दृष्टिकोण – Indra's Viewpoint

It was Sunday, October 19. Alpana and Rakesh had invited us to join them in a carnival with their kids. Montair Elementary School, the public school of Keshav and Anvita in San Ramon had organized it for fund raising as mission. Rakesh said, ‘a middle class Americans can’t afford private school in US’. For those in India whose children are in US keep on boasting about their salaries in US converted in Indian currency. But that fat salaries can’t buy a good school for their own children. Is it not surprising? As I understand, almost all young parents in Noida must be sending their children in private schools. Every sector of Noida is having a good private school. It is unlikely that anyone except from the very menial workers such as maids and cart pullers send one’s child in government schools.

The elementary school in US covers KG to class V. Rakesh and Alpana took us through the carnival, that didn’t have anything unusual. However, the book fair was a unique idea. There was a section where a parent could buy the books for the class teachers of their kids. Moreover, the fair makes it easy for the children to get exposed, attracted and interested in books. The school was closed. But I could see some part of school. The creativity center, science centre, and the beds for plantation made me feel happy and excited. Even in this totally urban population, the school tries to make the kids plant some flowers or teach its need. The science centre imparts basic science knowledge through models and easy to carry out experiments. The creativity centre provides the means to find out the special interest in the pupils. I wish India could emulate the concept of creativity centers in every school. I don’t think it means a lot of investment. The education must provide facilities to identify and further the latent creativity in every student. I could find the website of the school that provides interesting information.

All the while I was thinking about the public schools in India. Yamuna was associated with one in our own sector that is maintained by Noida Authority. I can’t draw any comparison. Media of both the countries express concerns about the poor rather miserably poor condition of government schools. In US, parents keep a watch of the locality with better public schools based on ratings that are easily available through Internet and shift. Perhaps, in India too, a system of rating system of all the schools by an independent authority must start to help the parents.

Rakesh feels the American system is pretty good. In a chapter on American Power in ‘The Post-American World’, Fareed Zakaria writes, ‘it (American education system) is much better at developing the critical faculties of mind, which is what you need to succeed in life. Other educational systems teach you to take tests; the American system teaches you to think. It is surely this quality that goes some way in explaining why America produces so many entrepreneurs, inventors, and risk takers. It’s America, not Japan that produces dozens of Nobel Prize winners.” US certainly gives a lot of importance to education.US is going to invest $18 billion to overhaul of the nation’s public education system over the next few years. It was clear during the campaign and even now. We are happy. We can dream a better future of our grand children, who are all American citizens by birth.

RC Bharagava has recently made certain very relevant remarks about what and how IIMs are manufacturing management graduates. IIMs attract the best brains of India that include engineers, doctors, accountants, arts, science, and commerce graduates and even some from those selected in administrative services. Even hordes of IITians after getting the specialized training and knowledge of engineering join IIMs. Unfortunately, most of the students are without any work experiences. I am one of the many who disapprove this.

I have written many times about it. I earnestly appeal the industrial bodies such as CII, FICII and others to discourage this practice. It results in the diversion of the best lot to grow as generalists rather than as expert professionals such as engineers, architects and doctors.

RCBhargava was the CEO of Maruti Ltd. And as it seems, he is still the chairman of Maruti Suzuki, though it has become a Japanese company after it bought the majority of the share from the Indian government. He has a very strong and genuine concern and suggests that the IIMs must create and use Indian case studies instead of taking them from foreign universities such as Harvard. Interestingly, Mr. Bharagava heads a recent IIM Review Committee set up by the Centre. His viewpoints are pertinent: “India is a big enough country. So why are we not creating material out of the Indian experience? If there are no sufficient Indian case studies, how do you teach and create managers who are relevant to our business context?”

According to him, not a single “really good” case study of even Maruti had emanated from the IIMs. “Somebody has done a little bit here and somebody a little bit there. That’s all.” It is strange, as we keep on hearing Harvard using Indian Railways, Mumbai Dabbawallas, FabIndia, and ITC’s e-Choupal for its case studies. Are the teachers in the management schools negligent or complacent? Remunerations, some say, are poor. But can that be the reason when one selects teaching as profession?

According to Mr.. Bharagava, Management teachers are having so strong an obsession for teaching western business models in B-schools that nobody even mentions, let alone teaches a course, about Japanese management practices. “Students aren’t really told how the Japanese built up their industry after the war and the management systems developed by their firms.” Who can deny the mastery of Japanese of manufacturing management? It is the Japanese who produce better than six-sigma quality standard without following that practice. Surprisingly, the whole of West and US has started learning and following Japanese management system. Indian industry has got the maximum benefit out of it with many Deming Prizes with it. Only when the West adopts the Japanese management systems, some of it comes back to the teachers of IIMs. Tata Motors and Ratan Tata’s Nano can get globally accepted, but IIMs will not consider that a subject of case study to teach innovation in it courses.

The IIMs are not being able to attract good faculty, particularly in functional areas such as finance, marketing, organizational behaviour and strategy. Though research and creating knowledge was one of the missions of IIMs apart from running post-graduate management programmes, it hardly does any significant research. Media hardly covers IIMs but for the admission and placement details with spicy reports. People at large in India might have heard of CK Prahalad, Tarun Khanna and so many other management gurus of Indian origin who are reputed management thinkers in US. But hardly any of the professors of IIMs have published any books that are as popular as those by them.

IIMs produce very few PhDs and very few students find it attractive to come back as faculty. To Mr. Bharagava, Brand IIM has probably more to do with the quality of the students who enter through a ruthless process of selection rather than because of the contribution of teachers.