Diary of a Rural Manager!

On 30th June 2019, I had an esteemed opportunity to participate in Industry Connect Talk of Xavier School of Rural Management. The talk was conducted for the Rural Management batch of 2019-21. Truth be shared, this is the first time, I’ve given a talk in public place and that too a batch of aspiring rural managers. The speech revolved around exploring diverse opportunities in two years of college stay. I also gave a brief overview of the skills, students are expected to acquire before they venture into their careers in the respective domains of their choice Career or academic goals may vary from time to time yet few qualities always help in gaining new heights. These three qualities were insights of a colleague ( Subash Kumar ). These are: Relationship Management, Deep commitment to Work and Always remembering 'Bad times will last longer than good times'. Interaction with students was really good but student debt was on the mind of each & every rural manager. PS: ...

Today, the development sector has emerged as an unconventional yet full-fledged career option amongst the youth worldwide. People seeking careers in Development Sector face a dilemma on the choice between MBA in Rural/Health/Forest management and fellowship opportunities pan India. There are pros and cons to each choice: 1. Academia : Most candidates become largely irrelevant in running social enterprises by putting effort to keep themselves either too much academic or searching for degrees from premier colleges. B School always provides a broad base knowledge base than that is gathered in classroom training of Fellowship. 2. Seeking Experience - The grassroots experience is a must before jumping into solving an issue as one has to acknowledge the gap between ideology and lived experience. Fellowship experience will be much more diverse and fruitful than 2 years in MBA school. 3. Network Effect - The number of students enrolling and attending the MBA is much more than the fello...

“Small changes can produce big results – but the areas of highest leverage are often the least obvious.” – Peter Senge XIMB hosted 1st National Symposium on Rural Management on November 9th-10th 2012 [ Photo Album ]. The event brought together institutions, academics, professionals, key client groups and other stakeholders to deliberate on the issues, pool experiences and develop strategies and designs for expansion, institutionalization and better domain engagement. Papers / presentations were invited on five aspects of the Rural Management field listed here - 1. Rural Management in the Next Decade – Tasks, Organizations and Professional Needs 2. Rural Management – Defining the Field 3. Programs in Rural Management – Intent, Design, Content and Issues 4. Praxis in Rural Management 5. Strengthening Rural Management NSoRM Welcome Flash Video I attended few of the lectures/presentation and it was worth attending them. Eminent personalities like Dr. Mihir Shah, K V Raju, M S...

Prof. Shambu Prasad , Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, is the strict choice of the Villgro Awards' jury for Academic Contribution in 2013. It is so nice to hear and feel lucky to be taught by our own professor who is getting recognized for his works. Such achievements help in positioning XIMB as an institute with a difference.

Inir Pinheiro is a MBA in Rural Management from XIMB of 2004 – 2006 batch. He skipped placement offers to start up his own company, Grassroutes. Grassroutes is based on the concept of responsible rural tourism wherein tourism is run, managed and owned by local village communities. Today, it is a sustainable and profit making venture transforming unknown small villages, near the metros, into viable tourist destinations; sustainable for him and giving livelihood opportunities to the villagers. There is enough Media Coverage of this rural tourism venture. The best part in his story that he is a "typical city boy", born and brought up in Mumbai. Inir learnt about the realities of village India much later. Inir proves that one need not to belong to villages to work in rural areas. He described once his work in the words of Regina Spektor - “It started out as a feeling, Which then grew into a hope, Which then turned into a quiet thought, Which then turned into a qu...

1. You checked your stu-mail/Notice Board more habitually than you breathed or blinked 2. You could login to AIS even in your sleep 3. You found it easier to sleep right under the prof’s nose than in your room 4. You slept through all of the CEO talks (read: mass sleep-athons) and couldnt care less if the speaker performed a blindfolded back-somersault while simultaneously balancing a marble on his nose 5. You perfected the art of nodding off while standing during a presentation 6. You had your stumail,gmail,AIS,printer,IM,twitter passwords at your fingertips but still somehow managed to forget your girlfriend’s birthday everytime 7. You were addressed as someone from ‘XLRI Bhubaneswar’ on your train journey back home & you resisted the urge to rip his tonsils right off 8. You sulked about the prettiest faces on campus always being in the other section, the senior batch or in a different programme altogether 9. You h...

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...

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 ...

Sparsh: Development in a Trimester of rural management - 5... : I didn't come down to XIMB to oversleep. I've worked below what I am capable of. Here in 5 points what I learnt in last 3 months: ...