uncomfortable questions about yourself, but you do come out of it a better person. That was the purpose of writing about daily learning in the journey of two years.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

89th Week@XIMB

89th Week@XIMB - 17th February to 23rd February, 2013

17th February - Sikkim Trip

18th February - Sikkim Trip

19th February - Sikkim Trip

20th February - All classes were finished till now. I only remember Hobbes quote mentioned in Ethics class - It is a bleak world where there is continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

The following seven students of RM II have won the worldwide ACARA Challenge of USA (University of Minnesota). The Teams are: Pure Pots- V Ramesh, Pabitra Nayak- Prize $ 1500 ; Nutricycle- Jyoti Kumar Mainali, Omprakash Singh, Shreyas Bhartiya- Prize $ 1000 ; Community Shops- Amit Verma, Sachin Pethkar- Honorable Mention- (Prize money on Pitching)

21st February - Only one student had completed IRP in a entire batch of 330 students, and that puts his effort in perspective. B Srinivas Rao completed his IRP with full dedication and efforts.

22nd February - This was the last class of CMD where I learnt about futures market in more detail. The recent growth of futures trading has taken place in the backdrop of a long history of ban on forward trading when the perception about these markets was not good. These markets are bound to challenge status quo and adversely impact some interest groups. Whenever futures markets try to grow faster than the under developed physical spot markets of underlying commodities, disconnect between the two gets widened thereby exposing the futures market to the criticism of being driven by speculators, even if closely regulated.

23rd February - From a distance it seems that XIMB-RM is two poles: the potential, educated progressive half; and the self indulgent and bias, backward half. And they are quite dynamic in nature depending on situations ;) But a neanderthal legacy of hullabaloo over civilized and reasoned debates exist in the students.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

88th Week@XIMB

88th Week@XIMB - 10th February to 16th February, 2013

10th February - A person's essential fair-mindedness is perhaps its most striking and skillful feature that can won him over adversaries. That was my assumption until I came at XIMB. Here, the bias decision will win you more friends and build a reputation of caretaker. I hoped that such scenario changes in coming times in vain. The lobbies, peer pressure and affiliation became stronger with each passing day. I read a quote by Warren Buffett that cleared the fog in the mind : "If they don't have integrity, they never will. The chains of habit are sometimes too heavy to be broken."

11th February - George Orwell had said long time back: "Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it." This holds so true for each batch of engineering or management that I have been part of.

12th February - I read a wonderful statement on Economic inequality in a Journal : (Economic) Inequality materializes the upper class, vulgarizes the middle class and brutalizes the lower class.

13th February - Not in campus.

14th February - Not in campus.

15th February - Not in campus.

16th February - Not in campus.

Saturday, February 9, 2013

87th Week@XIMB

87th Week@XIMB - 3rd February to 9th February, 2013

3rd February - Not in campus.

4th February - Not in campus.

5th February - Not in campus.

6th February - I returned to the campus and attended GID lecture. I became aware of the term Green GDP for first time. The green gross domestic product (green GDP) is an index of economic growth with the environmental consequences of that growth factored in. Due to lack of training in economics, I was also unaware of the term Shadow Pricing. While discussing more about economics, I came to know about Ithaca Hours, Joan Robinson, Gender-related Development Index (GDI) and the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) . There was a general consensus that our society with market economy has transformed into market society in the age of neo liberalization.

7th February - There was discussion on audit process of an organization in GD class. That led our informal discussion in the class to Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India.

8th February - “When in Rome, be a Roman” is an often quoted idiom, but I never believed in the the practicality of this phrase. Moreover, it's everybody desire to be like, looked at and responded for walking on an offbeat path. This routine statement became more important in the context of state versus individual. No one can deny moral courage, of a person who stands in the face of public and governmental pressure and to do what is right rather balancing the views. It is necessary to be different and unique in its own sense. That individual walking a different line can only became a though leader and can be taken as an asset for social structure even when society is not conducive to adapt the contradictory form of truth. It is important not only for all of us to understand importance of such person. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult.

9th February - In the absence of Prof Kajri Mishra, our lecture was taken by Prof. Debi Prasad Mishra, who handles the general management strategy and policy department as a senior faculty member at IRMA. The complete lecture was around public system management. There was brief discussion on externality and Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, 2003 (FRBMA). In context of Indian state, post independence state has taken responsibility to provide fair value to producers, reasonable price to consumers and employment to the work force. That was a nearly impossible for any state to attend multiple objectives of the contradictory nature. And generations have to bear the good and bad consequences of such experiment.

It is a common complain that bureaucracy is not of customer friendly nature. It's wrong because there definition of customer is quite different. Citizen who pays for services is not a customer but who is in power hierarchy is a customer for them. This was a deja-vu moment of my learning about government. There are various methods like Citizen's Charter, RTI, Social Audit and e-governance has been taken to make state more citizen friendly. Let me end this week with an old, if cynical, saying about government : “Never believe anything until it is officially denied.”

Saturday, February 2, 2013

86th Week@XIMB

86th Week@XIMB - 27th January to 2nd February, 2013

I am away from the laptop, internet and XIMB for a complete week on a trip to home. I was becoming stoic calm proof against vicissitude of academic pressure.

The power of "rural": A special on rural marketing

Saturday, January 26, 2013

85th Week@XIMB

85th Week@XIMB - 20th January to 26th January, 2013

20th January - I got a great Facebook status over sales job : In Sales -someday you are the P*mp and someday you are the Whore. I am not much of a sales or finance person but what I realized that it only matters to do our work with integrity, excellence and discipline irrespective of where one is working in future.

21st January - Small clusters of graduation friends is a creating frog in the well attitude of the entire RM community. Author himself has not dwelled much beyond 100 people but has not hard lined himself with any lobby or Legacy system.

22nd January - We have started to speak the language of B schools and consultancies like ‘products’, ‘customers’ or 'stakeholders' even in our normal talks. This education is showing its toxic side effects.

23rd January - No updates for today.

24th January - I was packing for the upcoming home trip.

25th January - Our mid term exam of CMD got postponed to March 2013.

26th January - I left for home. Farewell.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

84th Week@XIMB

84th Week@XIMB - 13th January to 19th January, 2013

There was no record written for this whole week. Procrastination and laziness has completely captured me. The jargons like - Knowledge, Networking, Soft-skills, Development, Corporate, High asymmetry of information, Dichotomy, Business and government, Market, Customers and Growth, Value creation, Stakeholders, Institutions, Relationship Management, Structures, Innovation and Entrepreneurship: rampantly used in GD & PI's were put on rest. I am leaving readers with a brilliant convocation address and will be away from all social networking websites like Blogs, Vlogs, Blogs, wikis and even micro blogging site Twitter for a week.

Salman Khan gives commencement address at MIT (2012)

Saturday, January 12, 2013

83rd Week@XIMB

83rd Week@XIMB - 6th January to 12th January, 2012

6th January - 'Theory of maximising shareholder value has done great harm to businesses' : Meet Philip Kotler, the SC Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Chicago, and, in the words of Management Centre Europe, “the world’s foremost expert on the strategic practice of marketing”.

7th January - I was feeling quite low and listening to this song.

Hausla Buland - Haywards 5000 Anthem Theme Song



8th January - I started preparing for AIDMI, Srijan and OLM with keeping in mind that risk of unemployment reduces slowly and at great cost.

9th January - I applied in Ujjivan Microfinance today but withdrew my application later. Yet, I attended talk of CEO, Ujjivan MFI given by Mr. Samit Ghosh. Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Ujjivan Financial Service (Ujjivan), a micro finance institution which provides financial services to over a million urban & semi-urban poor across 20 states in India. Ujjivan started operations on November 1, 2005 and is headquartered in Bangalore. Ujjivan believes in holistic approach to poverty alleviation and works closely with a sister non-profit institution, Parinaam Foundation to provide services in healthcare, education, vocational training & community development to its microfinance customers.

The whole batch was unaware that average tenure of CEO is only 1.5-2 years. The clarity in your structures, Walk the Talk, Leadership & Types of Investors always define any organization. Ujjivan MFI wants happy customers not a money lending NBFC(MFI) and it had proven by emerging virtually unharmed at the times of MFI crisis as with their risk assessment, they decided not to move in Andhra.. That validated that company is going in right direction. Mr. Ghosh told us about middle class financial inclusion in late 1980's and 1990's era. There was a gradual movement middle class - ICICI, HDFC, HSBC and CITI Bank leading the baton of the private sector. Currently available two wheeler, four wheeler and housings loan were unheard in 1985. The same process is going for bottom of pyramid customers now. BOP customers even bank account but they were not financially included till now.

10th January - The pressure is on. As they say, it rains hardest on those who deserve the sun. We were delighted to host Ved Arya for a talk today. Ved shared his experiences founding and building SRIJAN -- "Creation" in Hindi, and an acronym for Self-Reliant Initiatives through Joint Action. It was registered, as a public charitable trust in Delhi with the aim to promote strong self-reliant village organizations, partnerships and enterprises to enhance people’s access to natural resources and their capacity to manage them sustainably. I was especially impressed with Ved's holistic perspective on the value chain of self-help and joint-support and cluster development and technological innovation which come together to be of differentiating benefit to rural Indian farmers and their families.

11th January - I applied for two enterprises working in the development sector. One was SRIJAN (Self Reliant Initiatives through Joint Action) that is a not-for-profit organization. They were looking for professionals who are enthusiastic to work at grassroots for the upliftment of the rural population of India. I had good discussion with Ved Arya who considered me unsuitable for this job. This was partially due to my commitment to family and age factor. It is very strong to comment but people like C P Mohan and Ved Arya involved in core development will always fail to grab why money security is a prime motive for rural managers of neo-liberalization era.

The other enterprise was National Rural Livelihood Mission, Odisha. It was a contractual job similar on the lines of Jeevika, Bihar. More can be read about their sister organization: TRIPTI and Aajeevika. I qualified three rounds consisting of written Test(Essay on Poverty and its eradication), GD (FDI in Retail)and Personal Interview (Based on Winter Internship and Book Reading).

I had finally seized the day. Carpe diem !!!

12th January - Streak of lazy days has just began.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

82nd Week@XIMB

82nd Week@XIMB - 30th December to 5th January, 2012

30th December - I stayed true to myself and started preparation for the development sector.

31st December - Why MBA in Rural Management and Engineering? The most cliche and funny answer given these days is 'competitive advantage'.

1st January - I went out to Chilika Lake for a vacationer tour.

2nd January - I missed classes to study for placement purpose. I had a surprise quiz in

3rd January - I was not selected in BRLPS (Jeevika). I studies from the website only but find this document(pdf) quite useful.

4th January - I was not selected in AISECT. I studied and prepared from a compendium on Mission mode projects under NeGP.

5th January - I am posting here the websites that will be useful for exploring data. FAOSTAT, World Bank Data Center, OECD Statistics & Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation, India (National Data Warehouse of Official Statistics)

Saturday, December 29, 2012

81st Week@XIMB

81st Week@XIMB - 23rd December to 29th December, 2012

23rd December - XIMB stops accepting IRMA scores for rural management program, will now only accept CAT, XAT or CMAT. That is the news rolling over at pagalguy. I don't know its implications. XIMB-RM may succeeds tactically in the eyes of AICTE, but fails strategically in the eyes of applicants in term of its reputation.

Rather than trying to be a person I cannot be - to do this or do that - I went back to reconstruct my own strengths. I had come here for development hence will not go for a high paying (sales/marketing) job.

24th December - CMD, GID and SER class.

It was quite nice to study sociology in GID lecture. Even today, after years of education and modernity, women didn't get the respect that they are entitled to. Yes, low enrollment of girls in this course is quite dramatically low. May be these girls either know everything or just don't want to discuss these issues.

25th December - Christmas is in the town, hence holiday. I had became shadow of the person who once was possessed with an individuality and self-belief. There is a clear difference between me as the person on two different occasion- one fighting inner demons, the other surrendering to the mental barriers.

Sound logic with brutal and bare truths is the Australian way. I will be adding conversation with friends, meditation and music in the to daily routine.

26th December - There were more discussion in GID class about sex and gender issues. Diversity of views were amazing that made me look and appreciate perspectives that I never knew existed.

27th December - Managers have to navigate the dynamics of governance contexts at various levels that impact organizational trajectories of the international environmental and trading regimes to shifts in national policy or market regulation to changes in organizational relationships with partners and networks. Thus was the brief introduction of GD course.

Yes, there is hidden apartheid and distinction between various courses floating at XIMB. Not all courses are treated equally by majority of faculty and administration. Some of this can be attributed to the lack of sincerity by RM students throughout many batches. There is no clear communication by faculty encourage people to plan their life and career more sensibly. A vocational college fails under current framework when its student operate under pressurized and uncertain job situation, as this don't provide them even elusive social or economic security necessary for survival. People also say “we all agree that we need to ensure rural managers get paid” even though, from the perspective of an individual welfare against loan, discussions rather than action are completely unimportant.

28th December - Our seniors had left few companies that are not well-suited to them in less than a year. That is harming our proposition in this dull market.

29th December - I am not able to focus for few minutes on a single thing. IRP field work is pending from a long time. I had made my life in the pursuit of short term goals.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

80th Week@XIMB

80th Week@XIMB - 16th December to 22nd December 2012

16th December - STM book reading session started today.

Prof Deepak Malhotra - HBS - 2012 Speech to Graduating Harvard MBA Students

17th December - STM reading session continues.

18th December - “Complacency is a part of Indian psyche and you can’t do much about it. Every time an Indian tries to be ambitious he is pulled down and that’s one of the reasons why Indians don’t have the killer mentality,” Sunil Gavaskar once observed.

The fees are submitted. Yet I didn't find enough motivation to attend classes next trimester. Without a dream to chase, the soul stagnates. This has happened to many individuals here at this place. I once wanted to change the brawn environment of RM but failed miserably. This place has the capacity to pull down in an institutionalized way. Neither are we great in knowledge nor have sufficient human capital in the alumni database.

19th December -STM exams were over. I started studying financial inclusion: Financial Inclusion by Extension of Banking Services – Use of Business Correspondents (BCs), Financial Literacy and Credit Counselling Centres and Financial Inclusion talk by Deputy Governor, RBI. Those who are more interested in examining their banking knowledge can give quizzes here at the IIBF website.

20th December - BM guys have nailed very good jobs today. That is much talk of the town today. Always aspire, never envy. I have chosen to take a career path with the TINA effect - there is no alternative.

21st December - FINO aspiration dies slowly. I qualified in the aptitude test but was disqualified in an HR interview. The only one reason that my batch-mates are getting jobs is that they had prepared much meticulously than me. They simply did not turn up and expect things to get done on past achievements. The twin crises of a shortage of jobs and a shortage of skills are hampering mine growth.

22nd December - There was a private meeting of few people with the student placement committee coordinator regarding rumours of future dates of the company visit to campus. With the batch size of 100, it will be a gargantuan achievement for placing all people in their favourite sectors. RM is not given importance by the administration and Placement Coordinator at XIMB. When the placement will falter, a lot of low paying NGO's will be pushed for recruitment. I have been hoping for the last 18 months that things will be all right as opposed to wanting to make them all right. How bad will it get before it gets better?

There is a rage within each student of the RM program with this careless approach. I am in the right mind will never ask anybody to join this program until a new campus is established. Nothing grows in the shadows of the big banyan tree. Continuing to the raging voices, there is nothing more risky and volatile of all things than a self-pitying majority. It's now is the question of identity and only partition is the solution. XIMB - BM has a big network of alumni who are spread all across the globe and have made their names in different fields. And for few exceptions, there is not much harmony at a 'professional' level between these two courses. Also, the majority of students have the habit of placing loyalty to their programs above professionalism for the sake of XIMB.

One must record history to prevent atrocities from happening again. I am finding pleasure to write this blog now. Placing a story of struggle in the placement scenario is a position that goes against the dominant narrative manufactured by B Schools. It is generally believed that anything that is not read, watched or consumed with immediate gratification can't survive for long. Even if I have to compromise on the delay in leaking out such heated debates about XIMB, I assume it's worth it and will never compromise on the authenticity of every written word.