Be the Change: realities of MBA Rural Management

Studying Rural Management has come a long way ever since it was started by IRMA, TISS or XISS, to name a few significant pioneers. The much hallowed ontologies and illustrious destinies of most of these courses lie in their respective relation with attitudes and representations about liberating rural India from its miseries and steering it carefully to a sustained modernity. And indeed it would be unfair to say that others who are joining with names like Development Management / Development Studies / Development Practice are less philosophical or romantic about dreaming and fantasizing sustainable futures.  

The complexities of new emerging realities beckon us to focus on expanding pathways of rural urban continuum instead of clinging too steadfastly to nomenclatures of ‘Rural’ and ‘Urban’ as frozen normative types. Such is the nature of new interdependencies of ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ in an age of networks and connectivity flows that together create an interactive space such as never known earlier. 

The field is diverse hence is open to people from varied educational backgrounds, skill sets and work experience. Scope of careers is wide, ranging from setting up and managing supply chains of products ranging from FMCGs to exquisite handicrafts and organic products; facilitating producer companies of rural companies to managing CSR projects or managing responsible processes and systems in flagship development programmes of state; contributing to infrastructure and human resource development for better integration of rural areas and communities with essential services and markets, promoting equitable use of natural resources, pioneering green energy options, innovating low carbon lifestyles, enabling sustainable agriculture and livestock production. 

And to top it all, one of the significant critical success factors in making a career choice with reference to an MBA in Rural Management is the passion for existing amidst and, possibly, contributing in making and regenerating of good earth, Gaia, the living planet.

Having said this, it may be interesting to point out that a defining attribute of inculcating value neutrality regarding deprived and marginal communities remains a consistent leitmotif, covertly or overly, of much of this rural management education enterprise. Riding on high fees and a fantasy of aspirations of making to the top, most courses make struggle to integrate values and perspectives that make students passionate and empathetic to concerns and issues of marginal communities. Careful sophistry of management language buttressed by a copious use of jargons, most often gets the better off to ‘educate’ students out of reflective engagement for holistic well- being of rural and urban realities.  This is a reality that needs to be transformed if MBA Rural Management has to fulfill the humanitarian vision of 'Be the Change'.