Kevin Kolben, assistant professor at the Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick, led 22 M.B.A. students on an intense 11-day learning experience in India during spring break of 2006. The program included visits to the cities of Delhi, Hyderabad,
and Mumbai for meetings with business leaders and Indian
government officials, combined with site visits and a bit of sightseeing. Kolben has a longstanding personal and professional interest in India since spending a year on the subcontinent shortly after graduating
from Oberlin College in 1994. Since then, he has traveled extensively throughout South and Southeast Asia researching and publishing on topics involving international labor rights and regulation, human rights, international trade law, and corporate accountability. Focus writer
Marc Kaplan spoke to Kolben about his recent trip and its impact on the students.
Focus: How was the trip structured so the students could get a representative sample of the vast economic, business, and political climate in India today?
Kolben: My goal was to provide the students with meaningful interactions that would expose them to a cross-section of the
population including politicians, businessmen, villagers, and representatives from leading NGOs and government agencies.
We met with the senior management of some of India’s leading companies, including AIG-India Division and Dr. Reddy’s Pharmaceuticals, the chair of Saytam IT Solutions, Ramalingam Raju, as well as representatives from the Reserve Bank of India. The highlight in Delhi for many of the students was visiting GenPact, a global outsourcing company with more than 25,000 employees worldwide. I think students were a bit shocked to actually see the reality of jobs that were once based in the United States – the types of jobs they could envision for themselves –now being outsourced to India. What’s more, they are being done just as well or better for less money.
Focus: The Indian economic success story is generally localized in the business centers of urban areas. Did the students see the extent to which India’s new business spirit might be trickling down into the villages?
Kolben: We visited a small village outside the industrialized city of Hyderabad. There we met with a group of women who were receiving micro loans from an organization called SKS to help them begin small, self-sustaining businesses. With a loan of as little as $200 dollars or less, groups of women would collectively buy a cow, sell the milk, and use the proceeds to pay back the loan. Because all five women in each group are co-signers of the loan, the members not only rely on each other but watch out for one another. The program appears to be successful both economically and as a means to build community. Interestingly, two of the major investors in SKS, Ravi Reddy and Sandy Tungare, are graduates of Rutgers Business School.
Focus: What challenges lie ahead for India’s continued growth as a global economic player?
Kolben: We heard India’s business leaders and leading politicians in Mumbai, and elsewhere talk about the need to balance the need to liberalize the economy with other social and political goals. CEOs and government officials, we found, would like to quickly implement liberalization projects, such as lower tariffs to encourage trade, and projects to improve the infrastructure so as to attract investors. But India’s vibrant democracy often translates into slow, incremental change, and this has had a tendency to dampen some of the optimism around the country’s future economic growth. But this trip I found that the attitude among business people and professionals has changed from ‘no can do’ to ‘can do.’ There is a newfound optimism about India’s future.
Focus: As a learning experience for future business leaders, what do you think the students took away from the experience?
Kolben: The students came away from this brief encounter with the Indian business sector with, I hope, an appreciation of the real-world consequences of larger economic policy frameworks. India faces many challenges that are linked to the liberalization of its economy. A good outcome of this trip would be that the students better understood the interconnectivity of economic regulations in a social and political context and how it impacts not just the elite but also all the citizens of the country. I also hope that some of these students would consider doing an internship, or consider taking a job in India. In many ways, the global economic future is very tied up with emerging economies such as India and China. Students would be well-served to think about how they can understand and take part in this phenomenon, and not be in a position where they are struggling to keep up with it.