Sustainable Development !

Thanks to Nikhil Akhouri for that pic !!! Indeed hearing everyone go gaga about 'Sustainable Development' sometimes gives the same feeling!!!

"Sustainable development is like teenage sex - everybody claims they are doing it but most people aren't, and those that are, are doing it very badly.”

Prof. Shambu Prasad takes the Academic Contribution Award

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.

Suggested Viewing for Rural Manager

We realized that the important thing was not the film itself but that which the film provoked. —Fernando Solanas ("Cinema as Gun")

The purpose of nearly all films/ documentaries is to communicate. People want to communicate to an outside world with hidden portrayals and interpretations of society. There will be no solution but a simplistic view of this world through the eyes of cinema. What good is cinema if it trails behind literature? Just as in literature, as the taste has moved from fiction to nonfiction, this happens in the film as well. There is a need for an individual to engage with harder issues such as poverty, gender discrimination, sex trade, class struggle, prostitution, environmental damage, terrorism, ethnic and religious riots. We unknowingly or knowingly form opinions on them very fast. But such complex issues require the further probe to see the complete picture. A film or documentary is a naive effort to increase our knowledge base before making any judgment.

I am enlisting films and documentaries that show bewitching, haunting, anxious, and even comic portraits of our society's underground life. On one side the cinema displays the natural beauty of the society along with representing the related customs and cultures, the other side the hidden taboos and exploitative practices. What one wants to communicate and what one hopes to reach are two different sides of the same coin. I hope you will have a rational and emotional response to the section of lost, forgotten, or overshadowed experiences presented through a simple, straight-to-heart edition of cinema.

1- Movies on Business - Rocket Singh Salesman of Year, Trishul, Guru & Chak De India, Pursuit of Happiness, It’s a Wonderful Life, Thank You for Smoking, The Hudsucker Proxy, Death of a Salesman, Glengarry Glen Ross, Barbarians at the Gate, The Social Network, The Insider, The Godfather, Wall Street, 12 Angry Men, Up in the Air, Modern Times, Norma Rae, A Christmas Carol, Syriana.

2- Movies on Development - Manthan, Swades, Peepli Live, Well Done Abba, Do Bigha Zamin, Mother India, Aghaat, Gaabhricha Paus, Goshta Choti Dongraevadhi, Jhing Chik Jhing, Kanchivaram, Bawandar.

3- Good Documentaries - There's No Tomorrow; The Yes Men Fix the World; Inside Job; A Small Act; Smartest Guys in the Room; The Corporation; Food, Inc.; An Inconvenient Truth; India Untouched; Jai Bhim Comrade; Kiran Bedi: Yes Madam, Sir; Ram ke Nam; Pitr, Putr aur Dharmayuddha, Born Into Brothels; The Day My God Died; The Story of India; Final Solution; Love in India; The Slow Poisoning of India; A Narmada Diary; Satyamev Jayate(TV Series).

One may suffer from PDDD (Post Documentary Dullness Disorder). I hope you feel the films and documentaries because you will not enjoy them. These films have more roles other than eroticism and social duty. We are just given a tour of reality through them. Saying in the words of John Grierson- In the documentary, we deal with the actual, and in one sense with the real. But the really real, if I may use that phrase, is something deeper than that. The only reality which counts in the end is the interpretation that is profound.

Remember, all our lives, we have been asked to believe that "quality matters, not quantity". Yes, there is the absence of critical documentaries on the current phase of Indian society that reflect a big lapse in our higher education. Watch the films and grasp the reality of development either for people or fair market, one bite at a time - every film will tell something, you don't know ;)

Suggested Reading for Rural Manager

The philosophy of the former Nation editor Victor Navasky, “to question the conventional wisdom, to be suspicious of all orthodoxies, to provide a home for dissent and dissenters, and to be corny about it, to hold forth a vision of a better world” still holds true for times now.

We are all living in an era where raising comforts and growing economy has conditioned many individuals with good education to jerk off all political responsibilities and even basic understanding of political matters. There is rapid increase in the mindless content of entertainment, news, films and books, hence we have to seek knowledge in a very mature and intelligent manner. In the era of instant judgement, careful analysis and patience is required. By looking through the complexity enough one need to find real cause of sufferings of many.

Curiosity is the most powerful thing you own. There is a pleasure of finding things out. Starting point of any education is by giving us an understanding of our-self, our culture and our world. Our knowledge must adapt to changing times, not get buried under traditional walls of classroom teaching. I don't read journals (not even EPW) myself as even using Google smartly requires a scholarly work. But there is always an effort and guidance required for personal growth.

I am naming here few books related with the field of rural management and development. You can add your own preferences but reading books is a personal choice. There is a very thin line between creative suggestion and interference. One is always free to search and share his/her own knowledge. I will quote Aldous Huxley who put it in a more elegant way - “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

Good Management Books

01- Connect the dots by Rashmi Bansal
02- Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
03- The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker
04- Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson
05- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
06- Simply Fly – A Deccan Odyssey by Captain Gopinath
07- Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson
08- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
09- Made In Japan: Akio Morita & Sony Reissue by Akio Morita
10- Positioning : The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries, Jack Trout
11- The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
12- What Money Can't Buy The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel
13- We Are Like That Only: Understanding the Logic of Consumer India by Rama Bijapurkar
14- Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't by Jim Collins
15- Beyond the MBA Hype: A Guide to Understanding and Surviving B-Schools by Sameer Kamat
16- The Ascent Of Money : A Financial History Of The World : A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson

Good Development Books

01- I Have a Dream by Rashmi Bansal
02- Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich
03- I Too Had a Dream by Verghese Kurien
04- Small is Beautiful by E F Schumacher
05- Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen
06- Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
07- Everybody loves a Good Drought by P Sainath
08- The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry
09- We Are Poor but so Many: The Story of Self-employed Women in India by Ela R Bhatt
10- Hello Bastar: The Untold Story Of India's Maoist Movement (Paperback) by Rahul Pandita
11- Banker To The Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty by Muhammad Yunus
12- A Fistful of Rice: My Unexpected Quest to End Poverty Through Profitability by Vikram Akula
13- The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits by CK Prahalad
14- Poor Economics: Rethinking Poverty And The Ways To End It by Abhijit V. Banerjee, Esther Duflo
15- Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism by Muhammad Yunus

How much book a person can read, it can never substitute the experience part of the life. Talking with the people who are living with, not against, nature is biggest guide of a rural manager. Their wisdom and prejudices have been passed through generation of experiences. Observe them !!!

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 !”