Diary of a Rural Manager!

64th Week@XIMB - 26th August to 1st September, 2012 26th August Past performance are not an accurate predictor of future outcomes. Yet they can give a reference line about the academic career of the person. So much can be said in reference to the academics grades. Are we the student more than the CV and grades? There was also a lot of thinking gone over the news item - Placement reportage: How the DMS, IIT Delhi 2012 placement report is designed to mislead you? . This shoddy practices of fudging placement report without having a real-world experience of running a values-driven company possess a serious ethical challenge. It is actually a less known but well performed malpractice in most of the B-School! While army officers go beyond the call of duty sacrificing life for the country, investment bankers do exactly opposite. I can understand root cause of such problems in our education system only that never punishes plagiarism and other such activities. This makes me deeply cr...

63rd Week@XIMB - 19th August to 25th August, 2012 20th August - Since 1997 Dr Debal Deb has been conserving 700 varieties of native rice that seed companies are trying to drive out. He works for biodiversity conservation, knowledge transfer and non-commercial seed exchange within and beyond India's indigenous communities. Folk Rice Dr Debal Deb 21st August -  Today is my birthday. I will only quote Benjamin Franklin on life : "Content to live, content to die unknown, Lord of myself, accountable to none." 21st August I participated in Kurukshetra and Spardha Launch. There was a good Harvard Business review article uploaded by SDM faculty : Ending the War Between Sales and Marketing by Philip Kotler, Neil Rackham, Suj Krishnaswamy ( Complete Reading ) 22nd August -  There was presentation on OSCARD by our group in CM. We cam ro know about: Narasimham Committee on Banking Sector Reforms (1998) . There was discussion on MFI Andhra Crisis in MFM class. What...

62nd Week@XIMB - 12th August to 19th August, 2012 12th August - There is a policy paralysis in India. There are concerns over contraction in industrial output and drought need to be addressed soon. India's economic growth could fall below 5 per cent in the the first quarter of current fiscal. 13th August - Mr. K. Ramkumar, Executive Director on the Board of ICICI Bank is responsible for Human Resources, Customer Service & Operations. Are top business schools losing sight of what hirers want? is a probing article by him with a countering answer from N. Ravichandran, Director IIM Indore - Institutions need time to mature made by day. RBI had released long ago Malegam Committee Report on micro-finance. Report of the RBI Sub-Committee of its Central Board of Directors to study Issues and concerns in the micro finance institutions (MFI) Sector . 14th August - I had taken an interesting question for the research while doing later assignment of QRM. How students of PDGM-...

61st Week@XIMB - 5th August to 11th August, 2012 5th August - Professor Dilip Soman from the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, speaks at a conference about behavioral economics and mental accounting. Fear of Finance: Financial Literacy and Planning for Post secondary Education 6th August - One of our faculty is an IRMA alumnus. She shared a valuable insight about rural management course. IRMA has no case studies as reading material in its early years. Faculty, students and visiting fellow of the institute thrived hard to develop their own case research material. Today, we all are benefiting from their ground work. As long as basic principles of reliability, rigour, precision and validity are followed, the research quality will always be good. There is a great and valuable resource of Working Papers (228) on IRMA website useful for rural managers. These working Papers provide an opportunity for IRMA faculty, visiting fellows and students to sound out their...

60th Week@XIMB - 29th July to 4th August, 2012 29th July - Sunday is celebrated through a video on rural marketing sharing experiences of Airtel, M&M, and Hero Honda in rural India Eyeing on the monsoon reality, farmers in northern India always use the  proverbs of Ghagh aur Bhaddari for weather forecasting. There has been a research paper - Farming proverbs: analysis of Their Dynamics and Farmers' Knowledge by Ranjay K Singh and A Dorjey. The linkage of good monsoons and the Indian market is too close still we keep ignoring the reality of the rural market. With inadequate monsoons rural consumption falls and so do the overall sales of agri-input companies. There are many more companies whose sales are indirectly dependent on the agricultural cycle but with the poor monsoon that will also go down. Farmers try to maximize their returns in times of drought through the use of local, non-hybrid seed varieties and cheaper micro-irrigation. 30th July - A two-day worksh...

12th Week --- 28th August to 3rd September 28th August - Sunday. No work and missed Envision organized by XSYS. SRP work finished today. 29th August - Thanks to Partha and AP that I landed up in the class for right time. 30th August - Every teacher is in hurry to finish the course. 31st August - Eid Holiday ! 1st September - Ganesh Pooja Holiday ! Lunch food had came from ISKCON. There are students who didn't know how to eat from their hands. It was hilarious to watch them eating from 2 fingers :P 2nd September - A long day to get tired. 5 classes a day. I was in the part of 2 team and one personal presentation. Goofed up in one slide and mistype "blind spot" as "blood spot"; 3rd September - ME test was done on the basis of pure chances. But QM presentation was superb. Happy with the positive feedback of sir and my team. Gave feedback of each subject and teacher. Indra Nooyi and Ela Bhatt were chosen as examples of woman leaders in LT...

11th Week --- 21th August to 27th August 21st August - Birthday. Sunday. Batch took me in the air from room to the hostel front. Love you RM 2011-2013 BATCH. 22nd August - Nothing special but exhaustive day in classes.Launch of Spardha was awesome. Theme waschosen from starting scene of Gulaal. Mashaal and Gulaal added the colour in the show. Literally, it stirred the sentiments of the people. 23rd August - Mother Teresa and remembered the book The missionary position by Christopher Hitchens that dealt with a frank expose of the Teresa cult. Learning about Financial sheet is quite good. Feeling happy with the content of FR course ; Shadow placement committee work.Website discussion. A form was float to know expectation of the batch internship and job expectations. Launch of LAXIM 1 ( lol !) 24th August - COMM classroom discussions were awesome : Ethical sensivity, whistle-blower in company, Is business a commercial or social activity, spiritualism, focus on deadlines an...

उम्मीद वक्त का सबसे बड़ा सहारा है, गर हौसला है तो हर मौज में किनारा है। -'साहिर' लुधियानवी 10th Week --- 14th August to 20th August 14th August - Bike came to Bhubaneswar ! SRC cordially invited everyone for the candle march tonight in honour of country's Independence Day. 15th August - First Holiday of the Trimester ! Not attended flag hosting ceremony due to sleep. Spent time with children at orphanage for SRP project. That was much better way of celebrating independence. 16th August - Summer Internship Process started today. I was busy man today as a shadow Placecom member. Literally run 100m for a cup of coffee to HR. Gaurav Anand, Joslin Jose, Abhijeet and Anshul were finally selected in this agri input company. 17th August - Not much happening day. Sportscom Applicants were invited and most ; Yogesh Joshi was finally selected in any committee. 18th August - Robert Mulhal of Lucca Leadership gives a brilliant interactive session. He pointed out abou...

9th Week --- 7th August to 13th August 7th August - I opened my eyes in Jharkhand. And our train reached at Jamshedpur in the morning. I remembered Udaan movie. 8th August - Returned from XLRI,Jamshedpur in the afternoon. Mr. Inir Pinheiro an alumnus of XIMB RM addressed us tonight. He is a Social Entrepreneur, Founder of Grassroutes. His emphasis on dreams, networking and sharing ideas with role models was the core of the talk. Yes, he told about the sacrifices made in personal and professional life throughout this 5 years. MBA schools are over hyped placement agencies. That line completely knocked me down. 9th August - Biresh Sahoo is an awesome person and definitely an outlier . Today, he compared h index of the research papers in the microeconomics class. None of the teacher stands near to him in XIMB. He unveiled the mask of sophistication in the research field of many eminent names in XIMB.Research gives one frustration while teaching gives money. Only conclusion t...

8th Week --- 31st July to 6th August 31st July - "Teach for India" came for a Presentation at XIM, Bhubaneswar. Sunday Morning was good. SAMBANDH 2011 kicked started in the evening. वो इंतजार था जिसका ये वो सहर तो नहीं, ये वो सहर तो नहीं जिसकी आरजू लेकर. I remembered this line today. The batch is doing awesome in dance, song, games and every extra curricular activities. Yet no body is uttering a single word either about B Plan or Social Entrepreneurship. What a batch of under performers. Anyone's role model define the horizon of his/her aspirations. Our batch is choosing wrong role models for rural management programme. 1st Aug - SADA class was good today because there was discussion on Ideology. I loved one quote mentioned in slide. "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why are they poor, they call me a Communist." Pandit Shri Hari Prasad Chaurasia conducted a Hindustani Classical Flute Recital today. It was mesmerizin...