Diary of a Rural Manager!

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 )

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 ...

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 stud...

79th Week@XIMB - 9th December to 15th December, 2012 9th December - There was an interesting collaboration that XIMB has had with the University of Minnesota this trimester. We had (almost) simultaneous courses running on "Social entrepreneurship" (XIMB) and UMN-Acara's "Design for Sustainable Development" ( syllabus ). Nine students of SE paired with four teams of UMN and after initial facilitation from both sides the students have been working on joint problems with regular discussions over skype. The teams had their live presentations on Dec 7th which was conducted on an open platform with students here able to add and listen to their counterparts. This low (no) cost experiment has happened with good learning on both sides. While positioning some of the advantages of XIMB, the noteworthy was the ability of RM students to be more awake when Americans are! The manner in which successive batches of RM students have participated and created a conducive e...

78th Week@XIMB - 2nd December to 8th December, 2012 2nd December - I was back in Bhubaneswar from Raipur. I was rejected in Manipal Process after playing simulation game round. People don't remember why they even join this course. 3rd December - Its Institute day i.e. Holiday. Fr. Paul Fernandes, S.J., Ph.D is appointed as the Director of XIMB by its Board of Governors with effect from December 4, 2012. 4th December - I wasted another precious day of my life. 5th December - In a closed and localized market, increased productivity only resulted in surplus goods and falling prices. That may happen to Amul and directly affect to the prices paid to producers. Indian government must start exporting milk and milk products to avoid such condition. And we are also self sufficient in milk production. 6th December - I qualified for the written test but rejected again in interview. I observed that beyond a solid knowledge of subject, it is temperament in stressful situatio...

77th Week@XIMB - 25th November to 1st December, 2012 25th November - I was busy in preparing CV for off campus. I attended last three lectures of CRM. 26th November - IRP meeting is going on. I need to acknowledge their past errors in order to avoid them in the future. I will be more regular in updating my seniors. I Couldn't attend a talk on PDS due to excessive drinking at night. This the lowest point of the college life. As they say, familiarity breeds contempt. There are amazing speakers who have worked and achieved fame across various sectors give talks every other day at XIMB. I could have attended if I wanted to. When it becomes a daily occurrence, one start to take it for granted. Don’t. If one want to be great, one has got to learn what’s made great people great. That was their sheer consistency to learn with limited opportunities. 27th November - KM quiz was over today. I loved and hate the feeling of being pushed to the wall. Without that one never apprecia...

29th Week - 25th December to 31st December 25th December-   A day dedicated in the library for preparation of the upcoming exam. There is an inspiring talk by Pradeep Kashayp, CEO & Founder, MART at a TEDx event at Hyderabad (on 'Creating an Endearing Organisation - The MART story' . He been advocating entrepreneurship courses for the business school and I taught courses in XIM- Bhubaneswar in 1993 called ‘Start your own business’ . XIMB was the second institution after IIMA which had this course. Now most of the B- schools have entrepreneurship courses. MART had also developed 3M model that is an innovative approach to initiating micro enterprises based on the three tenets of micro finance, micro markets and micro planning. I was also reading about legendary management thinker Peter Drucker . In a 1984 essay he persuasively argued that CEO pay had rocketed out of control and implored boards to hold CEO compensation to no more than 20 times what the rank and f...

28th Week - 18th December to 24th December 18th December-  I again visted to the same village with more bonding and enthusiasm. While talking to villagers, I was overwhelmed by their efforts to overcome difficulty of credit, regular income, irrigation and education. Despair is frightening at this situation when you love the people but placed in the system you despair of. Farmers were poor but they were trying to cope their life with dignity and hope. They have been cheated on the development projects before and still they were helping us with full enthusiasm. They are to be admired not pitied. The field part of RLLE was over. This one month experience was a memorable one. I felt strongly that  the strength of India lies in the resilience of poor not the money power of Indian middle class.  Without the support of such agricultural workforce, the great Indian middle class bubble would have busted long back. I finished remaining day work and started journey for one ...

27th Week - 11th December to 17th December 11th December - PRA done at Hinjerpenth at Nandapur block in Koraput district. Progress is an illusory term used in the development projects. That was the crux of the learning that I got working there. 12th December - PRA done at Renga Village in Simliguda block. This village was a prosperous one and caste division was visible to an outsider also. There was great difficulty for us in gathering people come from all hamlets together for FGD (Focussed Group Discussion). Me and MM were also misjudged initially as the agents of mining companies during survey. We have to clear our project mission and our background to them for tuning. 13th December - The remaining PRA tools were applied at Renga Village in Simliguda block. A lot of information was extracted in excess of our project to get an overview of the people mindset and village level conditions. Still, I was very careful in not giving any sort of political overtones in rapport buildi...

26th Week - 4th December to 10th December 4th December - I attended the meeting for the assessment of our RLLE project at CTCRI Bhubaneswar. We were well prepared but the data was in hard copy. Overall, a good show at the end of the day. We are advised not to interfere in the political and caste problems of the village/region. I read about Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act in  Swaminomics article  by economist SA Aiyar as it is related to the recent political heating of proposed Foreign direct investment (FDI) in the fast-growing retail sector. 5th December - The whole day passed in the training of the Community Participatory Rural Appraisal (CPRA) tool at CTCRI. The training was of 3 hours but the financial estimation for next 15 working days took a lot of the time. 6th December -   I didn't go to the training due to a cold and lack of sleep. I am reading, again and again, an article 'Youthpal bill' by Rashmi Bansal who is making emphas...

25th Week - 27th November to 3rd December 27th November - I changed the old costly hotel to a cheap one. Lot of Condoms were previously used in the room when it was cleaned in front of me ! I learned that Cigarettes, Liquor and Tea have strong sales distribution network. It was an off day. 28th November - There is no photo taken in the field trip of poverty and hunger as I didn't want to glamourize the poverty. I am travelling between mountains and rice fields. Tobacco chewing is seen in both gender. There is unavailability of mobile network of airtel and vodafone . Only BSNL and Reliance has better outreach here. Accessibility of mobile network is there ;to block level and ;on highways only. There are no signals at GP (Gram Panchayat) level. Naxal affected block is identified for risk mitigation in the data collection through unofficial sources. 29th November - Government officials are cooperative but the pace of work is quite slow here. The brand name of XIMB wor...