It's a difficult task at a time when management graduates look only at the pay packet
While thousands of management graduates are churned out yearly, many taking seven-figure annual pay packages in multi-national companies, there is a dearth of professionals addressing logistical and marketing concerns of the rural population. And for many educators, this gap is directly linked to the fact that MBA education is driven by salaries.
Currently, most rural entrepreneurship programmes are funded and run by the State and Central Government. Sanjeevani, an entrepreneurial and innovation programme, launched by the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj department, is one such example. The Central Government scheme, which apart from imparting industry skills to rural youth, will also aid rural entrepreneurship by mobilising capital. The pilot project now covers 20 taluks in Belgaum, Dharwad, Gulbarga, Mysore and Tumkur districts and would soon be implemented across the State.
Similarly, the Centre for Entrepreneurship Development of Karnataka (CEDOK), which is aided by the Government, conducts entrepreneurship and managerial training to those subsisting on rural industries. However, as Maltesh Jeevannavar, Director of the CEDOK, puts it, the programmes are meant only to motivate the rural entrepreneur, while leaving it to them to figure out logistics and marketing.
“What a rural entrepreneur produces should be lifted, and the product marketed well. For this, some managerial skill is required,” said B. Vijaya, Professor, Department of Post-Graduate Studies and Research in Commerce, Gulbarga University.
However, from the private MBA education point of view, rural management is limited to short projects or electives in the syllabus, with very few students ending up in the hinterland to bolster the entrepreneurship foundation there.
“Only when MBA graduates have support or funding can they be encouraged to work in rural areas. With high pay packages in corporate companies, there is nothing to attract the graduate to the villages,” said Mr. Vijaya. He suggests that if rural management is seen as social responsibility, there may be a higher participation of MBA graduates in the rural sector.
Sanjay Padodi, a Board of Governor of the Institute of Finance and International Management (IFIM), Bangalore, concurred: “Anything with the tag ‘rural' doesn't command the same interest as consulting or marketing with an MNC, and in fact acts as a deterrent for aspiring candidates. Unfortunately, MBA education is driven by salaries, and students look at the prospective salary of campus placements before joining a college.”
To reverse this, he said, it was up to the Government to introduce special schemes for MBA graduates to allow their participation in healthcare, government agricultural storage houses, among others.
Like in most MBA colleges, rural management and rural entrepreneurship in IFIM is taught as an elective; and often, students are encouraged to do their management projects using rural case studies – which are hawked as an opportunity to learn rural marketing demographics.
However, the social impact of short-term projects is limited, said Mr. Jeevannavar. “Rural management cannot really work part-wise or piece-wise. Learning about the marketing, logistics in rural places, and overcoming problems like power supply take a long time,” he said.
Keywords: MBA education, rural marketting
Rural economy accounts for over 60% of India’s labor force and is an
important contributor to the GDP. Despite being the very base of
India’s economy, the rural areas, however, face a huge development
challenge. So there is a need for more people to get into MBA in rural
management as large-scale investments are needed to modernize
agricultural practices, improve extension services, and upgrade
physical infrastructure, education and healthcare. The basic
objectives if one works in a rural area is the upliftment of the rural
working and living lifestyle. This is devotion and needs lots of
patience. The advantage to work in a village or in a rural area is the
pollution free environment. Secondly, the hygienic food and pure water
would add more to the health of the person. The other advantage is the
no-politician of work force which would help one work freely.
Institutions like IRM (JAIPUR), Xavier Institute of Management
(BHUBANESHWAR), MYRA (MYSORE), provide quality education in rural m
Globalization and liberalization have accelerated the pace of
transformation, often to complex levels. The agricultural sector
employs 70 per cent of the national workforce, contributes a handsome
23 per cent to the GDP, and is no longer regarded to be the poor
cousin in India's growth equation. It has now opened the floodgates of
opportunity for those interested in making careers in this field. If
experts are to be believed, agriculture may actually turn out to be
the most under-appreciated driver of India's structural growth
acceleration over the coming decade. Factors that can be attributed to
this recent upsurge are increasing export potential and rapidly
growing domestic demand fuelled by the booming retail market. Hence,
now is the time that students are finding good future opportunities in
rural management for their MBA specialization.
Going by the current global scenarios, In this globalized economy only
they are going to survive at last who will offer the best product and
great offers, hence here arise a need where one must realize that only
major towns or well connected place can't give you all you want but we
need to have contribution of those small and rural areas also which are
potentially challenging but lack somewhere in amenities. Hence, working
at the ground level has become even more crucial now.
This is really disappointing that management graduate is totally driven by fat salary, but that is why they pay high fees in prominent institution. Another deterring factor for joining rural management is that if someone enters into this field the carrier growth rate is less comparative to consultancy in a MNC.
so this problem can be best addressed by opening new opportunity and investing into rural management so that it can attract brain.
if MBA students refrain from entering into rural management sector due
to lesser salary being provided, then steps should be taken to attract
the students towards this sector.A student works hard to enter into a
reputed MBA college and then pays a huge amount to complete the study.
Obviously then, he /she would be eager to be paid highly. So, attractive
salaries should be provided to the MBA students in this sector to avoid
most of them from entering into the multinational companies.
An MBA grad's worth is viewed not in terms of output to society or contributions to
knowledge, but by numbers (salary, entrance exam scores, ranking). The
tremendous BUSINESS opportunities in Rural Markets will not be seized by Indian
MBA graduates, which is quite depressing. It's foreign universities with international development programmes that will bring awareness to the economic/societal growth opportunites (College of Agriculture and Life Science, Cornell University, Arizona State University, Harvard's Kennedy School, York University, etc). Funding from foreign governments and foundations (Gates, Clinton, Fulbright) will help as well. I'm confident that the "fortune at the bottom of the pyramid" will be dug up by our children - but it will take time for the paradigm shift to occur.
The problem is that we teach our MBA students in English and give them cases and examples of multinational corporations so they do not want to work in rural areas. I think management education must be bilingual- in both English and in the local language (50:50 classes) and we must use local cases. Then, our MBA students will not think of only large corporates as the place to work.
Initial package for sectoral management graduates who want to work in
rural areas is very less. After spending lakhs on getting management
degree/diploma,one obviously expects good income package
first.So,Maslow's Need Hierarchy Theory holds true for most of
management personnel.Working in rural areas should be lucrative by
offering good salary packages to reduce brain drain from rural-urban
area.
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