Diary of a Rural Manager!

What is unofficial tagline of Brand Rural Management Programme at XIMB : “We Try Harder” A quick question is fired by an aspirant, “Why does anybody ever want XIMB-RM as first choice in admission ?” Yes, we all know that “XIMB-RM is only No. 2.” Yet the reply is simple: “ We try harder in nurturing our budding rural manager because we have to make a point. It's always the second ranker who works harder and learns a lot more in the process.” The origination of the answer is not to create a cute, gimmick, but instead it was – and is -- a business philosophy that every XIMB-RM students holds true. Each and every student of rural management knows that he must work harder and learn extensively than their counterparts. XIMB - RM focus on frank and truthful statements about our ranks and education philosophy. This institution is a Sangam (confluence) where we seek to find balance between mainstream business and development of people on margins. As I write this, I'm enj...

On Monday, March 25, 2013 at 6.00 P.M. we had our 22nd Convocation. Shri Jaspal Singh Bindra, Executive Director and CEO-Asia, Standard Chartered PLC of Standard Chartered Bank Ltd. came as the Chief Guest. I finally convocated from the Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneswar (XIMB). The degree of rural manager was awarded not only in letters but also in spirit. It will be impossible to say when so many of us will gather at the same place again. May be in upcoming 10- 15 years ! This could not have been achieved without emotional support and confidence by my parents, Prem bhaiya, Chandan, Shreyash, Abhishek and college friends like Gaurish, Gautam, Anshumani, Partha, Abhijeet etc. As an overpriced assets, we all are out of the walls of the college campus. I suddenly understand why values like humility, sincerity and honesty are more important than qualities like intelligence and achievements. A person's most useful asset is not a head full of knowledge but a heart full of l...

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...

90th Week@XIMB - 24th February to 2nd March 2013 24th February - It's not about good grades. It's 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 a 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...

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 ...

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 stateme...

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. 8t...

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

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 2...

84th Week@XIMB - 13th January to 19th January 2013 There was no record written for this whole week. Procrastination and laziness have 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)

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 financi...