Thursday, December 30, 2010

IRMA Barefoot Managers

Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) (founded 1979) is an autonomous institution located at Anand in Gujarat, India with the mandate of contributing to the professional management of rural organisations.

The focus of IRMA has been on strengthening the management capacities in organizations which are controlled by users of their services rather than by capital suppliers. It is this commitment which defines IRMA and gives it the identity unique among the management institutes.

Documentary film about IRMA, Course, Career path featuring some of the alumni working in the Development sector. Dr Kurien, the founding chairman of IRMA shares his vision for setting up the institute.

Those who are unable to watch the video can see @ Yahoo! Video. IRMA Barefoot Managers
I have applied for Post-Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) programme. I have qualified into the written examination of this exam; GD-PI will be happening soon and final results will be declared till end of March 2011.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Perfect is The Enemy of The Necessary

Race vs. Class: The Future of Affirmative Action: Miller Center of Public Affairs.The debate has obvious parallels with the caste vs. class reservations :-



There may be a perfect way for solving all the problems. But there may be problem of implementation at the ground level. This should not stop us from doing what we are capable of in the required direction. Hence, despite of all merit talk, I prefer reservations and empowerment of class, caste or gender in our society. And make a statement that Perfect is the enemy of the Necessary.

Sustainable Development :

Engineering for sustainable development means providing for current human needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.The three components of sustainable development which are environmental responsibility, economic return (wealth creation), and social development.

Amartya Sen has talked of freedom as development . This means not just more consumption but more voice, access to accountability , access to influential networks and livelihood choice, access to good governance, and physical security. As math education is reduced to the calculation, the talk of development is reduced with data and statistics.

As Pakistan’s finance minister in the 1960s,a distinguished economist, Mahbub-ul-Haq was able to generate a growth rate of seven per cent. “And still people voted us out,” he acknowledged.  “It was a rude awakening for me. I then realized that a high economic rate of growth is no indicator of human development.” Mahbub-ul-Haq then gave me the memorable gem: “We were wrongly advised that we should take care of GDP and it will automatically take care of poverty. This is not correct. We need to take care of poverty and it will automatically take care of economic growth”.

The key issues of research in area of Human and Economic development include size, scope, ownership, technology, and management from the sustainability perspective. The domain is so large that it can draw concepts from anthropology, sociology, economics, ecology, public policy,  public administration, corporate social responsibility, law and governance, ethics, entrepreneurship, gender studies, and so on, necessitating a multi-disciplinary standpoint.

Individualism

Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so independence and self-reliance.

Introspection is only way of exploring subjective experience depends largely upon the extraordinarily creative interplay between seeing and thinking. And no excellence is possible with a degree of self-doubt. The more people talk about these uncomfortable issues, the more comfortable you will get with being open about what is happening to you.

The correct definition of Knowledge: Developing a coherent body of ideas and creatively reaching out to the unknown with the power of critical and scientific thinking. That can be done in education sector. There is a dire need to promote technical and social innovations in all fields of life. That comes when the feeling of social, cultural and religious identity lapses to give rise to individuality.

Promotion for working at grass root level for development can be given through inclusive education. The mindset of exclusivity is antithetical to education in a democracy. One more matter to be careful of is 'Choice'. Often 'more' is not always better, particularly when we abdicate our power to filter and choose.

In the US, volunteerism is highest in high-tax Massachusetts, and lowest in low-tax Mississippi. In Europe, volunteerism is highest in high-tax Sweden, and lowest in low-tax Eastern European nations.It seems that a thriving state stimulates a thriving volunteering sector – and a shrunken, passive state encourages passivity in the population.

Humans are versatile and multidimensional in nature. That has been proven with the development of various companies. Most of our management rituals were designed (a very long time ago) to promote discipline, control, alignment and predictability—an uni- dimensional model of growth. Yet, new companies having exponential growth in little time like Google, Amazon and Apple have been built around principles like freedom, meritocracy, transparency and experimentation. They are so endlessly inventive and strategically flexible because they provide space and time to each individual.

Anarchism works in the creative destruction of the old institutes. There will always be people giving a voice to the voiceless. An anarchist is an individual with the voices of conscience. To categories dissenters as enemy of state/institutes will be an act of injustice.

Self-organization is the process where a structure or pattern appears in a system without a central authority or external element imposing it through planning. The evolution of life on Earth, language, and a free market economy have all been proposed as examples of systems which evolved through spontaneous order. The basic unit is given freedom to grow. Freedom is prerequisite for spontaneous order to take place, rather than liberty being the result of spontaneous order.

India is a divided nation in which the governors and the governed do not share a unifying worldview. While Western liberal democracies are focused on the rights of the individual, India is more concerned with the rights of groups. The politicians and extremists thrive in order to perpetuate conflict between people with the one-dimensional narratives of the problem. That leads us to the path of police state. Only rebels, not reformers are born in such atmosphere of suppression.

Still, progress of an individual without social sustainability lacks farsightedness and vision.An individual should aspire for coherence and relevance for better future of whole environment. Non-sustainable development decimates the environment, the burden of which falls on the poor and unprivileged.