62nd Week@XIMB

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-RM in XIMB identify effective (and ineffective) areas of the curriculum offered to them ? The parameters were field work, demand in market, relevance in development field or attributes like value addition of knowledge etc.

15th August - On the occasion of the 65th Anniversary of India's Independence Day, I have to say nothing. Facebook pages are colored with the heart of patriots.

16th August - ‎"Start Your Venture" not floating this year 'due to some last minute procedural problems' ... a step back for RM program.

TALK DELIVERED BY MR. AJIT KANITKAR AND MR. DINESH AWASTHI

As part of the Livelihood sharing series a special talk by Ajit Kanitkar (Program Officer, Ford Foundation and former Professor, IRMA) and Dinesh Awasthi (Director EDII) was organized on 16th August, 2012. Livelihoods MANTHAN is a collaborative effort to envision the participation of management and higher educational institutions as an important part of the livelihoods ecosystem int the county. The distinguished speakers spoke on the theme “Grassroots Entrepreneurship and livelihoods” and interacted with the XIMB, Rural Management students at length. The talk was coordinated by Prof. C. Shambu Prasad and a few representatives from NGOs and professionals working in the livelihood sector also attended the session.

Ajit Kanitkar reminded the audience that agriculture itself is an enterprise, albeit a very risky one. Uncertainty about the monsoon, price fluctuations, spurious seeds, storage and transportation, pest attacks and so on makes agriculture the riskiest enterprise. Under these circumstances the speaker argued that there has to be a multipronged strategy to generate enough livelihood options for the people and it should specifically address three major areas of concern. First, there can be no substitute for agriculture in a country like India where 60-70 crores of people are still dependent on it. We have to find ways and means to make agriculture a profitable enterprise. Secondly people have to start respecting vocational education. Time and resources has to be allocated for training a large number of young people for skill development. Thirdly, Mr. Kanitkar mentioned about the need to promote social enterprises.

“Economy of scale and scope is the most important factor for successful running of any social enterprise” - Dinesh N. Awasthi.

Dinesh N. Awasthi firmly believes that until unless all the people are economically empowered it will be impossible for them to get social and political empowerment. According to him Social Entrepreneurship is all about making products and services available to people which are accessible as well as affordable. He explained the three different views about social entrepreneurship.

a) Ashoka Foundation view:- It believes that whosoever is doing social innovation and trying to fix social issues, irrespective of the facts like whether it is getting grants and funds or not, its earning profits or not and whether it is self-sustainable or not it should continue doing the work.

b) Muhammad Yunus view:- His view is opposite to Ashoka foundation’s view. According to him a social entrepreneur must be self-sufficient; its activities should be self-sustainable and must make profits. People, organizations who are investing in a social enterprise should re-invest the profits in these activities only. They should not take away any part of the profits that are being generated.

c) Any enterprise should address the need of bottom of the pyramid following the principles Availability, Accessibility, Affordability.

17th August - There was a group presentation on Individual lending in MFI. That passed quite well. I learnt the difference between asset based and collateral based lending.

There was career counselling Session with Prof. Govindrajan. I expressed my interest in either consulting or development sector. Market research will be my third option. I am looking forward for off campus amid weak economy that may affect placement.

Vijay Mahajan: Rebuilding a Stronger Microfinance Sector in India - Vijay Mahajan, the president of the Microfinance Institutions Network of India and also the founder and chairman of the Basix social enterprise group talked to India Knowledge@Wharton about the implications of the new bill and the way ahead for the sector.

Why research that establishes causality is better than just correlation? by Krishnamurthy V Subramanian, Assistant Professor (Finance), ISB. Correlation is the basis for superstition while causation forms the basis for science.

18th August - I visited office of The Odisha State Cooperative Agricultural & Rural Development (OSCARD) Bank. That was followed by brief discussion between our team and one of the staff member of OSCARD bank. They were not so reluctant to share financial data but it looked more like white elephant of the government.

Mechai Viravaidya: How Mr. Condom made Thailand a better place

61st Week@XIMB

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 ideas and research work before publication and get feedback and comments from their peer group.

Rural management student must check this page of International Journal of Rural Management for latest developments. The International Journal of Rural Management (IJRM) is the first international journal that focuses exclusively on rural management as opposed to rural or community or sustainable development.

7th August - ESM: Agriculture should be looked from the livelihood point of view rather than contribution to GDP. Industrialized farming is not sustainable and there is hidden cost of subsidy with health issues. There are success stories built on sustainable agriculture. With dedicated investment of time and energy for three years, Rajeev Baruah has proved this fact. There is no need of crazy maverick backed with foreign aided NGO to do this job.

Slow Food is an international movement founded by Carlo Petrini in 1986 and expanded globally to over 100,000 members in 150 countries.

8th August - We have already news of weak monsoon rains that can slow down sowing of key crops. There is also a story of public private partnership in Maharashtra. Maharashtra govt join hands with PepsiCo, Unilever and others to develop value chains for vegetable crops. FMCG companies are shifting focus from premium products because consumers will be trading down due to inflation and low income due to uneven rains. As per India Meteorological Department(IMD) Rainfall deficiency is large in Punjab, Haryana, west Rajasthan and Saurashtra and Kutch.

9th August - ESM: There was full on discussion on Watershed Management as a strategy for managing natural resources. There was presentation of documentary of Waterworks India: Four Engineers and A Manager. The camera travels from the remote cold desert of Leh to far south in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, then visiting two outstanding rural engineers in Rajasthan.

No talk of Water Management is complete without mention of Rajendra Singh
known as "waterman of India". He won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for community leadership in 2001 for his pioneering work in community-based efforts in water harvesting and water management.

Water Mangament Workshop by Rajendra Singh-Part 1


2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Part of the talk can be viewed on the you-tube.

India Water Portal is an open, inclusive, web-based platform for sharing water management knowledge amongst practitioners and the general public.

10th August - There was talk given by three eminent fellows:
1- Debashish Sen - Head, Natural Resources Management at PSI attached
2- Dr Nagesh Kolagri on participatory GIS in empowering rural communities.
3- Dr. Baharul Islam Mazumdar (Sr. Agronomist, Tripura) on SRI

There was a batch meet called by placement committee on the scenario. It was an eye opener for those sleeping with cushion of brand name XIMB. It's time to buck up and start revising their knowledge stock and flow !

11th August - Only two closing lectures of immersion course ensured a peaceful weekend.

60th Week@XIMB

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 workshop on “Markets That Empower Farmers (& Consumers)” has started today at XIMB. This learning and brainstorming workshop is jointly organized by XIMB and ASHA (Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture) and is coordinated by Prof. Shambu Prasad. There was detailed coverage on the blog of Kisan Swaraj.

My Learning:-

1- People have lost many years doing wrong things. But you have to do wrong for long enough to realize this. It's worthwhile to do something not for the sake of money and pleasing society.

2- Too much consumer centric approach has diverted our attention from the problems of primary producers and rural livelihood. Policy, Market, and Technology are currently used for agri-business rather than agriculture. Farmers are in crisis, not farming.

3- Diversity is the key concept for sustainable agriculture. Sustainability should be the keyword for the next green revolution. More collectivization of farmers is required to increase bargaining power. Bina sanskar nahin sahkar, bina sahkar nahin udhar (without morals no cooperation, without cooperation no uplift).

Fact: 5000 liters of water is required for rice in comparison to negligible irrigation for millet. Per capita yield must be matched with the per capita nutritious value of the crop.

31st July - There were guest speakers in the ESM class: Joseph Thomas, Centre for Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship, IITM,  and Sridhar Radhakrishnan who runs a Zero Waste Center in Kovalam, recycling local waste and converting it to useful products, thereby generating livelihood for locals. Both of them were critical of the engineers. One of them was about the design of sewage systems design and the other was about the use of incinerators for the disposal of solid waste.

One quote mentioned in the slide quite touched my emotional chord: “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.

The concept of waste management is good and useful for assessment of product life cycle assessment. While the whole class was very vocal in their support of organic farming, I found that response quite shallow. The core message of organic farming forms an antithesis for the students looking for their bright future in fertilizer giants like Monsanto, DSCL, Tata Rallies, etc. I will support my assumption by quoting Upton Sinclaire: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

1st August - M-CRIL is Micro Credit Rating International Ltd. M-CRIL is a global leader in the financial rating of micro-finance institutions and sectoral advisory services.

2nd August - Prof Nonita Yap, Professor in Rural Planning and Development at the University of Guelph delivered a talk on "Greening the economy - opportunities through cleaner production and industrial ecology" at XIMB. She touched on the topic of Decarbonisation of the whole energy sector, Industrial Symbiosis at Kalundborg, and the "Quasi Cyclic" economy. There was criticism of the cluster approach of industries in her talk as these clusters concentrate pollutants. In India, industries rarely see waste as a resource.

3rd August - The immersion course Agribusiness Value Chain Finance (AVCF)and Carbon Management and Carbon Trading (CMCT) started today.

4th August - I was sick with a fever and still managed to attend a few classes of immersion courses. With the weekend looming, enjoy this video!

Making the Market Work for the Poor: This session was moderated by Elliot Gerson, Executive Vice President, The Aspen Institute USA, and the panelists included Adarsh Kumar, Executive Director, All India Artisans and Craftworkers Welfare Association; Lakshmi Venkatesan, Founding Trustee and Executive Vice-President, Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust (BYST); Deepender Hooda, Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha (Indian National Congress); and Amitava Chattopadhyay, The L'Oreal Chaired Professor of Marketing-Innovation and Creativity, INSEAD, Singapore.

The majority of Indians are still not reaping the benefits of liberalization. While there seems to be a growing consensus that the trickle-down theory is not working for India, is there a way that markets can be made more responsive to the rural poor in particular? Beyond NGO activism, how can the poor buy into the market economy?

59th Week@XIMB

59th Week@XIMB - 22nd July to 28th July, 2012



22nd July - Sunday was gone in studying for mid term exams.

Raising an Olympian - MARY KOM : As the Proud Sponsor of Mom, P&G presents a series about the Mom behind each Olympic athlete.







23rd July - ESM exam is over.The big news was about Hindustan Unilever Ltd. HUL increased its net profit by 112 per cent for the first quarter of 2012-13 to Rs.1,331.2 crore, thanks largely to a one-time gain on sale of property amounting to Rs.607 crore.

Hindustan Unilever Profit More than Doubles on Strong Sales and Speaking at company AGM, HUL Chairman Harish Manwani lays emphasis on role of corporate in financial inclusion.

24th July - Tuesday was a holiday. I came across an article: How Hindustan Unilever is making every employee a marketer.

25th July - Mid Term exam of MFM was more analytic than based on rote learning. With Q2 session results are coming, companies are coming up with reports. Here a positive news from agri-business sector: ITC's e-choupal boosting company's FMCG business. ITC typically organises 60,000 Pradharhan Khets and 6,000 Choupal Haats in a year. There is a general criticism that its expansion has benefited only large farmers as their produces could be sold at somewhat better prices and perhaps quickly through e-choupal. But, they are ignoring the ITC is market development initiative with its huge cash piles against nexus of caste based strong lobby of traders and middle men.

26th July - CM quiz was last one and that finishes mid term on happy notes. Let us watch a conversation with Wharton Marketing Professor Jagmohan Singh Raju .

Multinational Corporations and Rural India:





27th July - Lectures started after the mid term. That was a boring stuff. I am also struggling with facebook addiction and attention deficit disorder.

28th July - This was a sleeping day still I was lucky enough to read Report of the Nair Committee on Priority Sector Lending. There was also news of RBI enforcing foreign banks to raise their priority sector lending (PSL) portion to 40 per cent from 32 per cent currently. The move will impact only four of 55 foreign banks, which have over 20 branches. Only four foreign banks — Standard Chartered Bank (94 branches), Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation (50 branches), Citibank (42 branches) and Royal Bank of Scotland (31 branches) would come under the ambit of the new norms. Another foreign lender, Deutsche Bank, has 16 only branches. That's a welcome move by RBI.

Some loans that would be classified as priority sector -:

• Loans up to Rs 1 crore to micro and small service enterprises
• Loans to food and agro processing units
• Loans to distressed farmers indebted to non-institutional lenders
• Overdrafts up to Rs 50,000 in no-frills accounts
• Loans to individuals other than farmers up to Rs 50,000 to prepay their debt to non-institutional lenders
• Loans up to Rs 25 lakh for housing in metros having population above 1 million
• Loans up to Rs 15 lakh for housing in cities having population less than 1 million
• Education loans up to Rs 10 lakh for studying in India and Rs 20 lakh for studying abroad

While doing AMDA assignment on Multicollinearity, I read about Demonstration effect (Keeping up with the Joneses) and Cobweb model. I also made inquiry about Co-variance and correlation. The problem with covariances is that they are hard to compare due to metric units. Notably, correlation is dimensionless hence more author friendly.

Why Do I Love IRMA ? : The memoirs of an IRMA alumnus in one page article is beautiful reading on this weekend.

58th Week@XIMB

58th Week@XIMB - 15th July to 21st July, 2012

15th July - Sunday is always wasted in some entertainment and long sleep. Today there was Individual Profile verification for Brochure and work ex certificate submission by placecom.


16th July - In QRM lecture, there is lot of emphasis given on ethical behavior of the researcher. A researcher must not opt either for socially desirable or biased answers for personal economic benefits. Such type of researchers /journalist are hard to find these days.


17th July - Rural poverty can be attributed a lot to ecological poverty or in easy terms biomass scarcity available for commons. Hence, a rural development program must be quite eco-specific. Auxiliary benefit of NREGA includes eco-restoration & regeneration of natural resources.Once upon a time, World Bank sees NREGA as policy barrier hurting economic development and poverty alleviation.


18th July - One opportunity for XIMB is to track performance in state livelihood missions. It’s happening in Bihar, Odisha government is also now planning. If students take this opportunity, XIMB can possibly look to become sole leader in this space, something like IRMA is in so many.

PRADAN has an advanced course on livelihoods and they have an intensive workshop lasting around 18 days. They get experts from across the country and collecting different curriculum from across schools.

19th July - Neo-urbanization is a new mega-trend rising in India and other parts of the world. It is the extension of traditionally urban benefits and opportunities to semi-rural and rural communities. Neo-urbanization can transform market needs by empowering people in many ways. These are the views of global telecommunications equipment corporation Alcatel-Lucent.

Neo Urbanization - the new paradigm shift




I will not call this paradigm shift like the company promoting this video. This was a gradual change with the development of infrastructure connecting periphery of urban centers and rural area. Foreign companies have been slow in realizing the emergence of rurban area in India. For beginners, the new land development between a rural area and the EDGE of a developed suburban area is called rurban.

20th July - I was busy whole day in lectures.There was a scuffle between workers and management employees at Manesar plant of Maruti on 19th July. Awanish Kumar Dev, a manager in the Human Resources department of the Maruti Suzuki Manesar Plant was killed. Maruti Suzuki management has not even constituted the Grievance Redressal Committee and the Welfare Committee at its Manesar plant which was agreed upon after the last dispute in October 2011. So who can prevent such violent outrages of the workers.

21st July - XSYS interview for the selection of the shadow members were conducted.