Creators amid the predators | Business Standard

Creators amid the predators | Business Standard

The State of Our Cities Evidence from Karnataka

Samuel Paul, Kala Seetharam Sridhar, A Venugopala Reddy and Pavan Srinath

2012 Oxford University Press, New Delhi

pp.297. Price Rs.765

There is a fairly widespread recognition that we are moving towards a rapid process of urbanization. Issues of development and poverty that was once focused in the rural areas is now finding increasing importance in the urban context and setting. The need to make informed decisions and customize interventions to the areas where such interventions are needed depends heavily on the quality of data. One of the aspects that we constantly lament about is the non-availability of meaningful data either for research or for policy making.

In this context this is a very important book. It is important because it recognizes the gap that an academic always encounters, it tries to fill in the gap and offers a template of a database that could be built up over a period of time across all the habitations – not necessarily cities. It will be particularly useful in not only preparing master plans for the habitations, but it will help the local administration to prepare and plan for civic amenities.

The book opens by making a case for itself and also detailing the methodology of collection of data. The book covers data on 15 cities of Karnataka, a chapter dedicated to a city. The overall template covers the history, demographics, economic dimensions, infrastructure and other services, quality of life and the budgets. All these are interesting pieces of data. Indeed as the authors present the data, they also bring to the fore the difficulty in obtaining granular city based data. It is somewhat surprising that given that the national databases are built on the basis of primary granular data we find it so much more difficult to get disaggregated data.

Take for instance the availability of credit and banking data. While the book has been able to present the data with the co-operation of the Reserve Bank of India [RBI], one should have had a natural access to such data bases. With the level of technology being used, it should not be difficult for agencies like RBI to put the entire database [subject to the confidentiality aspects] in a manner that could be downloaded and accessed as per the requirements of the seeker of data.

As we work with databases and use these databases to draw policy inferences, we also discover that there is disconnect between the agency that collects the data and the users of the data. For instance, let us discuss the observation made by the authors:

“Given India’s service revolution, we examined if at all there is any single sector which dominates the services category in all the cities. Talking all the 15 cities into account, we found that a little more than a fifth of workers were in wholesale and/or retail trade and an additional one-fifth in “other” services such as public administration and defence, compulsory social security, education, health and social work, other community, social and personal service activities, private households with employed persons, and extra territorial organizations and bodies. Unfortunately we neither have data on information technology [IT] or IT enabled services in the cities not enough data to examine if employment in traditional services [such as work in hotels, restaurants, or trade and commerce] were high in smaller cities.” [p.16]

This quote from the book opens up a classic question on the methodology of data collection by government. Do we do our collection on the pre-specified silos and populate them, or collect raw data and later classify them into some silos? If it is the latter, then the database should be able to turn in the data that the researchers want. The above quote is also an indication of how badly the statistics of the country lag the trend shown by the primary sector. Given that IT and ITES are expected to be one of the significant employers in the services sector, the data classification not capturing the detail is something we should ponder over.

The book does not touch upon the government inter-departmental co-ordination specifically, but we may have to discuss this issue in the context of the book. In most of these, there is little co-ordination between departments. For instance, the Ministry of Labour has classified all the occupations in the country using a four level hierarchy and aligning it with International Standard Classification of Occupations. This classification is called the National Classification of Occupations. Wonder how many of our surveys done by other government departments use this classification in mapping the occupational patterns. If the government does not use this classification, the probability of someone else using this classification is remote. If we were to make data comparable across time and across sectors and locations then these protocols need to be followed. While bringing out the data on cities, the book points out not only to the gaps, but also the direction in which data could be organized.

The angst about the data continues elsewhere in the book as they are looking at comparing city data sets:

“Despite the JNNURM and numerous urban poverty programmes, basic information on the urban poor is sorely lacking. No data exists on a city-wide basis on the magnitude and the problems of the urban poor, their households, and the services delivered to them. How programmes can be designed and delivered in the cities without such basic knowledge is difficult to fathom. There are wide variations among the 15 cities on most of the parameters on which this study has gathered official data. The inter-city disparities in resource distribution and utilization are most striking. The fact that different departments of the state government are in charge of different services and programmes could be one reason”.

This could be a nightmare not only for the policy maker, but a lesser mortal like an academic. Where would you start a quest if basic information is not available? How would one draw up a population and a sampling plan? And what level of triangulation could we do between the primary data and the database to understand representativeness? In this sense the book really throws open the inadequacy of information and the need for organized data.

Even when we take the broad parameters on which the book presents data there are further questions that crop up. It is okay to look at data at a city level, but how a city is broken up by the various departments is not uniform. The way the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board divides up a city like Bangalore is different from how the wards are cut up under the Brihat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike; this is different from how the postal department has organized pincodes; Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporations organization of divisions is unique and the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company’s organization of divisions would also be uniquely different. Each one of these data providers would have a different definition of the borders of Bangalore. Therefore any researcher or policy maker working in the field of urban issues is bound to face significant problems in secondary data and how it is organized. The authors also highlight the other problems with data. Look at this quote for instance:

“As far as hospitals are concerned, we found that Bangalore [The city] has 13 hospitals [including government hospitals, private hospitals, and nursing homes] per lakh population [or a total of 1,027 hospitals]. However, what matters is number of beds in the hospitals rather than the number of hospitals themselves. Unfortunately, our data on the number of hospital beds cover only government hospitals since we did not have data on beds in all hospitals.”

So, while the book works as a resource book and an aggregation point of organized data on 15 cities of Karnataka, it also implicitly raises many more questions about the quality and quantity of data that is available in the public domain. Therefore what is unsaid in the book is as important [if not more] as what the books brings to the table.

This is certainly not a book to be read. It is a book to be referred to. In that sense, the book is a bit of a let down due to one factor. It has been published late for the 2001 census data where it ends and a bit too early before the 2011 census data could be obtained. If only the authors had added the 2011 data it would have been even more useful for somebody who wanted to analyse this neat data over time. Clearly if one indeed tries to “read” the book, then the problem encountered would be that of a monotony. Unless one was doing a specific research on a particular city, the format looks repetitive – and seems to say the same thing about each city. A little bit of work would have made the text more readable. While there is a comprehensive chapter that looks at data across cities, it would have been good when specific data of a particular city was being discussed a counter point, a comparison, a reinforcement of that using data from other comparable cities could have been slipped in. It would have made the book a little more readable.

Irrespective of other expectations, this is no doubt an important book, but only as a starting point. The quality of data and the quality of analysis from now on should only improve – both in terms of coverage of cities and in terms of the depth of the data provided, and also in terms of the granularity of the data.

Prof. Paul and his team need to be complemented for this painstaking and frustrating work that they have undertaken

The Truth Shall Prevail?

The Resurgence of Satyam, The Global IT Giant

Zafar Anjum

Random House India, 2012

pp.268. Price Rs.399

At one level, corporate frauds are difficult to pull off. There are thousands of employees, control systems, auditors, analysts, regulators, and the board. And yet a look at the history of corporate scams, it makes us wonder about the reams written about corporate governance, the golden peacocks, the theory of an independent professional board. In case of Satyam, we also wonder about banks, auditors and more. Reading about scams at the base level titillative and at a cerebral level introspective. A book about scams and frauds comes with huge and diverse expectations.

On the face, by focusing on the resurgence, we believe Zafar Anjum tempers the expectations to the resurgence and reconstruction. But, a large part of the book is dedicated to the background of trying to dissect and reconstruct the modus operandi of the fraud perpetrated by Ramalinga Raju on Satyam. The reconstruction effort gets disproportionately lesser pages. It could have been very interesting if his research understood the homework done by Mahindras in the run up to the acquisition. How does one evaluate a stake in a company that was opaque and fraught with fraud? A company listed on NASDAQ and facing class action suits in the US? How could a clannish company transformed to professional one? Was the deal worth it?

Unfortunately Anjum’s book does not provide fulfillment. It draws heavily on existing literature and in particular from the book “The Satyam Saga” published by Business Standard. While the book is well crafted, simple and straightforward, the narrative is inspired by the chronicling style of Tim Bouquet and Byron Ousey who authored Cold Steel, the saga of the marriage between Mittal Steel and Arcelor. Anjum also seems to be inspired by Kingshuk Nag who wrote The Double Life of Ramalinga Raju both for style and for content. While this style makes the text readable, it does not come across as a rigorous piece of work.

Inane trivia are a part of this style. The prologue subjects the readers to how Anjum stumbled on story of Satyam, the flight [with the number] to Hyderabad, the weather and the menu on board. With action he gets to the chronicle mode: “Karnik could feel a palpable sense of urgency in Goel’s voice. Being a representative of the government, Goel seemed determined to save the situation at Satyam. Karnik gave in and said yes, accepting the ‘responsibility’ in principle.” [p.93]. Unfortunately this style is not followed in the reconstruction phase. It appears that Anjum had access to the Mahindras [the spine sports the Mahindra-Satyam logo], but we get no insights into the minds of Anand Mahindra or CP Gurnani. Except for the fact that Anjum had an interview with Gurnani and visited the Satyam Headquarters to meet a few senior level employees we do not get evidence of extensive interviews and primary field-work, interviews with other stake holders, which would be considered necessary even if we treated this as a journalistic piece of work rather than academic research. Instead, there is a dry rendering of events that followed the take over, the communications strategy, a peek into Gurnani’s blog and the events thereafter. But: What about the tension? What about the dilemma of whom to trust? The problem of what lay within this black box? None of these come out. The resurgence story ends much before it starts. The learnings we have: communication was important; there was internal restructuring; a Shadow Board was set up to make decision-making agile. The content could have been more insightful than a collage of material neatly culled and ordered from secondary sources.

This should have been an important book in management literature. The concept of “too big to fail” so often used in the banking sector was applied to an unlikely sector. The government stepped in, while it could have let go. The Enrons, the Worldcoms and many an Indian company have been allowed to fail. There was something in Satyam that triggered the government to save it. It was saved without a bail-out. A significant share of the credit for holding out must rightly go to the employees, it should also go to the State for handling the IT brand of India so carefully. The competitors in general seem to have acted with maturity promising not to poach. It was a great case of Statesmanship and revival. Anjum touches upon this, but fails to weave these pieces together.

And finally, Satyam tells us a tale of how decorative the boards are and the limited role they have in “governance” if the management decides to cheat. The Boards at best could give strategic inputs and directions, but governance? A question we should probe very deeply.

There was a lot of fun and pun about the name Satyam. The book ends with a note that indicates that ultimately as the truth prevails the name might fully be erased when the company merges with Tech Mahindra. A case where the truth prevailed but not Satyam?

Macro View on Microfinance

Microfinance in India

Issues, Problems and Prospects: A Critical Review of Literature

SL Shetty

Academic Foundation, New Delhi

pp.658. Price Rs.1,295

Historically, the State has been seized of the issue of access to financial services to the poor. A review of the initiatives of the past century, shows that the concern about making financial services, to the disadvantaged sections of the society being articulated largely by the State. These articulations can be found in the form of

[a] seeking inputs for policy making by setting up study groups, committees, commissions, working groups and the like;

[b] institutional interventions in setting up new forms of organisations and new initiatives in existing organisations

[c] intervention in the operations of institutions by directing them to serve a section of the society through quotas, orders, notifications, schemes and subsidies.

While these initiatives were happening, the State was never satisfied about the penetration of these services and was looking to re-invent solutions to the problem. However, what was striking in the century long interventions were that the initiatives came from the state in state owned, state controlled organisations. Till recently there was an absence of the private sector in this space. Thus most solutions were supply side, welfarist solutions. Not many of them were market-based. The history of intervention in the financial services targeted at the poor started with the active participation of the state. A wave of initiatives through state partnered and state promoted co-operatives followed. This was followed by nationalization of banks, establishing Regional Rural Banks. On the policy side there were targets for flow of financial services to certain sections of the economy.

In the late 1990s the NGO sector actively embraced the agenda of financial inclusion. These initiatives proved that market based solutions could be offered in financial inclusion particularly through the provision of microcredit services on commercially viable terms. This demonstration led to an increased interest of the commercial world in providing services to the poor. This market based approach also coincided with the entire market paradigm starting to consider the poor as viable consumers of various services an “opportunity” discovered by Prof.CK Prahalad as a Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

With the excitement of newer forms of market-based interventions in the area of microfinance, there was an increased attention from researchers and academics, as also from the popular press on this topic. Much was written about how microfinance offered a silver bullet in doing good and doing well at the same time. The attention that microfinance got and the writing that followed was disproportionately higher than the impacts it was making. Shetty’s book is to be seen in this context.

The book is a scholarly piece of work and personifies Shetty who is known for his meticulousness, dedication, eye for detail and discipline. As I was reading the book I kept trying to look for some literature that I was familiar with, that could have missed his attention but have to happily admit that I failed. Shetty and his team trudge through reams of material, digest, classify, organize and critique it in a readable manner. The book is rich with data. It is very remarkable as it offers a lazy researcher a complete guide to the literature, significant amounts of secondary data and leads on where one go for more, making it a researchers’ delight.

The book is organized into 9 parts. I would hesitate to call them chapters because each part is not only a book in itself, but is also significant in its own way.

The first part deals with the theory - locating the “market” for microfinance. It talks about market imperfections, market failures and how they impact the poor, with due focus on women, who almost define microfinance in the Indian context. The theoretical elements dealt by Shetty, shows the importance of microfinance as a concept. In focusing on the poor, microfinance started at the far end of the poor and the excluded and tried to provide a solution for the requirements of financial services. Microfinance was not only correcting and intervening in what was identified as market failure [the finance for the poor] but expanding it to the clients who were not traditionally considered by the state as a significant group [the women, who usually were subsumed under the category of poor]. The dual disadvantage of being poor and a woman is brought out brilliantly by Ela Bhatt in her professional autobiography “We are poor, but so many”. Shetty captures the essence of her argument in this part.

Most of us working in the field of rural finance succumb to one stereotyping, and Shetty is no exception. Scholars working on the vexatious issue of finance for the poor, use two significant pieces of data. One is data on agriculture and the other is the data on rural areas, falling into the trap of equating rural/agricultural finance with finance to the poor. It might not be off the mark considering that a significant amount of poverty is in that broad segmentation, but it ignores a significant portion of the urban poor from the discussion leaving the urban poor off the policy radar. There is no other way of carrying this discussion forward as the availability and organization of data and literature is on a similar pattern. From Shetty’s discussion of the background another element comes out: that we do not have data ordered on gender.

In the next part Shetty deals with the origin of microfinance as a concept and details out the players. Here he follows an interesting interplay between [a] theoretical definitions, [b] discussions of the concept, [c] the institutional responses and their redefinitions through notifications, product developments, partnerships and linkages and [d] the happenings around the world that seem to provide a greater meaning and prominence to the concept of microfinance. This is an endearing approach that helps locate the evolution of microfinance amidst much action across the world. Shetty deals with the multiple definitions by getting the context that evolved the definitions and how contexts could move and change. In addition, the players themselves have re-defined their role vis-à-vis the clients. While this part rightly has minimal data, it has examples demonstrating the evolution of the current concept of microfinance.

Part 3 talks about three different models of microfinance – the NGO led model, models run as government programs and bank led models. Each of these models are discussed in their emerging context and the regulatory framework. In a matter of a few pages Shetty is able to cover the setting for microfinance looking at its genealogy, geography and orientation. Having laid out the global landscape for microfinance, he focuses on India. This part deals with the evolution of microfinance in India and sets the story of microfinance, dating back to the establishment of Sewa Bank. This chapter also shows the subtle shift in Shetty’s orientation. While the first background chapter talks about the entire financial sector for the poor, in this chapter the focus is sharply on what is commonly understood as microfinance. There is no discussion on agriculture/rural. It discusses the initiatives outside of the government programs [except for the linkage with NABARD on the SHG-Bank Linkage programmes]. This chapter breaks away from the supply-side State sponsored models of inclusion to the model that was proposed and implemented by others, starting with NGOs and later by the private players. In highlighting the initiatives Shetty brings out the data on growth, the subtle difference in approach and also how it pans out at scale. Part 5 is a researchers’ delight. It provides all the data that one could have had about the aspects discussed in Part 4. It follows the operational models discussed earlier and points to not only the data sources but also brings in significant details from specific studies undertaken in this field.

Having looked at the evolution and the meteoric growth of microfinance in India in particular, it then becomes important to ask the question as to whether there was a regulatory framework under which these activities were being undertaken. The answer for that is yes and no. While the microfinance was being done in the available regulatory framework, it was probably an inappropriate framework for scaling. Shetty examines this from a chronological perspective as well as from the perspective of interest groups. While this is in itself a brilliant work, it could have been richer if Shetty had focused a bit on the policy towards microfinance. There was a churn on whether there should be a bill or not, and whether microfinance should fall under central or state government’s purview and the role of the Reserve Bank of India [RBI] etc. On the sidelines there were policy guidelines being issued both by the finance ministry as well as the RBI under the extant legislations. These dictated how the sector shaped up. Shetty focuses only on the details of the regulations, the issues that were debated and the fall-outs. It is surprising given that in the rest of the book he has examined various layers of the issue. Regulation has multiple layers of policy making, notifications, orders and advisories. The regulatory machinery did not have a uni-focus on law making during the period under question.

The next three parts look at what microfinance means to the poor - a detailed look at impact studies and the methodological issues surrounding them; the emerging debate on the critical issues pertaining to microfinance; and a concluding set of recommendations.

Shetty’s book is not easy to review because of the depth and width of its coverage. It is a book that can easily be admired, and referred to and will serve as resource material for a long time to come. It brings in divergent view-points, data and discussions. Shetty largely remains in the background, in his usual understated way. However, this is a book that should form a necessary reference material to anybody interested in microfinance and the larger issue of financial inclusion.

As we close, we need to engage in a lingering question. Did the new models of microfinance replace other more difficult and exploitative sources of finance such as the moneylender? Or did the women centered microfinance include the totally excluded segment into the formal financial sector? It is most likely that even the moneylenders did not consider poor women as a market segment. Therefore the importance of microfinance was in starting at the far end of exclusion if we were to take a welfarist point of view, or in “expanding” to create a new unexplored market segment if we were to take a Prahaladian point of view.

We should be thankful to Shetty for undertaking this rather difficult task and bringing out the output in such an easy and readable and referable format.

Stories from the Slum

Rashmi Bansal is at it again. After three blockbuster books, here is a fourth one co-authored with Deepak Gandhi. In a way it is almost like the Harry Potter series – starting with an accidental discovery of a selling formula and then following it up with books having a similar concept. Her first book – Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish talked about 20 entrepreneurs who had a IIM Ahmedabad degree. She followed it up with 20 who did not have the coveted MBA, and then moved on to profiling social entrepreneurs. The latest is a book on Dharavi – the biggest slum in Asia. As usual it is trying to find what Rashmi has excelled in finding. Successful stories on entrepreneurship narrated over and over again, like an inspirational speaker who mentions the essence of life through multiple narratives.

Rashmi has an irritating style, which has come to be popular. This style dumbs everything into sermon like stories, without a methodological frame. It is a travelogue. It paints a happy and rosy picture and helps a person to identify with the protagonist – “I could be the next Vijay in an Amitabh Bachchan movie” – the angry young man. However much we may pick bones about this brash style, her writing is something that we cannot ignore. There is a piece of an inspirational story here, there is some interesting stuff there all discovered accidentally, but organized in a neat set of silos that make it appear to be within a theoretical frame.

To put the exuberance of Rashmi’s and Deepak’s Dharavi in context, one should read it alongside another book by a journalist Katherine Boo’s – “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” a somewhat dark picture of the Annawadi slum in Mumbai not far from Dharavi, not far from Bandra-Kurla Complex but certainly far-far away from the optimism shown in this book. Boo’s work is rigorous, deep, incisive and persistent. No, it is not an academic book, not an ethnographic work, as would be written by a sociologist or anthropologist, but a rigorous journalistic work to be taken seriously. Poor Little Rich Slum is a happy travelogue that multiplies the story of slumdog millionaire.

It is a narration of the story as claimed by the protagonist, without much of a cross verification. If Rashmi were to apply rigour in her first book ,she would have avoided putting Subhiksha as a “successful enterprise”. The early signs of decline were already showing up, but she went with the bravado of the promoter.

If only Rashmi and Deepak had put Dharavi in the context of poverty, each entrepreneur in the context of Dharavi, it would have been better. The book is a mix of stories of people who have made it within Dharavi itself, people from Dharavi who have made it outside and people from outside who have positively ‘intervened’ in Dharavi. These three are somewhat distinct themes that get intermingled in their narration.

The narrative uses language freely, intermingles slang and chats with the reader. The paragraphs are less than three lines, grammatically more accurate than bullet points, but intended to be like bullet points. The book is rich in its presentation with many photographs of the slums. Unfortunately not all the pictures are relevant to the text. Photographs that show filth and squalor is not a part of the discourse. The difficult conditions under which slum dwellers live, the physical threat to their existence, and the fact that their very existence is constantly under threat because of weak documentation does not come out clearly.

Dharavi has been grabbing much attention from the press, financial institutions and policy makers. It has bank branches that do urban financial inclusion and has become an icon for anybody to talk about urban poverty. In that sense, this was a natural destination for Rashmi and Deepak to go, because their model is based on pegging entrepreneurship in a larger recognizable “brand”. Dharavi [unlike Annawadi] provides that “brand”.

Is Dharavi representative of the most low-income settlements in large urban sprawls? This question needs much more rigorous indulgence. Yes, it represents one type of settled low-income settlement, with recognition, with amenities coming in and also being on the policy radar. The conditions in the other places are more appaling as we discover from Boo’s Annawadi. Dharavi has now become an icon and symbol of slum tourism, of entrepreneurship and of financial inclusion. There is a darker side to the problem of urban poverty than Dharavi. The handicap for entrepreneurship in Dharavi and elsewhere might also be different.

Having said this, Poor Little Rich Slum is one of the better books of Rashmi Bansal [and Deepak Gandhi]. It narrates the stories of the protagonists without fluff and hits right on the point. It is positive and gives a feel-good feeling, possibly undeservedly in the rather dark bottom of the pit [or should we call it a pyramid?]

Poor Little Rich Slum

what we saw in Dharavi and why it matters

Rashmi Bansal, Deepak Gandhi with Pictures by Dee Gandhi

pp.194. Price Rs.250.

Westland 2012

Ahmedabad’s IIM

Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad [IIMA] celebrated a somewhat low-key golden jubilee in December 2011. Three books came out during the year, which looked at the making of IIMA. The first Nurturing Institutional Excellence was a collection of essays written by past and present faculty members talked about the internal processes, launch of programmes, management of specific activities and some reminiscences. Given that it was written by a diverse set of people, with differing styles and perspectives – it gave a set of anecdote like look into the Institute. This was followed by a book independently written by TT Ram Mohan – Brick by Red Brick, which examined the history of IIMA, but largely from the lens of the first full time Director Ravi Matthai. Anubhai’s book is different from both the above, and provides the history of the Institute from a different perspective.

Anubhai has been associated with IIMA for long years – both as a board member, a visiting faculty who has taken substantial teaching load and as a member of multiple committees for future direction – a planning and goal setting process of IIMA which is set up once a decade. He has a better view of IIMA and a sense of history for having been there. Therefore his version of the story should have been exciting and readable. However, Anubhai’s rendition does not engage the readers’ attention. This is because his rendition falls between two stools – it does not locate itself in the larger paradigm of IIMA as a good case in managing higher/professional education. That approach would have brought out challenges of funding, structure, alumni relations, curriculum design and delivery and new programmes in a different light. Given that Anubhai is the Chairman of the Board of Management of Ahmedabad University that has an ambitious plan of setting up a large campus with multiple disciplines, he was eminently suited to undertake such an effort.

For instance, Anubhai does not bring out the fundamental differences between IIMA and IIM Kolkata [the only difference he brings out is that Kolkata campus was built by public works department as against an architect designed campus of Ahmedabad]. Both were set up around the same time, but took significantly different growth trajectories and managed differently. The involvement of the local industrial houses in Kolkata and the state government was not as deep as in case of Ahmedabad. How or whether this mattered would have been interesting to analyze.

Alternately given his involvement, he could have taken the memoir approach with a range of anecdotes to make the story engaging.

Instead of the two approaches Anubhai takes a ‘case analysis’ approach to dissecting IIMA. He uses correspondence, facts and also some of his own personal experiences to do an inward looking analysis of IIMA. Not only it is inward looking, it is somewhat board and Ahmedabad centric with little engagement with the processes within the faculty body, the alumni, the industry and so on.

Mention IIMA, and the association is strongly with Vikram Sarabhai and Ravi Matthai. Anubhai in his narrative highlights the role of Kasturbhai Lalbhai, and his contribution to the building of IIMA. This is an important part of the narrative. Sarabhai and Matthai set up the internal processes; Matthai cut out known organizational hierarchies and brought in functional hierarchies. However, the role of Kasturbhai in managing the external environment, his contribution to the hardware of the Institute – particularly being on the building committee and getting Louis Kahn to design the campus is usually missed in the narrative and Anubhai fills in the gap.

Anubhai tells us that Kasturbhai refused to be the Chairman of the board of governors of IIA even when he was offered the position more than once, while he accepted to be the Chairman of IIT Mumbai. The reason: He wanted IIMA to be perceived as a national Institute and his assuming chairman’s position had the danger of sending the signal that it was a very Ahmedabad based institute.

Ahmedabad as a city has the tradition of nurturing institutions of excellence and taking pride in the fact that these institutions are a part of the city. While the intellectual power for sustaining the institutions come from across the country and is cosmopolitan, the support structures for the institution come wholeheartedly from the local community. This is the aspect of Ahmedabadi pride in National Institutions is what is captured effectively in the IIMA Story.

To understand the elephant called IIM, we now have multiple descriptions. Apart from the books named above, one could look at Chetan Bhagat’s Two States to get a perspective of the student life, or Prashant John’s Second Degree to get another perspective. Anubhai’s narrative style is flat and bereft of emotions, a difficult feat indeed for somebody so closely associated with IIMA. He tries to use numbers to justify his arguments. He uses bullets to summarise something that he has narrated and makes the book like a long presentation. It could have been more engaging, bringing some insider perspectives and with implications for management of higher education. But the story of IIMA remains just the story of IIM of Ahmedabad. Given the visibility and size of the Institute, the story could have been much larger, broader, bigger. While it is a very interesting book for what it is, it disappoints when we consider what it could have been!

  

The IIMA Story

The DNA of an Institution

Prafull Anubhai

Random House India

pp.269. Price Rs.599.