Anna Hazare was the poster boy all of last week, hijacking almost every bit of newspaper space and television time. And many aam admi tried to, did, or at least appeared to be wanting to do something to feel akin to the movement. Some b-school drills in endorsing the cause also made news. While some students let go of meals to feel close to the ‘fasting’ bit, others initiated online petitions. Some corporate types also kicked their jobs to join the new-age icon (more on this below*).
But there was a little of everything else that also grabbed eyeballs last week. The funniest among them was the band of ministers from the Kerala government, who along with their chief minister Oommen Chandy took a business class at Indian Institute of Kozhikode (IIMK). While the actual motive of the class was to hear a talk on Self-Governance for High Performance Leadership by IIMK’s director Debhashis Chatterjee, the ministers, it is reported, had a bit of a problem ‘taking orders and being disciplined.’ http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels/cities/kochi/big-boys-kerala-back-school-896. And while going to class, the ministers also got some ground-level learning. The potholed-ridden road from Thrissur to Kozhikode took the babus all of four hours when its is just a 120-kilometre stretch – the ride possibly sent home a good lesson since every minister knows that a Dubai-Kochi flight, in fact, takes only a little over three hours.
Pic: Bijoy Mohan
Of course, the biggest b-school news of the week was the Common Admission Test (CAT) voucher sale and registration which began from Wednesday (August 17). PaGaLGuY was on the field monitoring the queues and also registered online to get a first person account (read earlier posts this week). The number of traditional CAT enthusiasts has dwindled. In fact, when PaGaLGuY visited some of the AXIS Bank branches the next day, (once during the morning) some had just no takers, while others had two people. Other media covered the first day as well – after all CAT is the biggest (perceived) high for b-school aspirants in India. A good CAT score hopefully leads to an admission in any of the Indian Institutes of Management – be it Raipur, Ranchi, Rohtak, Shillong, Kozhikode, Tiruchirappalli, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Indore, Kashipur, Lucknow or Udaipur. That is of course if ‘normalisation’ does not come your way and ‘psychometric’ evaluation does not gobble up your paper. http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-educationplus/article2357641.ece
A news that tried hard to keep reader interest and managed too, to an extent was that of a single admission test for all MBA aspirants from 2013 onwards. All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) chairman SS Mantha proudly declared that from 2013 there would just one admission test ( C-MAT) for all b-school. The news got all AICTE-affiliated schools up in arms considering that a court battle on the very issue of admission tests is still ranging on in the Supreme Court. No media tried to confirm the news either from the HRD ministry or whether a common test was plausible given the legal wrangle in which the issue is. B-schools even decided to go to court against Mantha’s statement. http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-08-17/india/29896279_1_entrance-exam-lakh-students-aicte.
Thankfully, a statement by the Human Resources and Development (HRD) ministry, two days later, put the hullaballoo to rest. The statement said that ‘while it is ideal to have a unified admission test for admission to higher education for all students, it is a great challenge, considering the huge diversity of education systems in the country. ….. Compelling the state owned and controlled and privately owned institutions is ruled out in view of federal nature of our polity and due to the fact that education is in the Concurrent List of the Constitution. It is impossible to mandate the states and colleges to adopt such a uniform system…’ We tried to get in touch with Mantha for a clarification, none came but we will keep trying. For now, let’s just believe what the HRD ministry says.
Pic: Ramesh Lalwani
*Just so that the biggest news of the day gets its due, there were many Young Turks who quit their jobs, adorned the Gandhi topi and joined the Anna Hazare movement. One such was Shaleen Mitra (26) an MBA, who took to travelling into the country’s hinterland explaining Anna’s cause to the masses. Having travelled extensively while a senior executive in the company, Shaleen knew the gullies in Haryana, UP, Delhi and hence had a good grip of his task. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/How-GenNext-drives-home-message/articleshow/9668858.cms
Others showed their support too. While about 1,000 students of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore skipped a meal and resolved to stage sit-in demonstrations everyday, students from IIM Ahmedabad and some of the Indian Institutes of Technology in Gujarat, Assam and Hyderabad decided to go the ‘online petition’ way. This apart, the Teachers’ Union of Lucknow University and degree colleges in Uttar Pradesh, who announced a mass casual leave last week to support the case.http://www.pakistannews24.com/2011/08/17/support-for-anna-hazare-at-iim-iit-campuses/
On the international front, the news that really caught the eye was Harvard Business School all gearing to witness the highest number of women students in its 2013 batch. Not too big an achievement considering that women make up 45 percent of the incoming class at Wharton. And London Business School has categorically stated that it will target female enrolment figures of at least 30 percent in its MBA program going forward from this month’s intake. To know more about the skyward flight of women in b-schools abroad, read http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/MBA-admissions-strictly-business/2011/08/19/more-women-head-to-school-for-mbas
Indian b-schools, from IIMK to Indian School of Business and others have been also doing their bit to get in more women students. But none of them want “more women at the cost of merit,” which also And while on women, here is an interesting bit of news from IIMB. It has announced a 40-day crash course which will coach women to become astute politicians. Sonia Gandhi, Mamta Bannerjee and Jayalalitha are some inspiration. http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_exclusive-iim-b-creates-special-course-for-women-politicians_1577709
Pic: Patricia Drury
And it’s going to be a sweet September for Harvard, when it will launch its new entrepreneurship course, i-lab. Harvard Business School (HBS) Dean Nitin Nohria sees the Harvard Innovation Lab as a potentially quite distinctive resource in the innovation space. i-lab will open its doors to students, faculty and alumni of the entire university to leverage Harvards people and resources in new and exciting ways.” Read more: http://business.in.com/article/briefing/now-learn-entrepreneurship-at-harvard/27712/1#ixzz1VY53OHBS