35th Week@XIMB

35th Week- 5th February to 11th February, 2012

5th February - IRMA has declared their GD-PI list one month ago. XIMB-RM cut off for rural management course had been declared now. This year CAT, XAT & IRMA scores are valid for the entrance from this year. I welcome this diversification of application with different scores.

Lot of debate and analysis will go again in the rural management community.It is a course that has unique fusion of rural development and business management. Rural Management is a different course whose people are convinced of the superiority of their mission and are obsessed with the inferiority of their merit on CAT/XAT scale. As per mine opinion, a rural manager must be more professional and learned as comparison to the normal MBA college manager as one has less capital and more complex problems to deal with. More about rural manager as per point of view of an IRMA  at pagal guy.

I respect IRMA for their immense work in the field of development. Yet, governemnt and IRMA adminsitration have failed to set up more number of colleges on such pattern. With 32 years of establishment, there is no substantial increase in the number of seats offered from 80's to 2010. A very low increment of seats while the population has 65 billion to 112 billion people shows lag of government in the higher education. This is a drastic policy lapse from both IRMA and Central Government. They should take lessons from IITs and IIMs who are opening colleges without the illusive fears of quality dilution by few elites. Here, I will lay emphasis on the private colleges like XIMB that are putting efforts for developing such niche program with a different framework. Yet, reservation of seats for a youth from BPL card holder family by IRMA is a nice move. I heavily appreciate this progressive step. Way to go !

6th February - Quiz in IRV ; I was selected in the new XSYS Team that is the Systems Association of XIMB. That is a good progress happening slowly in mine professional life.

There is much beyond classroom to learn. The attitude of Spoon-feeding knowledge has killed the spirit of questioning and search for the solutions. Its hard to get the spirit of questioning in the last stages of your academic career.

7th February - ADM end term exam was there and hence it led to the official end of the 2nd trimester today. I missed two classes of REPP and RIM for the exam. It was a low point of my post-graduation academic session. There was huge and open discussion on the caste system with referring to an EPW article : An Obituary on Caste as a System by M N Srinivas. The changing social dynamics of India throughout centuries was well documented in this. Yet, the article misses to say much about caste system in Islam and Christianity of the converted community.

Mr. Sandeep Rajan and Mr. Harihar Dubey of PGDM(RM) 2010-12 batch have won the Earthian Awards 2011-12 declared by WIPRO.

8th February - I heard the name of Harsh Mandar who is a bureaucrat turned activist in UDO lecture. This was the last class of IRV. Prof summarized the class with anecdotes of his life and a nice video giving message to live simply.

Life is like Coffee

9th February - "What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over ― Aleister Crowley". Robert Chambers points out different type of biases that a rural manager should be minimizing. Its often true that we convert our developmental intervention as rural development tourism. In 1983, six biases of such visits : spatial, project, person, seasonal diplomatic and professional - against seeing, meeting and learning from the poor people were identified and described. In 2008, the seventh bias of security was added and all these biases continue to reinforce popular wrong perceptions.

There is Ganesh Devy and Mahashweta Devi who are working for tribal languages unknown to most of us. While they are unheard by most of us, we tend to read more Dickens than Mahashweta Devi to understand our own backyard. I was lucky to get a TED talk by G N Devy. Professor Ganesh Devy talks about how languages evolve. And how local Indian languages are dying, taking with them a treasure of historical knowledge and wisdom.

RIM: I learned about Distribution strategies and tactics of rural market. Companies are reviewing the rural marketing concept and trying to outreach rural market with NGO's and SHG other than the channel partners. There was discussion on SHG. The average life of SHG is 39 months as per a study (No reference document available).

There was a video shown on Project Shakti of HUL. HUL collaborate with self-help groups and non-governmental organizations to identify underprivileged women and train them to be saleswomen.

Film on Project Shakti

Congratulations to Suma Pratyusha and Sreevidya Gowda of RM-1 batch for finishing at Silver Level in the Acara Challenge 2012 organized by the University of Minnesota. Kudos to them !

10th February - It was the last day of National CSR Conference. Only lecture of REPP was possible with Joseph C Kumarappa. Economy of Permanence is a famous book written by him. Unfortunately the book is out of print but was downloaded and supplied to the whole batch by GB. [Download PDF Version]

11th February - There is case discussion in BIS over CCD. The approach to teach BIS completely through case studies is quite strange with most of the public coming from agriculture and commerce background. As they have consider BIS a technical subject with unheard jargon.

Guest Lecture by Biju Dominic

Biju Dominic is an alumnus of XIMB. He is currently CEO of FinalMile Consulting. . He mostly focused his talks om behaviour architecture- changing human behaviour with the help of Cognitive Neurology and Behavioural Economics. He talked a lot about solving macro level problems with micro- management.

- The genuine question raised by him was - Does Brain take a shortcut ?

- Indian politician is a person to learn man- management.He gave various example from Kerala to US Presidential elections to prove his claims.

- Sucking out of money phenomenon. This is happening to the big farmers at Noida and Gurgaon who had became suddenly rich with the higher prices of the real estate. The habit of austerity has given place to mindless consumerism. And they consume most of their money within few years, and never make a substantial investment . It has lot of do with irrational nature of the human beings that neo-liberal economics fail to explain.

34th Week@XIMB

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 and UDO quiz welcomed me in the morning. Break even point analysis came handy while studying capacity strategy in OM class. For any profit and non profit organization, the cost effectiveness and efficiency in operational planning is must for achieving the suitable outcome. We learnt about the theory of constraints (TOC) that adopts the common idiom "A chain is no stronger than its weakest link" as a new management paradigm.

There was lecture in IRV on basic concept of design of market and valuation of assets. There was further heavy discussion on Law of one price, Information Asymmetry, Gambling and Legitimate Risk. The regulatory behaviour of market led me thinking into the zone of US model of laissez-faire and the European model of deficit-driven welfare states. There is always need for the right balance between markets and provision of public goods. Also, the tax imposed on the companies should not led us back into the license-raj era since welfare state depands on how much taxpayers are willing to pay for them. Present day recession is caused by too-big-to-fail banks and big cartels that could have been averted by stricter supervision and regulation of a financial system.

31st January - I learned in MR class that consumption pattern depends on occupation, education, values and socialization of the household. While during socio-economic surveys in urban areas, there is comparison through education-occupation matrix, the rural areas are compared by type of house and education. We didn't take income in survey as that is difficult to gather due to the privacy reason and may be seasonal in the nature. The occupation otherwise is more stable form of variable.

Professor at BIS lecture presented Cisco Telepresence Magic to show the future of the technology.



There is lot of positive thing that can be done by technology in the area of health care and education. As we are finding Aravind (India) or Narayana Hrudayalaya (India) using the latest medical technology for serving poor. I am more cautious with the approach. As higher technological innovation comes with patent and research cost leading to the monopoly of the producer company.

Heard first time about NCAER socio-economic survey, Thompson Rural Market Index and MICA rural market ratings.

1st February - While learning about Institutional Capacity Assessment and Organisational Diagnosis in UDO lecture, I came across Weisbord, Marvin R. Six box diagnostic model and McKinsey 7S Framework.

The symptom of undeveloped district in India can be easily seen through credit deposit ratio of the bank. It is same like checking cash inflow /outflow in the company. Micro Planning lectures are good and must be put forward in our civics books from 10th onward.

SEC elections were held in the night. They were full of candidates with inflated promises and flattery. How defenseless we are in the face of flattery! I was viewing the whole election as market segmenting, art of choosing and irrational nature of targeted consumers. The networking, deceit, lies and articulating speeches were making it look like a sop opera. It all lasted more than six hours. Speaking about the candidates : Flamboyancy created a mass following but also reduces the credibility with a poorer image. In the time of goodwill, erosion of credibility and intentions into question, no individual, company or NGDO can survive.

I will paraphrase here about “state of nature” and social contract. Any human condition absent from any political order, usually termed the “state of nature”. In this condition, individuals' actions are bound only by their personal power and conscience. Then, individuals unite into political societies by a process of mutual consent, agreeing to abide by common rules and accept corresponding duties to protect themselves and one another from violence and other kinds of harm. From this shared starting point, social contract theorists seek to demonstrate, in different ways, why a rational individual would voluntarily give up his or her natural freedom to obtain the benefits of political order.In our democratic political order at college level, it is necessary to qurantine the early intruders (unworthy candidates) in bud. Otherwise the well-meaning and merited representatives will be kicked out by these intruders either personally or by proxy depending on the nature of appointment or election. That is the summary !

2nd February - In CMIB, there was discussion on case study between the two approaches of development : facilitator or advocate what's the difference ? We again encountered the terms like 'critical thinking', 'paternalism' and 'sustainable development'.

Cavinkare Private Limited - Serving Low Income Consumers: The case discussed in RIM lecture highlights the understanding for rural market and innovations needed for the successful tapping of opportunities present in the bottom of the pyramid (BOP) markets. The Lessons :

1- A regional brand with the good market research and iinovation can beat MNC's in its backyard easily. Good example : Ghari moves out Wheel to be No 1 in laundry market.

2- Multi-attribute segmentation is key to the successful business. Tapping of economic activity clusters like Haats and Melas show the quick feet thinking of Cavin Kare. More about Marketing of Chik BY C K Ranganathan

3- FMCG companies like Perfetti with the brand like Alpenliebe represent the operational efficiency and low margin-high volumes segment.

The block launches of MAXINATIONS started in the night with the event 'Last Manager Standing' in which GR2 was clear winner.

3rd February - Paul C Mueller of US Consulate delivered a talk today. It revolved around New Silk Road strategy proposed under Hilary Clinton. They also talked about bilateral trade and investment in the infrastructure for longer terms with lower interest rates. I participated as audience of GR2 in the quizzing event of Maxinations.

4th February - Classes were cancelled at the last moments. I was busy in assignments. An important thing done was to vote in Pagal Guy Ranking 2012. An aspiring student should have more information with the higher level of transparency and competence provided by rating agency. Yet I don't have high regard for the Ranking and Admission criteria used by any magazines like Outlook or India-today. There sample population is very low and the process is not much transparent. They may be influenced by external factors like financial sponsorship. But most of the B Schools or Engineering colleges have a conviction based on a pervasive cult of their superiority which cannot be reasoned with. Colleges use the ranking system whatever shows them in good public light. Access to quality education for a student depends not just on availability and affordability, but also on the information gap between aspiring students.

33rd Week@XIMB

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 Halifax, 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 we aren't more compassionate more of the time.

Daniel Goleman: Why arent we all Good Samaritans?



26th January : Train to Patna.  SRC organized the event "Para-Athlos 2012, a sports meet for differently abled children at the XIMB grounds ". Read on SRC blog for more detail ...

27th January : I missed 4 lecture today. This has never happened before.

28th January : Saraswati Puja organized in the campus ; I was in Patna thinking about governance and work culture prevailing in the state. The economic reconstruction is not “development as usual,” and became more sensitive to the specific needs and idiosyncrasies of the state affected by conflict and corruption over the years. Prosperity depends on the synergy between private sector, people and state as a whole cluster, not only on the individual entrepreneur. We have to remember that people have always prized opportunity over equality.

No democracy can be built on the foundations of the kind of mistrust and anger that prevails among various castes and classes. There is need for balance between merit and positive discrimination policies. Competition is not the only factor for the creation of smarter people or more educated people. People fulfill their potential if they can get access. Any economic model that does not properly address inequality will eventually face a crisis of legitimacy. So many years of Lalu Yadav has virtually destroyed any chances of growth in Bihar. This is the time of rebuilding and growth.

32nd Week@XIMB

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 linked to the quality of the b-school’s professors.
Read more here...

16th January : It was just another busy day. Today, I felt that humans have been sandwiched between godless communism and God-damn-it capitalism. Thrash religion, Love People and Learn Economics sounds like good mantra for mine personal development!

17th January : REPP lecture was mostly based on news discussion. There was use of words like Structural Adjustment and Structural Transformation. They are buzz words mostly used by World Bank regarding Indian economy. I get to know about colleges of developmental studies at International (IDS SUSSEX, ISS in The Hague, UEA Norwich) and at National location.

I learned a little about product and service design at OM. MIS lecture was a slow starter. All software engineers feel nostalgic for their working days and IT firms. RIM lecture was focused on both production and consumption aspects of the marketing. There is a TED video of Madhu Viswanathan founded and directs the Marketplace Literacy Project a non-profit organization that offers marketplace literacy programs in subsistence marketplaces.

TEDxUIUC - Madhu Viswanathan - Bottom-Up Solutions for Subsistence Marketplaces


18th January : MP lecture was largely based on the village plan. It was last lecture of ADM. Professor talked about philosophy of life that includes hard work, knowledge and ethics. He emphasized on the competitive advantage within us due to ours exposure to both academic and Industry experts.

Ms. Parul Agarwal, from the 2008-10 batch and is currently working as a Senior Research Associate at IFMR-CMR. She came to our campus but I was feeling lazy to attend her lecture.

19th January : I finally submitted the final version of our RLLE report to the college. It was 115 pages long having 40 pages of diagram only. There is over focus on the Elinor Ostrom while talking about Tragedy of commons. I learned in brief about STEEPLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal )analysis that is used as a framework of macro-environmental factors used in strategic management. There was similar study of dimensions of the community in CMIB lecture.

strategic Guest Lecture : Mr Kannan Lakshminarayan will speak on "Weaving a Vision: Technology applications in rural areas". Mr Kannan an engineer and entrepreneur has designed the rural ATM and a decentralised microspinning machine for processing cotton.

Malkha, a neologism that conjoins the words Malmal and Khadi, is the brand name of natural-dyed handloom cloth produced by the Decentralised Cotton Yarn Trust in Andhra Pradesh [Source : India Together]. Malkha' is a new age cotton fabric, that fuses traditional methods of production with innovative micro spinning machine's. Microspin is a start-up company born out of the vision to radically transform what is arguably the oldest industry of India – Textiles. This enables a field to fabric manufacturing chain, which is environmentally conscious and socially responsible, empowering diverse communities of cotton pickers, weavers and spinners through their ethical trade policies and equitable profit. More details on his innovations are available at MicroSpin and Youtube Video of Malkha is available.

With the mission of helping banks reach out profitably to unbanked & under-banked regions, and years of R & D ably supported by IIT Madras, Vortex has designed ATMs which are highly reliable, rugged, easy to use and eco-friendly. They consume up to 90% lesser power and hence can be economically operated using solar power. Vortex ATMs are currently serving even the remotest parts of rural India – using technology as an enabler to improve quality of life. More details on his innovations are available at Vortex India.

20th January : XIMB was hosting pan-India annual B-School sports fest, Athlos, on the 20th-22nd January. It was a rest day for me. On a serious note, I gave a thought about pursuing higher studies(PHD) with few years of field experience. This decision depends a lot on the personal life and academic standards hiding in the future. I always think a serious student of developmental studies must be equipped with skills in the real world with basic knowledge of political science, statistics, anthropological ,historical and economics, to encourage them for multi dimesnsional analysis framework. Even Chris Blattman agreed with me in his blog post.

21st January : I have no interest in these gaming affairs. Still,  I was busy playing Age of Mythology whole day. Time enjoyed is not time wasted.

31st Week@XIMB

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 cultivation.

9th January: There was only one lecture on IRV (Introduction to Risk and Valuation). I was amazed to know that the Ph.D. guide of our Prof. is Dr. Kirit S. Parikh. He stressed the fact that nothing is interesting if you're not interested and preparing the question paper of any subject can give you command over it. I was introduced to the concept of the time value of money.

- Microeconomics is only a tool of decision-making in the text of consumers, firms, and markets.

- Each of the people sitting in the class has a different opportunity cost, hence the unique ability to differ in decision making.

10th January: Only one lecture on REPP (Rural Enterprise and Public Policies). He gave high regard to P Sainath. He raised the point that despite so many successes, India's rural-urban divide is terrifying. As Amartya Sen warns in his address to the 93rd Indian Science Congress in Hyderabad, India's future "cannot be one that is half California and half sub-Saharan Africa". South Africa and Brazil have economic inequalities within their social structure but now India is also joining their ranks. All thanks to the wrong economic and political policies of the Indian government.

The concept of Gap Year College was told by him. An interesting concept read by me in the blog of Rashmi Bansal. Ending today with a quote for an engineer  -

"And somewhere there are engineers

Helping others fly faster than sound.

But, where are the engineers

Helping those who must live on the ground?"

-- Young Oxfam Poster

11th January: A lot of classes were canceled.

When you feel that the film industry is always a place of people with no art, culture, or political interest. The stereotype is wrong. Surprised to see the talk of Mansoor Khan who was talking about sustainability and growth. For those who aspire for a career change, purpose in life and trying to make sense of this insane world, he sets a glaring example.

TEDxYouth@Chennai - Mansoor Khan - The Third Curve.

Mansoor Khan is known to the country as the director of Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak and Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander. Despite being a success in Bollywood, he moved with his family to Coonoor where lives on a 22-acre organic cheesemaking farm. Alumni of IIT-Madras, he went on to study at Cornell University and then, MIT, USA.

12th January: There was the first lecture on CMIB (Community Mobilisation & Institution Building). There is a proposed discussion of Swades, Manthan, and Chak De India in the course outline. I am excited about the movies especially Manthan. Manthan was a 1976 Hindi film made by Shyam Benegal, based on a story written jointly by Verghese Kurien and director Shyam Benegal.

Professor of OM (Operations Management)  started with few quotes that were so precise and accurate.

“I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” ― Albert Einstein.

“If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.”      ― Bill Gates.

"Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt.

I heard the first time about the triple bottom line (abbreviated as TBL or 3BL). As per the economist (magazine), behind it lies the same fundamental principle: what you measure is what you get, because what you measure is what you are likely to pay attention to. Only when companies measure their social and environmental impact will we have socially and environmentally responsible organizations.

Never know about any business model till this class. Learned about one today. For example, one of the initiatives in the business excellence movement is a framework known as the TBEM (Tata Business Excellence Model). TBEM assesses core aspects of business operations: leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, measurement, analysis and knowledge management, workforce focus, process management, and business results. Read more on the Tata group website.

13th January: MR (Marketing Research) class started with two lectures back to back. A lot of stuff about social networks and content analysis is still there to learn.

OM (Operations Management) class is becoming full of new information and jargon. One article on strategy was given to us for reading. What Is Strategy? by Michael E. Porter. Source: Harvard Business Review, 21 pages. Publication date: Nov 01, 1996. The author argues that operational effectiveness, although necessary to superior performance, is not sufficient, because its techniques are easy to imitate. In contrast, the essence of strategy is choosing a unique and valuable position rooted in systems of activities that are much more difficult to match.

14th January: CMIB lecture was focused on the definition and characteristics of the community. I was thinking about our Cinephile society that emerged as Cine Darbaar now. My head was revolving around the talk, dreams, and vision of realistic and indie cinema. I was able to appreciate the necessity of social capital and the need for regular interaction for vibrancy in the community.

Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks. - Mark Twain. Any guess for mentioning this quote. I was reading about forecasting in OM (Operations Management) class. We were assigned to find the concept of the Markov chain. Happy Weekend.

I talked today with one of the teachers about the quality of students at XIMB. The discussion was casual yet confidential in nature.