The Hindu Business Line : Two below par are two too many!

A wonderland, with its campus spread over all of 262 acres, cavernous buildings with vast corridors, all one could wish for in modern state-of-the-art facilities, run by a Board whose members are the top-notchers in the world of business and industry, drawing on the combined talents of management schools such as Kellog, Wharton, London School of Business and consultancy firms such as McKinsey and with a vaunted world-class faculty said to be famed for cutting-edge research and standing out as an unmatched knowledge repository.

All these together have, as proclaimed by the sponsors, an unparalleled network with the Indian industry as well as public sector and government functionaries, thus facilitating a wide range of social , political, and industry interactions for the participants. Well, the Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad leaves pretty little to imagination or invention.

Jarring notes

Just a few jarring notes, though: Its Web site is too modest and reticent about giving the names and full background of the Chairman and the Board of Directors; details of its faculty setting out their experience and credentials discipline-wise are similarly wanting (in the absence of which it is impossible to know what private agendas they may be pursuing wittingly or otherwise).

The full ambit of the courses offered is nowhere given (unlike the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which has put out on its Web site every particular about all its courses as part of its push for open education).

In the entire length and breadth of the imposing edifice nothing — no pictures, no sculptures, no display — that would bring to mind the great geniuses and achievers India has produced.

Everything bears a Western imprint, the ambience heavily laden with brand names of Indian and foreign businesses and their chiefs.

No wonder, it wins laurels in Western eyes and runs away with top scores. From what I could learn from a two-hour private visit, the course content had no space for the profound insights on governance of Chanakya or Tiruvalluvar or the leadership profiles of Emperor Asoka, the great communicator and ruler par excellence, the charismatic Vikramaditya with his navaratnas, the master administrator, Emperor Akbar, or the creator of architectural marvels, Emperor Shah Jahan.

Coming to recent times, for aught the students know, the social reformers Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Periyar, the pioneer in shipping and navigation, V.O.C. Pillai, the pace-setter in industrialisation Mokshagundam Visveswarayya, or the one and only Mahatma Gandhi, to mention a few, might as well have not existed.

Business and ethics

One squirms wondering what products will emerge from the portals of this embodiment of Western precepts and prescriptions. Even they, as purveyed in some of the video presentations, make no earth-shaking impact.

For instance, I patiently listened to the discursive talk of Prof Ed Freeman trying to convey that ethics and business go together at the core of capitalism. It sounded jejune and none-too-incisive.

Talking of ethics, how does a B-School which prides itself on its high ranking explain the shocking criminal charge against its founder-director, Mr Anil Kumar, or the fact that the expertise of its dean, Dr M. Ram Mohan Rao, did not help him ask the right questions to save Satyam Computer from a whopping Rs 7,500-crore fraud?

It will not do for the ISB’s present dean, Dr Ajit Rangnekar, to seek to get away with saying that the misconduct of its luminous stars outside of the School is not its business.

Two black eyes within nine months are two too many and Dr Rangnekar’s nonchalant excuse will only fuel speculation that what the people have seen is only the tip of the iceberg.

The ISB should pull up its socks and do some introspection.

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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