[Assam] Assam:FROM INDIA BUSINESS SCHOOLS TO TOP OF WORLD’S BOARDROOMS

[BBaruah at aol.com]

This morning I was very much heartened to read in Assam  Tribune that one 
Naimur Rahman from Milanpur, Guwahati, is the  Project Manager, Commonwealth 
Connects,  in the field of information and communication technology (ICT) of the  
Commonwealth. He is the son of Sabibur Rahman, a retired PWD Chief Engineer of 
 Assam. Then I read in The International Herald Tribune the news with the  he
adline above, the text below (accompanying photograph dropped). 
In spite of desi  democracy, wanton lack of accountability, falling of 
academic standards, and  what not,  the surprising thing  about  India is that her 
sons are  now ready to play a bigger role in the rest of the world. 
Bhuban 
By Mary Habe Credeur and Ashok  Bhattacharjee
ATLANTA: When Rajat Gupta could not find a decent  job in India after earning 
a degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian  Institute of Technology 
in Delhi in 1971, he did what many of his compatriots  did. 
He moved to the United  States. He attended Harvard Business School, then 
landed a job at the New York  office of McKinsey in 1973. Twenty-one years later, 
in 1994, Gupta, 57, became  the first foreign-born chief executive of the 
consulting firm. 
As Gupta’s rise  illustrates, PepsiCo, which last week named Indra Nooyi as 
its next chief  executive, was not the first global corporation to recognize 
the calibre of  executive talent from India. The annual reports of many large 
companies show  Indians are landing big jobs. And like Gupta and Nooyi, most are 
products of an  investment in higher education the country made more than 40 
years  ago. 
“There is a huge demand for Indian executives,”  said Rana Talwar, the 
former chief executive of Standard Chartered in London who  runs Sabre Capital, a 
buyout firm. “The quality of the education is very good.  And Indians can adapt 
to any environment. When we grew up, we got used to  adverse conditions.” 
Those coming of age in  the executive suite often were educated at one of two 
institutions founded in  the 1950s and 1960s:IIT or the Indian Institute of 
Management. Created after  India achieved independence from Britain in 1947, 
they were designed to train  leaders for India’s postwar industrial development. 
They did, but not only  for India. Arun Sarin, chief executive of Vodafone 
Group in Newbury, England,  graduated from IIT Kharagpur. So did Ajit Jain, a 
potential successor to Warren  Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway in Omaha, Nebraska. 
Nooyi, 50, earned her degree  at IIM in Calcutta. 
At least eight of the  500 biggest companies in the world are headed by 
Indians. Lakshmi Mittal,  Chairman of Mittal Steel, based in Rotterdam, runs the 
world’s largest steel  maker; Mukesh Ambani is chief executive of Reliance 
Industries, the largest  nonstate company in India; and Ramani Ayer is chief 
executive of Hartford  Financial Services Group, based in Haratford, Connecticut. 
Part of what makes  Indian graduates desirable is their willingness to move 
for a job, said Ajay  Banga, chief executive of Citigroup’s $18.3 billion 
Global Consumer Group  International in New York. Banga should know. He has 
relocated 10 times in 25  years. Banga’s first job was with Nestlé in Delhi 1981, 
which moved to Calcutta  and Mumbai. He returned to Delhi to work for PepsiCo in 
1995, then went to  Madras when he was hired by Citigroup in 1996. 
Three months later,  the bank offered him a senior marketing position in 
London. “My boss said ‘Ajay,  you’ve got aspirations beyond what you’re doing. 
Come to Lonondon and be the  marketing head,’” Banga said. “If I had stayed in 
India, I would have been lucky  to just become the marketing director of some 
company there.” 
Nooyi’s older sister,  Chandrika, paved the way for her to leave India, 
moving to Beirut with Citibank  shortly after graduating from IIM in Ahmedabad. 
Nooyi left next, followed by her  younger brother, Narayanan, who studied at Yale 
in 1981 when he was 17, Nooyi’s  mother, Shantha Krishnamoorthy, said. 
“There was a lot of  opposition at home from the elders to letting Chandrika 
go to Beirut the,”  Krishnamoorthy said during an interview from Madras. 
“I would console my  mother by saying that “The candle has to melt to let 
the light shine,’” she  said. She told her mother to think of her “as the 
candle. Somone has to make a  sacrifice if the children are to do well.” 
The attitude  complements the rigorous education, much of it 
American-inspired, at the ITT and  IIM schools. One in 50 applicants to the IIT shools is 
accepted, and at the IIM  management college in Ahmedabad, the rate is one in 532, 
according to the  Economist Intelligence Unit rankings. At the Stanford 
Graduate School of  Business, one in 13 is  accepted. 
Even with the  education, staying in India would have meant working for the 
government or a  private company making the equivalent of $60 or $70 a month, 
said Vinod Gupta,  who went to University of Nebraska after graduating from IIT 
Kharagpur in  1967. 
Gupta, no relation to  McKinsey’s Rajat Gupta, founded InfoUSA in 1971 after 
his job was eliminated at  a mobile-home manufacturer. InfoUSA, based in 
Omaha, Nebraska, owns a database  of consumers and business used by Internet sites. 
When Gupta visited his  hometown of Rampur, a few years ago, he ran into an 
old IIT classmate. He was  selling vegetables from a small stand on the 
sidewalk.  
“If I had not come to  American, I might be stuck in that same village 
selling vegetables,”Gupta  said. 
But things are  changing. With India’s economy growing 9 percent to 10 
percent annually, many  graduates – and some who left the country – are remaining 
in the country, or  returning home. 
“Ten years ago, an  overseas posting for a colleague would be viewed with 
envy, but today it is not  a big deal,” said Roopa Kudva, director and chief 
rating officer with Standard  & Poor’s Crisil in Mumbai. “There are more people 
who want to work here  because India itself is turning out to be a bigger story.
” 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.assamnet.org/pipermail/assam-assamnet.org/attachments/20060824/9438447a/attachment.htm>