Diary of a Rural Manager!

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...

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 )

34th Week- 29th January to 4th February, 2012 29th January - The whole day passed in the train journey back to the college. I was retrospecting about my career shaping at XIMB. It was the right question that led Atanu Dey to a different career. His question: “Why is India poor?” . Asking the right question can make all the difference. Critical thinking is the most effective approach towards learning and self discovery. I have initiated that process 3 year ago with the series of failures and wrong choices. We all know that streak of losses can be self-perpetuating. And one start to wonder where that elusive win will come from. One start blaming luck and all other external factors. One start hating the crowds and find oneself in that rut but until, one starts to win/gain even a small achievement. I am feeling confident with good academic record and grasping of the subjects in the rural management program. Atleast now, I am asking the right questions. 30th January - IRV assignment...

33rd Week@XIMB- 22nd January to 28th January, 2012 22nd January :  I wasted two of the three holidays in sleeping, web surfing and playing computer games. I have the old habit of procrastination in the cases of assignments. 23rd January : Nothing much substantial except learning about Non-Governmental Development Organization (NGDO). 24th January : I learned about Madhu Viswanathan in RIM lecture who has founded and directs the Marketplace Literacy Project a non-profit organization that offers marketplace literacy programs in subsistence marketplaces. 25th January : UDO lecture begins with Dalai Lama Quote : Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. There was emphasis on compassion in the organization. There were three TED video shown : Joan Halifa x, Karen Armstrong and Daniel Goleman where I was having neutral, negative and positive feedback towards there views. I am reproducing here talk of Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence who asks why ...

32nd Week- 15th January to 22nd January, 2012 15th January :  Sunday is mostly celebrated as perfect reading day by me. Pagalguy had some really interesting articles on their portal. I will put here two articles - 1- India’s latent entrepreneurship potential lies untapped because of life skills that aren’t taught and social expectations that aren’t set right. By addressing these problems in India’s bright youngsters through their curriculums, b-schools could lay the seed for innovative businesses that scale to become billion dollar companies, says Vijay Anand, Head of IIT Madras’s Incubation Center and Founder of popular startup event ‘Proto.in’. Read more here .. 2- The popular method of measuring the average salary against the fees to calculate the Return on Investment of an MBA program has no fundamental basis by any concept of Finance, says IMI Delhi’s Admission Chairperson Prof Himadri Das. He suggests a more sound method to calculate the RoI and demonstrates how it is...

31st Week-  8th January to 14th January 2012 8th January: A busy day in the assignments. There was a public lecture by Prof Norman Uphoff , Director, Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA) and Professor of Government and International Agriculture on “ Public Policy Opportunities for Food Security (and Poverty Reduction) in a Climate-Stressed World: Building Upon Our Learning from Agroecology and SRI (system of rice intensification ).” There was a headband of "JAI SRI" (Joint Action Initiative on System of Rice Intensification). The students of the 3 Continent Global Management Program also attended The System of Rice Intensification , assembled in Madagascar over a 20-year period and gaining application internationally since 2000. As per my knowledge, PRADAN started introducing SRI in rainfed areas of the Eastern Gangetic Plains in 2003. He stressed the point of diminishing return obtained in the genetic input and external input after few seasons of cultivatio...

30th Week- 1st January to 7th January 1st January : This day was not any more significant than other days. A day worth utilized in reading book. There is a different world that exist outside the college gate. Hence, jumping directly from the graduate college to B School for higher education is not a good idea. One should try a year off or career building in any industry, NGO etc. It always makes you wiser. I feel sorry for the few classmates who didn't show the inclination of growing as a mature person even now. Passing over six months in MBA, I think pre work experience before a MBA is more useful rather than a fresher doing an MBA. There is a difference in the mindset of the Workex and freshers. It is a difference of maturity and vision. People with Work-Ex may be overqualified or unfit for certain type of the job, but they can manage things better due to their previous interaction with the outdoor environment. Recently Department of Industrial and Management Engineeri...