Congrats ISB!!

Ajay Shah´s blog  http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/major-achievement-in-higher-education.html#links (one of my favourite Indian blogs ..ranks also quite high for all conomics related blogs world wide) mentioned about ISB being ranked 20th in the list of best management  institutions by Financial Times for the year 2008( http://rankings.ft.com/global-mba-rankings ).  Well,  Mr.Shah you are correct in assuming that this one of the highest ranking an Indian institution has had.  in my previous blogs I had covered a number of them of such ranking in various fields.  Congrats  ISB for making into the ranks!!!

 What is  surprising is that ISB never figured in any earlier lists. In fact the only management institution that appeared in any list is  IIM Ahmedabad that was ranked 92 in the list in the best MBA schools as rated by  Economist Intelligence Unit which is a sister company of the magazine Economist (http://mba.eiu.com/index.asp?layout=2002rankings&rank_category_id=20000002&region_id=&x=22&y=10).   Earlier I always suspected that there  is a problem in the ranking methodology. EIU has published its ranking methodology also http://mba.eiu.com/site_info.asp?info_name=wmba_rank_method. Yet, maybe Indian institutes are not responding properly or something of that sort. I  grew up with idea that IIMs and IITs are the greatest and makes it difficult to accept otherwise. But their consistent non-appearance in any world wide list made me wonder that the Western style of Education evaluation does not suit these institutions. In management institution lists  I could not  find any other chinese university or institution. But that excuse was blown away  in this list because IIM A comes after Shanghai based CEIBS at 90 and Chinese University of Hong Kong  at 91.  It is not that I am putting down the Chinese Management Institutes. But I always presumed that China was more Eastern and less Western than India in management. I still believe it being  so no matter what the different list say. I firmly believe that standard management courses have to be supplemented with some cultural differentiation for managers to excel in China while such special classes are not really required for India.

In any case , I am glad that we have a name that can be quoted as a premier world class institution and hope they can also make it into the next EIU Management Institution rankings. 

Indian Statewise Comparison of Primary Education

While answering a question about the primary education in India (education upto 10 year olds) in the upper house on Nov 26th , the Minister for Human Resource Development Dr.G.P.Pilania gave these facts.

1. National University of Education Planning and Administration has developed an index called Education Development Index which depends on access,infrastructure,teacher related indicators and elementary education outcome.

2. With this index the statewise (or union territory) figure are as follows

State / UT	EDI	Rank
Kerala	0.708	1
Delhi	0.707	2
Tamil Nadu	0.701	3
Pondicherry	0.7	4
Chandigarh	0.69	5
Karnataka	0.674	6
Himachal Pradesh	0.668	7
Andhra Pradesh	0.654	8
Mizoram	0.65	9
Lakshadweep	0.65	10
Sikkim	0.635	11
Maharashtra	0.635	12
Gujarat	0.63	13
Punjab	0.608	14
Uttaranchal	0.605	15
Jammu & Kashmir	0.597	16
Daman & Diu	0.592	17
Goa	0.586	18
Rajasthan	0.583	19
A & N Islands	0.566	20
Manipur	0.564	21
Chhattisgarh	0.559	22
Haryana	0.556	23
Dadra & Nagar Haveli	0.538	24
Tripura	0.535	25
Meghalaya	0.534	26
Nagaland	0.533	27
Orissa	0.512	28
Madhya Pradesh	0.512	29
Assam	0.49	30
Uttar Pradesh	0.482	31
West Bengal	0.467	32
Arunachal Pradesh	0.458	33
Jharkhand	0.435	34
Bihar	0.327	35

I could not find any data on the NUEPA site or anywhere else the actual factors and figures used for calculating EDI. But from the table it is worthwhile to note that southern states are performing much better than others while the eastern part and central  part are the worst. Though Bihar and Jharkhand was as expected , the surprise entry in the bottom is West Bengal. I tried looking for an coverage in the local Indian magazines/newspapers for this revelation. But I could not find any. I guess they are busy blowing the trumpet about how well India is doing in the stock market and in the world ´s eyes. If highlighted I would expect that this fact would hurt the Bengalis ego enough for them to gear up. But any amount of coverage is not going to anything in Bihar or Jharkhand. 

Inspite of being on the top of the list here, the south indian states seem to perform very poorly in the UPSC exams, IIT -JEE exams, IIM etc.  But on the other hand GMAT,GRE the percentage of successful candidates are higher (though a lot lesser number attempt it ).Also after education the economic growth excluding farming sector the South Indian states maintain the same lead (except for Kerala…they tend to be less entrepreneur-oriented).  So why do the other states (excluding the bottom states which are have no signs of improvement) perform better from primary education onwards? The answer is that they are coached to the indian style of examination based evaluation. The number of tutorial centers for various exams and the tuitions which are prevalent in other than southern states is the clue. In Tamilnadu somebody going for a special tuition apart from the class (could be to the same teacher or a different teacher) is considered humiliating and nobody reveals that they are attending such special classes. But in the other states this is the norm. So all teachers earn more money (except for the “inconsequential ones” like the language teachers) outside regular job and this also provides tax free earning for the teacher. Sometimes it is so lucratively that the teacher goes to school only to recruit new students for his or her special tuition. In the South, the bad performance of the student reflects on the teacher and most of the time the teacher take over the job of providing tuition free of cost or at very nominal costs just to save their own reputation to students who are very weak in their studies.

Worthwhile R&D Spending for firms

The Dec.2007 issue of Spectrum (a monthly published by IEEE) has this article http://spectrum.ieee.org/dec07/5742 related to R&D spending of various firms for the year 2006. Toyota tops the list for 2006. The R&D spending is shown in different formats ie absolute expenditure, R&D Intensity(relative to size of the firm in terms of sales) and R&D Expenditure per employee. It points out that not all R&D investments can be compared directly as some firms have to spend more than the others just to stay alive like the pharmaceutical. But still puzzling is that Apple or Google which are considered to be the best innovation firms hardly make into the list in any format. Even the effectiveness of R&D in terms of patents applied don´t seem to explain innovation. So the conclusion is that the only wisdom in R&D matters and which is not yet a column in the comparisons.

This research does not contain any emerging economy like China, India, Brazil and so on. Even Australia seems to have been not included(or may be no organisation in Australia made into the list). It would be interesting to know what approach the mega merger companies from the emerging economies like Tatas will have to do it to grow considering that the R&D capabilities are so poor in these countries (particularly India). Would they have their R&D section located in India or in US or Europe (which is lagging but is aware of its shortcoming).  

What would be interesting is to know where is the research and development going on , in these firms. For example what share of the R&D of Toyota is spent in Japan and what share in US. Many companies are using the emerging economies as the base for such activities particularly IT related developments in India. In short, it would be interesting to know the country-wise breakup also of this R&D expenditure. 

  

Wages and Prices – India Shining!!

The last salary survey by Towers Perrin (http://www.towersperrin.com/tp/getwebcachedoc?webc=HRS/USA/2007/200711/2007_Global_Compensation_Planning_Report_nl.pdf ) shows that globally salaries are on the rise. But the rise in India and Indonesia are phenomenally high. Though Argentina and Venezuala are higher, the comparatively high inflation offsets it). The main cause for the rise is the shortage in qualified personnel in service sectors like IT , Telecom etc. The manufacturing and similar sectors are lagging  far behind . Farming is not even counted in these surveys. But consequence of such a high salary rises have boosted up prices in the super markets and real estate. Hence discussions like this in the Indian Economy Blog http://indianeconomy.org/2007/12/30/indias-retail-revolution-question-2/. Or is it the other way round?