Students make B-line for IIMs,shun anonymous colleges 

Mumbai: As many as 65 business management colleges across India are planning to close down.Realising there is no business wisdom in offering an MBA course,they are using the land for more lucrative ventures.
At one time,the archetypal Indian MBA did join anonymous business colleges.But now with no job offer at the end,the decision is no longer complicated: a young graduate would rather take up a job or prepare harder for another shot at an entrance exam which is the gate to a better B-school,says Stephen D'silva,director,Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies.
However,while the lower-rung management schools are being bypassed,there are still tens of thousands who make a B-line to join an IIM.
Pankaj Chandra,director of IIM-Bangalore,boasts of the lakhs of students who sign up to take the Common Admission Test (CAT) for close to 3,000 seats that the IIMs have on offer.It is a great time to do an MBA.The brightest ones still want to do an MBA, he adds.
Having said that,the manner in which Indias business education sector has developed poses a vital question: Is the MBA for everyone
Across the country,academics,irrespective of the institute they are affiliated to,are relating to Henry Mintzberg of McGill University,Montreal,who devoted a book to his contention that conventional MBA programs train the wrong people in the wrong ways with the wrong consequences.
Mintzbergs line Warning : Not Prepared to Manage has become a popular catch phrase in internal meetings that B-school boards and faculty members hold.

AFRICA ON RADAR TOO 
Sahara may bag new Bdesh capital project 

Roy Set For Retail,Education,Mining Foray 

Piyush Pandey & Shubham Mukherjee TNN 


Sahara India Parivar,which has been in the news more for issues relating to cricket and acquisition of an iconic London hotel,has been silently charting a bigger game plan,which includes getting into diverse areas like education,retail,mining,oil exploration and banking.Besides,it also includes entering newer markets such as Bangladesh and Africa.And at the centre of it all is a Rs 80,000-crore project to create a new capital of Bangladesh New Dhaka and a real estate development project spanning five different locations in that country,land for part of which it has already acquired.
But for managing worker and chairman Subrata Roy,it is his romantic girlfriend Air Sahara he wants to talk about the most.(Sahara sold the airline to Jet Airways for Rs 2,000 crore six years ago.) Roy believes aviation cannot be just a fancy of the rich and the flamboyant but it should also make abundant business sense.We should understand the importance of air transport in the economy of a country and what it stands for connectivity. 
He also underscores the need for lower navigation charges,lower cost of fuel,besides concession and subsidy if the airline business is to survive.
Fresh into a new bonhomie with Kingfisher boss Vijay Mallya (they are partners in the F1 team Sahara Force India ),Roy is in favour of the government bailing out the ailing airline because of the same economic necessity connectivity.There will be chaos if it is allowed to fail, he said and added quite radically that the government should also regulate the sector more to ensure that there are fewer players in the sector,so that they do not bleed to compete.An opponent of the open skies policy,which brought flying closer to the common man,he does not see reason in the argument that competition actually helps consumers bring down prices.
Roy by his own admission is most passionate about the media business (he is also launching tablets) but he beams as we change direction towards Dhaka.We are going into Bangladesh in a big way.I have finalized work of Rs 80,000 crore.It is a country,where we have lots to do.I have sent the proposal to the Bangladesh Prime Minister (Sheikh Hasina ) for the New Dhaka project and hope to meet her next month. He is not asking much from the government.Give us a sovereign guarantee and we will not need money.We have selected 40 sq km of land,50 km from Dhaka and it is available to us.We will get the land,build our own structures and sell it, he said.Sahara,which has real estate assets worth Rs 85,000 crore (according to the Sahara website),also built a hill station in Maharashtra from scratch Amby Valley.
Apart from Bangladesh,Sahara is also scouting for mining and exploration assets in Africa.Roy says that since most industrialists have to spend 50% of their productive time managing the system and chasing clearances,most of them are of the view that its easier to do business outside India.Quizzed if he wants to opt out of the country he maintained a stoic defence: I will stay and fight the system. 
Banking is something strategic for the group as it has experience in dealing with deposits of people and naturally wants a licence.We are the only company to have dealt with five crore people where no bank reaches.We have sent a proposal to the Reserve Bank of India seeking a licence, he said.
The action on retail will begin in March where it plans to invest Rs 17,000 crore.We plan to set up one lakh organized distribution centres and the first such centre will come up in Rajasthan next month.They will work as modern kirana stores, he said.
This would be followed by an entry into the education sector,sometime in 2013.We will enter in a big way by setting up universities,distance education centres but at the centre of it would be a project to take English to our villages.Only 2-3 % of population know English,and is a big opportunity to bring people from all strata into the mainstream, he said without providing any other details.
For most of its proposed businesses in India,it plans to leverage on its field staff earlier involved in para banking and its network of 4800 offices all over the country.The group which has interests in insurance,mutual funds,media and entertainment and hospitality has an outstanding liability of Rs 24,000 crore towards repayment of investors.
Despite his conflicts with regulators the Sebi and the RBI over various issues recently and ongoing court cases,Roy is in a zone of his own.He is writing a book,which he describes as a philosophical,cultural and emotional experience.Its titled L ife i s t o o B e a u t iful,L e a r n i t t o L ove i t a n d w ill b e r ele a s e d later this year.