Aloof From The Light

Of course, the course’s withdrawal led to lively discussion and debate between students on campus, alumni, and even some faculty members. There were some who felt this could be just another example of how alienated business schools are from the country’s social realities. And how, with a single-minded focus on training executives to be in sync with the corporate mantra of maximising growth and profits, B-school graduates are becoming immune to larger social responsibilities.

Most students at B-schools do come from middle-class backgrounds, where growth and reforms are seen as the only efficient poverty busters. This tends to add to the sense of social disengagement on campuses. So while efficiency gets most of the attention, equity gets little. "B-schools reinforce that to a certain degree," says Krishna Chepuri, a former IIM-A student who interned with the CPI(M) last year. "Most students therefore feel that bringing efficiency and equity together is not their job." IIM-A professor Anil Gupta adds, "At that age, one would expect these students to have a certain idealism. But whatever little that exists is tempered by the lack of widespread engagement that exists on campuses."

Managing land acquisitions and the environment, for example, are seen by most students as more annoyance and expense than responsibility. That’s a pity, because businesses have to willy-nilly deal with such issues that have widespread social ramifications. Looking at the intense opposition from local stakeholders to the numerous SEZs being planned, or the environmental opposition to large projects, one would have thought B-schools would sensitise future managers to these prickly matters.

Particularly as it’s quite clear that a lack of socio-political engagement will only exacerbate the friction between businesses’ interests and that of society. "Just knowing how to deal with banks and financiers is not going to help in the different times we live in," says Rajesh Tandon, a former IIM-A student and president of grassroots organisation Society for Participatory Research in Asia. "MBAs must be aware of how municipalities, panchayats and zilla parishads function. If not, they would be leaving out a society that is becoming increasingly articulate and knowledgeable."

"Most students who come to business schools do so with a one-point goal of getting a good salary. They seem to be increasingly less informed about the problems our country faces and less concerned about the larger humane role that businesses can play," adds Jayanta Bandyopadhyay, professor at IIM Calcutta’s Centre for Development and Environmental Policy. "It seems educational institutions are creating intellectual marginals at the core of our metropolises," he observes.

The B-schools, unfortunately, couldn’t care less. Most MBA graduates are lapped up with high salary packages by firms hungry for fresh talent. In that sense, there’s no market-driven push to incorporate courses of greater social relevance. And this perpetuates business that is isolated from the rest of society. Says Santosh Desai, managing director of Future Brands and IIM-A alumnus, "That link between society and business is also thereby not factored into business school education. It is largely focused on the single-minded pursuit of profit maximisation and not what the community gets from businesses." That leads to the feeling that the interests of society are something that needs to be ‘managed’. "Barring a few exceptions, corporate social responsibility (CSR) too is an option that is made keeping in mind the returns one expects," Desai adds.

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It’s not that students don’t think about social issues. But a sense of insularity is perpetuated among them. "Being socially responsible is not much of a career path for our students as employers do not look at such issues sensitively," IIM-A’s Gupta points out. Adds Ajit Rangnekar, deputy dean of Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business, "This generation wants a clear conscience, but practically it is still a challenge to bind social and business interests."

The problem intensifies when B-schools end up endorsing the isolation model for large, professionally managed corporations. "The notion that businesses are isolable from society’s rules and conventions then comes with added and intellectual legitimacy," says Desai. That’s why most B-schools end up studying successful business models in detail but either shy away from or gloss over questions of social relevance, like how to ensure equitable development.

This gap has been institutionalised to the extent that the identity of IIMs as centres of management has been completely overwhelmed by their B-school identities. "That they are also centres of management, whether in the government, private or NGO sector, has not been adequately publicised," says Bandyopadhyay. This also implies that MBA students do not benefit from some of the cutting-edge work these centres do in their respective fields. "There would be few MBA students who would opt for a course on environment simply on the basis of their conscience," he adds.

But change may be in the offing as more and more students demand a more realistic, engaged curriculum and as businesses realise they cannot skirt social aspects of their work. IIM Lucknow, for one, adopted a village in 2006 and enabled its students to engage in developmental work there, and some business schools are beginning to rework their courses to accommodate social changes. Says Srijan Pal, general secretary of the IIM-A student’s council, "There is a lot of talk of profits and growth but very little discussion of where those profits are going or what that growth is resulting in. A little insight into that would help and give business schools a broader sense of society." That said, for all the efforts to rectify this situation at some B-schools, they are still seen as mere tokenisms given the challenges in hand.

Even the IITs boldly took social engagement a step further in October 2007 when several members of the faculty and students called for a ban on Dow Chemicals, which now owns the infamous Union Carbide responsible for the Bhopal gas tragedy. Irrespective of the positions MBA students may adopt on crucial matters like these, they ought to be made aware of the larger social impact their work ends up having. Would this be too much to expect from India’s business schools?