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

[umesh sharma]

Amerika is a land of immigrants --earlier mostly came from Europe or Africa --now are coming from Asia --so why so much drama?
   
  Umesh

BBaruah at aol.com wrote:
         
  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 headline 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.”
   
    
   
   

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Umesh Sharma
5121 Lackawanna ST
College Park, MD 20740

 1-202-215-4328 [Cell Phone]

Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005

weblog: http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
 		
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