Hyderabad :

Hinting that India was a tough country in which to do business, eminent historian RamachandraGuha said if he were an entrepreneur, he would have liked to have been born in a country like Singapore or Sweden.

Addressing graduates of the Indian School of Business on its 12th Graduation Day on Sunday, Guha referred to his book , ‘Makers of Modern India’ and said India was undergoing five dramatic revolutions ‘simultaneously’. “India is experiencing a national revolution as from being a colonised colony, the country is emerging as an independent nation. Second is the democratic revolution, as in our country we still hold general elections and not the ‘election of generals’ that takes place in neighbouring countries,” he said. “We are also going through an industrial revolution as the country is transforming from an agrarian economy to an industrial one. There is an urban revolution as people are migrating to cities in massive numbers. Finally, there is a social revolution, where India is coping up with issues of hierarchy and patriarchy,” he added. The historian urged the ISB grads to try and experience the democratic and social revolutions closely as by virtue of being MBAs, they would naturally be part of the other transformations.

Addressing the ISB pass-outs, Kishore Mahbubani, dean and professor in the Practice of Public Policy,  Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore said: “MBAs are one the major reasons due to which there are lesser number of wars in this world today as MBAs are taught to carve out a ‘win-win’ strategy while a war is always a ‘lose-lose’ strategy.” “This generation has the least prospect of dying in a war. The other good news is that countries will be able to halve global poverty by 2015 and the middle class is expanding rapidly and in Asia alone, the middle class base will expand to 1.75 billion people in 2020 from the current 500 million,” he said. On problems, he said the biggest worry was that the 193 countries in the world were no longer isolated entities and each and every action of a single country could create ripples in other nations.

ISB’s 12th Graduation Day saw 565 students of the post graduate programme class of 2013 and 59 students of the PGP-MAX class of 2012 pass out.

Referring to world trends, Mahbubani said there were ‘good news, problems and solutions’ in the present day world.

According to him, there was certain ‘good news’ for young people. “This generation has the least prospect of dying in a war. The other good news is that countries will be able to halve global poverty by 2015 and the middle class is expanding rapidly and in Asia alone, the middle class base will expand to 1.75 billion people in 2020 from the current 500 million,” he said.On problems, he said the biggest worry was that the 193 countries in the world were no longer isolated entities and each and every action of a single country could create ripples in other nations. According to him, the solution was in the strengthening the world bodies such as United Nations  and World Health Organization  that can help bind the world and address the issues of the world in a holistic manner.

source: http://www.articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / Home> City> Hyderabad / TNN / April 08th, 2013