Mr. Sibal’s Speech at IMT-H Inauguration

The HRD and Communication & IT Minister, Kapil Sibal inaugurated the IMT Hyderabad campus on 2nd July 2011. On this occasion, Mr. Sibal said that it is time to start making use of the management education system for resolving the common man’s problems.

Here are some excerpts from his speech:
On the occasion of inauguration of this Institute of Management Technology, I am given to understand by President Kamal Nath (IMT Group), that this is the third institute of its kind in India. One is in Ghazaibad, the other is in Nagpur and the third one is in Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad. I am also made to understand that one of the institutes is also in Dubai and the director of that institute is here. This gives you a clear indication to where education is moving in this country.

It is not only investment in education in India but we are also moving outwards. We are also investing outside the country to take the quality of our education outside and to tell the world that this is only the first step forward, soon we will be exporting education to the rest of the world.

When I think about management, I think about the importance of management in everyday life. We all, on a daily basis have to manage our homes. There are management skills required for that. We have to manage our day, the 12 hour day, 14 hour day or the 18 hour day. Anybody who manages his day better is always ahead of others. We manage our localities where we live; we manage the talks, the Panchayats and the Gram Sabhas. This requires a lot of management skills. We manage our states and I am sure the resolution of issues that emerged recently will be a management study in the years to come in Andhra Pradesh.

Management is at the heart of everyday life and yet we give such little importance to management. So, I think the more institutes of management we setup to look at the diverse problems that we face in the context for diversity of our country, the more solutions we will have for our people. At the moment our management schools are centred around getting placements in big firms for fat salaries. And this is really a tragedy because all children who come to the management schools of our country are looking at the end of the one year course and two year course to get placement in some profitable enterprise of the country. The quality of the institution and the excellence of the institution depends upon the quality of the job that you will get at the end of one or two years.

This is the ‘greed is good’ perspective that we have developed in management institutes throughout the world and throughout the country. And I think this is a wrong way of looking at management because management is much more then getting a fat salary in a company which gives you a lot of perks so that you can manage your family. That is not what management is all about.

And it is about time the nature of management instruction and the nature of management education has to change. How do you manage your schools? There are huge problems in that context. How do you manage the 95 lakh teachers that you have in those schools? How do you manage recruitment of those teachers? How do you manage a school administration? How do you make sure and how do you manage the children in the localities to actually go to schools? How do you make the school the centre of socio economic activity that leads to the betterment of the society? I don’t think that there are any courses taught in India in any management schools that look at the issue of education as a management issue.

That is why I said that you contrast it with placements and say that you can produce investment bankers for the western world but it’s time for us to produce the bankers for India that will increase India’s wealth. That will bring solution on the table for India’s problems and that is the kind of change that we need to bring in management schools.

Take for example health. Health is a big issue in India. Are there any courses in management institutes that teach solutions for health care or solutions for the elderly? We talked about poverty. How do you manage poverty? We have talked about inclusive growth but have we found solutions for managing poverty? Look at the children in urban areas; look at the families in urban areas who live in slums. They have no access to water; they have no access to sanitation. Have you ever imagined how they manage their lives? Has any case study been done with reference to slums? With reference to the localities and the people who are living in those slums without any access to basic necessities of life. How do they manage their lives? I’m sure there has been no study like that.

Can we in the management system bring about a change of mindset and look at management solutions that actually impact and affect the ordinary man on the street. So from today, we must start thinking through the management education system, providing management solutions to the common man. And unless we move forward in that direction, the kind of wealth that we hope to create through management schools will not be created for the good of the nation.

Everybody tells me that when they talk about education, the ministers are in a hurry, but I can tell you that if there is any minister in the cabinet in India who is in hurry, he is Mr. Kamal Nath. Because any ministry he goes to, he wants to solve problems. And now that he is the president of this Institute of Management Technology, I am sure that he will look at some of the issues that I have placed before him to change the nature of this course of management in this country.

I was at the ISB the other day, and I said the same thing to them. I said that when I look at your syllabi and I look at your courses, all your courses are directed towards the kind of solution that the western world wants from us, but it’s time for the western world to start looking at us for solutions that we want for ourselves. And remember, as Kamal and Kiran said, the centre of gravity is shifting to Asia. Solutions have to be found in Asia and the solutions have to be found by Asians for Asia. And when it has the solutions for Asia, it will provide the solutions for the world because the world will be in Asia. This is what we need to do.

We need a change of the social contract. The employee-employer relationship that exists today will change. The nature of that relationship will change in the years to come. The needs of the employers are different. The needs of the employees are different. The relationship between the worker and the workplace will change. The nature of the worker is different; the nature of the workplace is different. The relationship between colleagues will change and this will be the new social contract that we will have to address ourselves in the years to come. Management in education, especially business education is static. It is a dynamic process and must change with the times.

The other thing that I want to mention is that the real capital in the world is not the financial capital and this is something that the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh mentioned. It is a really talented human capital that will provide the impetus for the economies to grow. Talented human capital will come about only when there is quality education in this country.

Look at how the change took place in this country just after the beginning of the 21st century. This was because many of the people in this part of the country, from Andhra in particular were residing in Silicon Valley and when they had made millions of dollars, they realized that it was time to pay back. They came back to Andhra Pradesh and started not just institutions but entrepreneurships and industries and this was the first step towards India becoming a modern state. Therefore I thank people in Andhra for having led and provided the leadership for taking India forward.

When I was driving here on this beautiful road, I was looking at the greenery around and I realized how prescient you are. You wanted to make Andhra a hub of education in India. I have seen many of the biotechnology institutes in this part of the state and how they are world class and I am sure this virgin land will be the centre of knowledge in the coming 15 to 20 years and there will be a cluster of institutions here which will interact with each other. These institutions will bring about a kind of multi disciplinary knowledge that is required to solve the problems of India.