Happy New Year

While the IIT alumni have always been benevolent in terms of donating substantial sums to their alma mater, these donations were primarily meant for creating or renovating infrastructure. There is a welcome departure this time as the January 1, 08 edition of the Times of India reports,"The batch of 1982 of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay had something to gift their alma mater for the new year. On Sunday, the alumni handed over a cheque of Rs 4 crore to the premier engineering institute. The money will be used to bring in more talent into the faculty. With the interest earned on the corpus, every year 25 incoming faculty members at IIT-B will be offered a bonus of Rs 1 lakh for three years."

Kudos to the IITB batch of 1982. However, there need to be more initiatives of this nature preferably with the involvement of the rich Indian corporates. For our institutions to be truly great, they need to attract the best from across the world. And this requires resources, which only private participation can ensure.

M2i Trainings (www.m2itrainings.com)

In my experience with MFIs, I have noticed that very often the difference between those that perform well and those that dont is the quality and motivation of the line staff. While this is a function of the kind of internal control systems that an MFI possesses, it also has to do with recruitment policy as well as staff training. In the absence of control, agency problems invariably creep in and this leads to corrupt practices. If the institution has evolved good internal control systems, but has demotivated and untrained staff, there is again a problem as staff productivity suffers and staff turnover is high. I can say that the trainings that we offer allow MFI line staff to get a better perspective of their own roles in the wider scheme of things and their motivations improve quite a bit. In addition they also get exposed to best practices and gain in terms of professional skills.

We are introducing M2i trainings. I hope that it will evolve into a valuable resource for the microfinance sector. We will also strive to build in a world class team of researchers who will contribute in an original way not only to "the microfinance domain" but also to areas in applied economics, finance and public policy.

India 2020

The Rockfellers made their millions from the industrial and economic transformation of towns like Bluefield and Pittsburg some hundred years ago. They "invested" millions to cultivate the sciences in the US. In addition (to quote Sylvia Nasar - A Beautiful Mind), they imported scientists from centers such as Berlin and Budapest, established European style professorships in US universities (including Princeton), with extravagant salaries. The fact that the USA today is a storehouse of intellectual giants owes at least as much to the private sector as it does to the US government. The universities on their part have ensured a supply of high quality human resource as well as the best technological innovations. In terms of economic ROI, the investments made by Rockfellers are unsurpassed.

Can our rich private sector attempt something similar? Can we think of an India where our institutions will support the best scientists of the world? Or shall they continue to take pride in how difficult they were to secure admissions into or how many of their students went to the US and got married and settled there?

IRMA Convocation of 2002

Quote from APJ's convocation address to our batch - "When it comes to us actually making a positive contribution to the system we lock ourselves along with our families into a safe cocoon and look into the distance at countries far away and wait for a Mr. Clean to come along & work miracles for us with a majestic sweep of his hand. Or we leave the country and run away. Like lazy cowards hounded by our fears we run to America to bask in their glory and praise their system. When New York becomes insecure we run to England. When England experiences unemployment, we take the next flight out to the Gulf. When the Gulf is war struck, we demand to be rescued and brought home by the Indian government."