Grassroutes: Developing Villages through Rural Tourism

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 quiet word

And then that word grew louder and louder…….

'Til it was a battle cry !”

You know you’re a Jhabierite when….

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 had more visitors to your room from the amphibian family than from MTR/RMH
10. You regard your MBA education not as an investment but as a ‘sunk cost’
11. You agree that a course such as COMA could not have been more aptly named
12. You cant remember the last time you had breakfast in the mess
13. Your basic food groups were: 1.Beer 2.Caffeine 3. Masala Thums-up 4. Maggi 5. Pizza 6. Some more beer
14. You felt like you were cheating on Country Kitchen on the rare days you had dinner in the mess
15. You flashed your college ID at a restaurant manager’s face seeking a discount but ended up having it shoved down your gullet instead
16. You knew that even if the world were to end, there would still always be X-Café & Walmart
17. You got away with saying ‘yes sir’, ‘present sir’, ‘yes sir’ back to back during attendance
18. You have actually seen GOD and even had HIM call out your name during attendance
19. You knew that a ‘Bring your laptops to class today’ notice actually meant ‘look buggers, I’m in no mood to teach today, so why don’t you just do your stuff & let me do mine’
20. The 4 P’s you live by stand for Pessimism, Procrastination, (Bi)Polarism & Plagiarism
21. Your business awareness levels paled in comparison to your blood-alcohol levels
22. You found a newspaper’s obituary section more interesting than the business page
23. You were more willing to swallow a sword laced with cobra poison and have your body crevices pierced with red hot iron rods rather than attend that last remaining lecture of the day
24. You envied the strays outside the main gate for having a better social life than you
25. You feel like killing a baby everytime you come across the word ‘Mandatory’
26. You acknowledge that the wheel is not the most important human invention, Google is
27. You couldn’t thank Xerox enough the night just before your exams
28. You can type 316 words a minute but struggle to read your own handwriting
29. You show how it’s possible to be illegible even on MS word & MS excel
30. You wasted your time partaking in compelling cinema such as Gunda, Chandaal & Jallaad on X-Sys when you could have done something worthwhile like harvesting dried kharbooja seeds or adopting a maroon monkey for your farm in FarmVille
31. You count Crazy Taxi, Bouncing Balls & Throw the mummy among your favourite sports, (and not X-cricket)
32. Facebook is not just a site for you, it’s a way of life
33. You went to the library to socialize (read: check out the cute chick ) or to have yourself clicked with books so that you could put them up on FB/Orkut for your parents to see & feel all reassured & happy
34. You said “Arre pata, usne apna marriage proposal CONVERT kar liya”
35. You know a HR professional when you see (and hear) one
36. 7 am lectures were a myth, and attending them, a crime
37. 5 pm was your idea of a perfect morning
38. You can peacefully sleep through earthquakes, meteorite showers, alien invasions & of course, JLT’s
39. Your next door neighbour (who lived within 30 cms of you) sent you an email asking you NOT to wake him up the following morning
40. You set your mobile phone alarm for the 9 am lecture, then reset it for the 2pm lecture, and then again reset it to 5pm for the snacks, and eventually went on to miss dinner
41. You didn’t remember what sunlight looked like, and often confused sunrises with sunsets (also males with females)
42. X-pressions was the only time you were active & that too because you got to check out the chicks from other colleges & then tut-tut about how rotten your luck was
43. Terms such as ‘pataka, hot chick, garma garam item’ inadvertently brings to mind the image of a girl perspiring & burning in the Bhubaneswar heat
44. You abused the term ‘it depends’ to such proportions that Oxford just stopped short of filing a case of harassment against the institute
45. You called upon X-Sys to complain that you were unable to access Facebook, only to realize that typing www.facebook.com in notepad gets you nowhere
46. The dosa they served in the mess was the worst dosa in the world but you still got up every Sunday morning at 9 am to line up in the queue
47. You thought breaking into Fort Knox was a cakewalk compared to MTR
48. You took a bath everytime there was a solar eclipse
49. The last time you did your laundry, Halley’s Comet had made an appearance
50. Almost all your t-shirts are from X-pressions, Alumni or game/interest committees
51. The only time you had given your superhero costume (read: business suit) for drycleaning was before you got here
52. Your saw your entire life flash before your eyes as soon you were handed your valuation end-term question paper
53. You needed SPSS to convince you that your bakar time is inversely related to your QPI
54. There was nothing surprising about Surprise quizzes anymore
55. You mulled over taking the CFA exam without even knowing what CFA stood for
56. You took up the ‘fight against deadlines’ cause with pretty much the same zeal with which Bollywood stars take up the ‘fight against Polio’ cause
57. You used font size 32 for your assignments as a desperate ruse to get to the minimum 10 page limit
58. You used font size=Amoeba??? for your last minute scribblings on your exam paper
59. You resorted to the good old ‘Cntrl C-Cntrl V’ for your Business Ethics term paper titled “Plagiarism- a social malady”
60. You finished two whole seasons of LOST/FRIENDS in 2 days flat just before your end terms kicked in and then proceeded to finish three more seasons while they were on
61. You promised yourself you’d start preparing for placements tomorrow, but that tomorrow somehow never arrived
62. CQPI was just another four letter word
63. You can quote dialogues from any of IMDB’s top 250 movies
64. Conniving with your friends during exams is what you called Group Dynamics, not cheating
65. You could quote Kotler at the drop of a hat but couldn’t remember your postal address
66. You attended batchmeets religiously but never bothered to turn up at Alumni talks
67. You often discussed Pizza Hut’s core competency/product differentiation vis-à-vis Smokin’ Joe’s
68. You subconsciously started addressing your elder brother as ‘bhaina’
69. You tell your dad you’re taking the dog out for a X-walk
70. You start writing executive summaries for your tweets, SMSes, status messages..everything
71. You can prepare a 40 page dossier replete with all the MBA jargons in the book to arrive at the conclusion that inanimate objects do not need air/oxygen to survive and are therefore non-living
72. You can beat any Tom, Dick, Harry, Yadav, Patel, Sharma, Singh, Khan, Thirunakarasumaiyalamma at the fine art of pfaffing
73. You refrain from using the word ‘bhakti’ in spiritually stimulated discussions & at family pujas
74. You gave Maxinations more consideration than your sister’s wedding
75. You have the attention span of an armless monkey with a major flea problem
76. You would happily give your right arm away for a JLT
77. You get turned on everytime you see a chain mail
78. You dont find prison jokes funny anymore
79. Masochism has become as much a part of your social fabric as say human sacrifice to the Aztec culture
80. Messrs. Levin & Rubin seemed as grotesque manifestations of Jack the Ripper & Hannibal Lecter
81. You swore that had Gandhi studied here, he would have killed more Jews than Hitler
82. The admin & acads screwed you so bad you contemplated taking a pregnancy test
83. You likened Gladi, Kuruk, Skill & Helios to Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba & Harkat-ul-Mujahideen respectively
84. You equated balancing your acads, responsibilities & personal life to a tightrope walk on a cord made from burning charcoal while balancing a family member on the head and at the same time have Sunny & Bobby Deol dancing to Kajraare on either ends of the rope
85. You were socked in the face with the realization that 90 mins was actually 5400 seconds of raw, unmitigated torture eventually leading to death
86. You believe in reincarnations (having died multiple deaths yourself during the course of a single lecture)
87. S.O.B means more than just a slur to you
88. Khajoor isn’t exactly your favourite fruit
89. You sniggered everytime you heard one of those CEOs or recruiters say “you are the crème-de-la-crème..the top 1%..the future leaders of the country..blah blah”
90. You crack up everytime you hear the words ‘MBA’ & ‘value-add’ in the same sentence
91. During placement week, the only company you cared about was ‘female company’
92. During Convocation, you realized you had forgotten almost everything you had learnt at school, were left with the engineering skills of a brick & only had this degree to show for your efforts
93. You realize that the only thing more difficult than getting into XIMB is getting out of XIMB

*The End and Flush*

-------Adapted from the blog post of Soorma Bhokali.

"Young Professional" @ Odisha Livelihood Mission

"No man is a fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

I personally identify and like to attach with the cause of the underdogs in general. There is a dilemma involved with this choice because by descent, upbringing, education and needs; I am a person belonging to middle class society. I am fond of middle−class comforts (like 3rd AC train compartments),a bit of liberal values and even risk free career aspirations. And now, I have undertaken a job in the OLM (Odisha Livelihood Mission) as a "young professional" (a word designated by World Bank for their fresh joiner) so that my work can directly have a positive impact on the people. I had made a new path in the career by abandoning engineering to work in the rural areas for a brief time. The line that boosted my career jump was- If gamblers start worrying about the odds, they would never gamble.

Our generation has an old mindset of scarcity (money) and risk aversion (career switch). Age is never an issue if you have an enthusiastic spirit. 27 is such an age where I stand on the end of bachelor life chasing wild dreams. I have chosen to change course radically and to start completely all over again from scratch. I am happy that my new job will not be to make people buy things they don't want and don't need.

There was a bit of randomness in allotting work initially but induction training happened at Bhubaneswar office. New joiners will be sent to rural areas for exposure to the organization work style through the trainee-ship segment. I am going to Balasore district for immersion visit of 21 days accompanies with two other new fellows like me. Field experience is not only about preservation as about fortification of the knowledge gained at college.

People travel to the far and remote part of alienated regions. They are just only "guided tourists", who return from turbulent societies only to talk about wonderful scenery and wildlife, instead of the people who live their daily lives in the pain and laughter in those foreign lands. Identity of the people leaving in such a desolated region cannot be reduced to a mere geographical space. It is much more than that: it comprises of the emotional−psychological and historical landscapes. I am not any morally superior or far better than them but only going one level more from being a "development tourist" only this time.

Going off the topic, i am too happy to support and share vision of Jairam Ramesh who publicly proclaimed - Unlearn the garbage taught in professional schools.

Life of A Rural Manager

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 enjoying cool breeze of Vagator beach, Goa with a chilled beer. Actually, that’s not the true case at all. I'm sitting in a small room with bare minimum facilities at Gajapati district during winter internship. I assumed before joining XIMB that I can handle the weather of Odisha. Rarely, it rains mildly with a romantic weather. Its always either a dull humid weather or heavy rains. Nothing weakens Superman like Green kryptonite, the humidity acts same way here draining all energy! For once, we can wish cool weather every day (yes dear XIMBians, We all love Bhubaneshwar weather :X)! To add to that rigour were other matters like bad food (very very important). We love cuisine like Night-mess ka roasted chicken to X-cafe ka garlic chicken soup.

Arbeit macht frei is a German phrase, literally "labour makes (you) free". The slogan is known for having been placed over the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust, but that should be put on the entrance of this place. Yes, life is not so cool here. Time is a scarce commodity in this place. Yet, one can see endless usage of time in various activities. People still have the spirits to involve in various Committees, quizzes, games and X-Walks. But this is a thing about XIMB: you rarely get time for yourself. Even the whole 24 hours seems to be exhausting, tiring and even suicidal as it can sometimes get, I don't think any of us would want it any other way.

When Rural India wakes Up at 5:00 AM only then our rural managers stop their interactive chatting sessions and start dreaming of liberal days of graduation. 15 minutes before beginning of the class, get you Ass Up Fast is the call from the beloved lazy neighbor. Even then, 9 out of 10 Rural managers are firmly grounded on their bed. Such is the start of the day and the forecasting of whole saga of two years can be made on this start.

There are not only Intelligentsia, Devil's Advocate, Activist, Salesman and Social workers but also Mamas, Chachas, Night-Owls & Free-riders present in each batch. There are people here who provide a lot of joy whenever they leave the room. While one or two are such masterpiece while everybody was drinking from the fountain of knowledge they only gargled. Yes, there are superstars who gives solid evidence of halo effect. Some of ours species can even argue with a signpost but there is one with whom it's hard to believe he beat out 1,000,000 other sperm. I fall in the category of rural managers who set low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them.

Before a layman goes on a trip, one may want to read more about the history, the people, the landscapes, and the present political and cultural situation of the destined place. That is the pedagogy of academics for rural manager. Donor Mentality, CSR activities, Development tourism, Caste based business, deep poverty, top down approach of government, rehabilitation policy etc ... we were mentored for two years to question authority and yet develop leadership traits.

Our alumni travel across India and are ease with corporate office as well as a tribal community in a remote region. That sets us apart from our colleagues in India. We have our internal conflicts like how we will integrate development (not sure what it meant then) with surging profits of the company. We know both about CK Prahlad and P Sainath. P Sainath who? A question that is asked too frequently from the rural managers.

And we learn in two years : For India, reality bites. But Lage Raho India, dream on! Business Managers are good Hegelian. They have a good theory, forget about the reality. Hence, the author has chosen to become rural manager. Yes, I will be saying golden jargons in the end : We all have a deep love for 'sustainable development' of all 'stakeholders'.

Notice: This was a draft written long ago treasured in archives of the blog for unknown reason. It's been like 8 months since I last wrote in one flow. I am throwing a glimpse of life of a rural manager tailored at XIMB.

Convocation @ XIMB

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 love, with an ear open to listen & a hand willing to care.

In coming times, we will be busy in work and burdened with more loans (namely House, Car & Personal). When a person has the single most important thing in life - choice, then one is empowered. As a student receiving quality education from premier institute, this degree has given me a basket full of alternatives. One has choice either to become brick of the foundation or finished top of the dome. I wanted to be an innovator rather than copy-paste machine. I just like to end by quoting thoughts of two eminent personalities -

"A teaching university would but half perform its function if it does not seek to develop the heart-power of its scholars with the same solicitude with which it develops their brain-power. Hence it is that the proposed university has placed formation of character in youth as one of its principal objects." ~ Mahamana Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya, The Founder of Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi.

"Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt . they can't afford the time to think. Tuition fee increases are a “disciplinary technique,” and, by the time students graduate, they are not only loaded with debt, but have also internalized the “disciplinarian culture.” This makes them efficient components of the consumer economy." ~  Noam Chomsky, an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, historian, political critic, and activist.