Jan 18, 2003 07:33 AM
4930 Views
(Updated Jan 18, 2003 07:42 AM)
Management is in everybody's lips, and in every Indian town worth the name, there is a mushroom growth of Management Schools. Many of these schools are fake ones, established to cheat the young boys and girls, who fall an easy prey to these establishments.
Management means to manage. Manage whom ? The men and their establishments. Women, please excuse me. I do not mean to ignore or insult you. The first syllable of the word Management is Man. Therefore, it is the Man, his associations, his establishments, his business, his industry, his farm, and above all, his home, which need sound management.
Management has ben recognised as an academic discipline. It has many components: Personnel Management, which is now called Human Resource Management, Financial Management, Public Relations Management, Stores and Inventory Management, Newspaper Management, Editorial Management, Advertising Management, Traffic Management, Canteen Management, Event Management, Entertainment Management, Home Management, Agricultural Management and the like. The Public Sector, the Private Sector and the NGO Sector practice management to suit to their specific needs.
There is a saying that you can not practice 18th century methods for managing 20th century organisations. I know one NGO, which suffers from resistances to Fax/Computer/Internet. One of their old guards tried to convince me that Computer and Internet are not for the Indian economy. What nonsense ? I took him to my Computer Room and demonstrated to him how an e-mail travels almost at the speed of lig, ht transcending physical and political barriers. He smiled and remained quiet. I knew that he was a pretty hard nut to crack.
One has to learn how to manage. In India, the Indian Institutes of Management at Calcutta, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Lucknow , Kozzikode and Indore; and the Xavier Institute of Management at Bhubaneswar are the principal business schools and it is very difficult to get admission. In advertising management, the Mudra Institute of Communications in Ahmedabad, popularly known as MICA, is an excellent institute. The graduates of IIMs start with a monthly pay packet of a lakh or so. The promising ones go to the Harvard Business School and MIT in USA. Even some of the IITs in India have started integrated courses where Management has a heavy share. The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) offers Distance Education Courses in Management in several capsules. The Course is very popular among defence officers.
There are not many books on Management by indian authors, but the one I can recommend is the highly interesting book called 'Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch' by the young Management Guru Arindam Choudhury. The magazine Business Today is very good.
Mahatma Gandhi had his own philosophy of Management. That philosophy was based on Truth and Nonviolence. It is still very much relevant today.
