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Management institutes in India are sharpening their focus on the social sector. Surbhi Bhatia reports on two
independent initiatives.

The Indian Institutes of Management have a mandate to contribute quality manpower for nation building. However, over the years they have come to be perceived as institutes that churn out managers who merely aspire for big salary packages or placements in top companies. IIM-Indore is working towards demystifying that image. According to N Ravichandran, director, IIM-Indore, IIMs should not be synonymous with industry.

"IIMs are operating on government grants. Hence we need to give back to the society and shift our priorities from churning out students who want to enter investment banks to developing real people who are interested in social causes," he explained.

"Being a social entrepreneur does not mean you have to run an NGO," Ravichandran clarifies. "A social entrepreneur is someone who recognises a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organise, create and manage a venture to impact change. You can still create a business model for profit," he adds. However, those coming to IIMs are not motivated enough to be social entrepreneurs. "It is the responsibility of IIMs to generate this spirit by bringing students face to face with social problems and real life situations ," opines Ravichandran.

It was with this objective that IIM-Indore had recently organised a rural immersion programme for its first year students. Students visited villages of Madhya Pradesh to analyse the problems and challenges plaguing rural economies. They learnt about various government schemes such as NREGA, Indira Awaas Yojna, Kapil Dhara and many more. They felt that these schemes are very inclusive in nature but their success has been limited on account of several constraints that are being experienced in terms of ground level implementation.

Another batch of students visited Border Security Forces (BSF) amenities in Amritsar, Kolkata and Siliguri. Abhishek Chatterjee, who was part of this team said: "We learnt about problems that are typical to border areas. We also acquired some eye-opening management lessons from the BSF jawans. We realised that it is easy to talk about management practices within the confines of secure walls. The BSF leaders are real managers as they manage to keep their human resources motivated under the toughest conditions. All in all this immersion programme oriented us with real social problems and now many of us are aspiring to become social entrepreneurs."