Full Text of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Speech

Governor of Andhra Pradesh, my esteemed friend, Sri Rameshwar Thakurji, Honourable chief minister of Andhra Pradesh Dr Rajasekhara Reddyji,, Sri Rajat Gupta, Sri Viswanadham, Sri Sunil Munjal, Sri Rammohan Rao, members of the Board of Governors, members of the faculty, and my dear students of this very prestigious institution, Indian School of Business.

I am delighted to be here at the Indian School of Business. This is my first visit, and I am doubly happy that this visit coincides with the completion of 5 highly productive years in the service of our people and that it also coincides with an area of work which is very dear to my heart, the regeneration of rural India. When I was a student in school, there used to be a poem in our text by the English poet Oliver Goldsmith, I don’t remember the full poem, but something like this sticks in my mind, when he said, “But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride, When once destroy’d, can never be supplied. Ill fears the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.”

Your emphasis in using modern science and technology and management skills to focus on the problems of rural India is an initiative which I greatly welcome more power to you.

I said that this is my first visit to this magnificent campus, I would like to compliment all those who have been associated with the creation of this wonderful facility in Hyderabad. It has been obviously a team effort. This is a fine example of public-private partnership and I compliment the State government, the trustees, Sri Rajat Gupta, and the management of the Indian School of Business, and all other stakeholders for this magnificent contribution to this very creative enterprise. Someone said, where there is no vision, people perish, and I am, therefore, very happy that this great saga of adventure and enterprise - forward thinking that led to the creation of this wonderful institution. This happens to be a plant which is beginning to yield excellent results. I sincerely believe that in years to come we will see lot more creativity, lot more spirit of adventure and enterprise and innovative thinking on the part of both the faculty and the student.

We need more such partnerships if we have to fulfill the challenge of building a hundred such campuses across the length and breadth of this vast country. I have just been around the campus, and am impressed by the top class facilities that have been created here. I hope these environs also inspire top quality research and teaching. I am sure each one of you who is associated with this institution, recognizes that it is easier to build facilities than to run institutions. People make institutions, rather than the other way round. We must never forget this.

I say this because in India, we have created many top class institutions, but we have not been able to sustain top class effort in them. Unfortunately, many such institutions have suffered over the years because of the decline in the quality of the talent manning them. I sincerely hope the trustees and faculty at this fine institute will never forget this, and continue to renew the institution by investing in people.

Ladies and Gentleman, management education has come of age in India. We have several institutions of international repute across the country. We probably do now have a critical mass of faculty, research and case studies to enable us to define what may be called an Indian approach to management. Management, like any discipline dealing with people, is more of an art than a science.

There is, quite understandably, a difference in approach to management philosophies and practices as developed in the United States, Europe and Japan. Perhaps one can even talk of a Chinese model of management. Clearly, there should be an Indian model too. Even as we learn from the West and the East, we must try and evolve our own paradigm of management education based on our own social and cultural attributes.

After all, one of the guiding principles of modern management is - “Think global, act local”. To be able to act local it is necessary to be familiar with the local. I am sure Indian management institutions will pay greater attention to this aspect as development spreads across the country, and firms and managers have to deal with an extremely diverse and rich social cultural and economic landscape.

Ladies and gentlemen, I say this today because your Summit has a special focus on rural development. The ideas and models that may have been developed to deal with more universal urban management situations will have to be modified when dealing with rural India. The production, financing, marketing and logistics possibilities of the rural will require new, innovative approaches, new tools of analysis and new solutions. This is the challenge for business schools and researchers. This conference addresses the issue of logistics. In a large, diverse nation such as ours, logistics is not just about time or space. Nor is it about the mechanics of movement of goods and people. Logistics is, above all, about managing people. We need to have a logistics model that reaches out to the potential in rural India, a model which delivers goods and services there in a cost effective manner, a model which provides cost effective access for rural produce to our urban, industrial markets. Nowhere in the world does one see a paradox as immense as we have here, where agriculture contributes slightly more than 20% of our GDP, but supports 2/3rd of our population. Logistics can play a key role in integrating rural and urban India, contributing both to employment creation and income generation.

My young friend, Sunil Munjal spoke about rural business hubs. I can assure him that we are now in the process of formulating the 11th five year plan. Therefore ideas associated with the encouragement of rural business hubs with receive adequate attention when it comes to launching the 11th five year plan next year. Sunil Munjal has vast experience of working in Punjab and Haryana, and with the Japanese, who have developed quality control and Just-in-Time logistics to an art. I am sure he can offer a course at the ISB on handling multiculturalism while managing logistics.

Before spreading your wings into rural development, our management institutions should work closely with our sociologists and anthropologists to develop an Indian idiom in management. I would caution against adopting a helicopter model in taking modern management practices to rural areas. Grassroots experience should inform management concepts, so that new management techniques can transform grassroots practices.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the focus of your Summit is on improving the competitive advantage of our rural economy. Indeed this is also the focus of some of the most important initiatives our government has taken so far. I notice that you have devoted a session to Bharat Nirman, and to providing urban amenities in rural areas.

As the global market becomes more open to Indian farmers, we must be able to take advantage of the new opportunities. Last year, the United States opened its market to Indian mangoes, and so has Japan. We have to ensure that we have the logistics in place to make use of these new market opportunities. Global demand for Indian agricultural produce will be supplemented by rapidly growing domestic demand as the country urbanizes, and the as industrialisation proceeds. This demand will rise in quantity, and will also change in composition with rising incomes. The demand for horticulture and marine products has been on the rise. We need, therefore, investment in rural infrastructure for our farmers to reach new markets. This is where Bharat Nirman has a vital role to play.

Bharat Nirman is, without doubt, about providing urban amenities in rural areas. However, it is not just about that. Bharat Nirman is something more than better rural roads, better rural housing, better rural connectivity, better rural schools and hospitals. It is all these, but most importantly Bharat Nirman is about building a new India - an India, in which the urban-rural divide is no longer a visible one. An India in which our farming community can rub shoulders with corporate India, and feel an equal in the process of wealth creation An India in which our rural citizens have the same quality of life as those living in cities. This is our vision for a new India. This vision is not an empty dream. It is do-able and we have to do it in our lifetime.

The change I see coming, I believe, will accelerate the pace of urbanisation, and we must be prepared for this change. However, the coming change must accelerate the pace of rural development so that we can create new jobs for our people away from the cities and closer to their homes and hearths. This is the vision behind Bharat Nirman. Hence, while your conference may well focus on the more immediate challenge of improving rural logistics, infrastructure and connectivity, the greater challenge is to improve quality of rural life in its totality.

This requires more than logistics, more than infrastructure, modernization, and more than improved connectivity. We have to invest in the capabilities of people living in our rural area. We have to enable an agrarian transformation that will uplift millions and millions of our citizens from subsistence levels into the 21st century.

This is a heroic challenge facing administrators and mangers in India today. This is, of course, not a new challenge. This has been the focus of our development effort since independence. Indeed, we have created many institutions and policies to address this challenge. The Indian experience with rural extension services, with the Green and White revolutions, and with rural marketing has been an impressive one. We have many ideas and institutions but I also recognise that they have not always worked. How do we make them work?

Institutions like yours, I believe, should avoid the mistake of re-inventing the wheel in terms of ideas and institutions. Rather, your efforts should be to see how we can retain the relevant wisdom of the past, incorporating it into new methodologies of change. This requires closer interaction between researchers, managers and people on the ground, including administrators and stakeholders.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I hope your conference will address this challenge. The transformation of Indian agriculture and rural India will, I believe, be the greatest development saga of the next quarter century. We have to think big and think anew, retaining inherited wisdom and building a new edifice of creative thinking on it.

We do already have many examples of good effort in agrarian transformation in different parts of our country. Be it the experience of tenancy reforms in Bengal, the operation burger, or of infrastructure development in Baramati, be it the experience of AMUL, or of ITC’s E-Chaupal. These are all inspiring examples that have to be scaled up so that the entire country can be transformed. We have to find new pathways to prevent the degradation of our land and water resources, and to promote more rational management of common property resources. We have to evolve location specific and environment friendly strategies of rural industrialisation and urbanisation in our quest for sustainable and equitable development. We need fresh thinking about the management of energy resources in our rural economy.

I hope the creativity and imagination of those gathered here can help us address these challenges in a more resolute and purposeful manner. The Indian school of Business has started very well. You have an inspiring vision. May you live up to that vision. I wish you all success in the novel task that you are engaged in.

Thank you.