'B-schools produce students who tend to be elitist'

I never went to B-school because B-schools were a brand new idea in the mid-1960s. Anyway, I had been to an Indian Institute of Technology, so what was this "M" word all about?

In the past 36 years, I have attended many management courses: the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad's (IIM-A's) three-tier programme for management development and Harvard Business School's (HBS's) advanced management programme. I am told that this qualifies me to be an alumnus of IIM-A as well as HBS!

I wish they would teach three subjects more rigorously than at present at B-schools. First, rural markets. Two-thirds of our people are rural, earning one-fourth of GDP.

Most management graduates belong to the urban one-third that earns three-fourths of GDP. That does not mean that managers should not have a sound understanding of agricultural marketing, rural infrastructure and economics.

Today, our management institutes produce students who tend to be elitist, living in ivory towers, unless they are given the right exposures and sensitivities. That is why the Tatas and HLL send out all their trainees for a stint in rural development.

That is why HLL insists on all trainees doing a sales stint in small markets or a factory stint in small towns. After all, these are the consumers to whom the management graduates would have to sell their soap, insurance and two-wheelers.

There are 600,000 villages in India, 90 per cent of whom travel to 2,300 towns (areas with populations of over 20,000) to buy durables. Of the one million BSNL mobile subscribers, I understand that 50 per cent are in rural India!

The second subject I wish they would teach at B-schools is managing your expectations. I have chosen not to call it a course on business ethics, though I have a component of that in mind, but embedded into a context that young minds will find interesting.

The students are bright; they come from a social structure where they have seen ethical turbulence as a part of everyday life. Merely lecturing to them about values and ethics, about Enron and Sarbanes-Oxley will not be motivating.

Getting iconic figures to share their experiences, the lessons they have learnt from failure and success, the value of good health and persistence "" all these have a great value to these young minds.

If they can leave the campus with the message that happiness is not a goal to be achieved, but a companion for the journey, then a great lesson of life would have been imparted.

The constant gripe from corporations is that students come to work with a tool kit of skills but with inadequate mental preparedness.

The course I am advocating is meant to answer that issue. The All India Management Association is attempting to fill this gap through a novel programme called "shaping young minds programme".

The third subject is emotional intelligence. The world does not work because everybody does logical things or because it is populated by intelligent people.

Solutions to social and organisational problems often lie in people's hearts and their emotions rather than in their minds. This should be revealed through a programme on the campus: perhaps it is already done, but more needs to be done.

Acharya Vinobha Bhave used to talk to hundreds of landowners during his bhoodaan movement. His younger followers would exhort him to "display stronger leadership" in the attempts to get land donations.

He would counter with: "Flow like a river, getting around obstacles in a zig-zag path. Every landowner has a high wall of ego around him. I do not try to climb the wall. Rather I will walk around the wall to find the small opening which may lead to his heart."

It is worthwhile to inculcate this type of problem-solving attitude also to management students.

In closing, let me say this: our engineering colleges and management institutes are great gifts to the nation. Our nation's market share in the global production of engineers and management graduates is 25 to 30 per cent. The quality of this output is highly variable. My suggestions are intended to improve that quality.

(R Gopalakrishnan is the executive director, Tata Sons. These are his personal views)