Alumni Newsletter

Share this page

Like this page

The First India Global Consulting Practicum

May 29, 2009

Pranab Majumder
 Assistant Professor, Operations Management
Ph.D. University of Rochester, 2001

Sitting in a small room in a "basti" in the town of Tonk, I looked around.  On my left were five of the nineteen MBA students who had chosen to come to India to consult for an NGO.  Next to them were our hosts, an NGO with a long and cumbersome acronym.  And surrounding us, all over the room were some twenty kids- child laborers being transitioned to formal schools in the 4th or 5th grade.  This was our first and only visit to this "classroom," if indeed a single rented room in someone's house can be called that.  On the walls around us were pictures drawn by the children; photos at various events; certificates from district administrators commending a particular child on her activism on local issues; and posters promoting health, nutrition, education and self- confidence.

In such a situation, there are no misgivings about why we are here, or about why we are doing this.  It is abundantly clear.  These NGOs are doing important work, and we are here to help them in whatever ways MBA skills can.  It took awhile to get to this point, though.  For almost all the students, India was a new context in which to work, and was 10.5 time zones away, too.  Email is sporadic- not because of technology, but because of "cultural" differences.  And finally, even though we started work three months before the trip, I could hear each and every NGO think, "But what can you really do in two weeks?"  That is the question we had to answer, for them, and for ourselves. 

Jaipur is a wonderful base of operations- a historic city, colorful peoples, and lots of shopping.  Most of the tourists here come to visit the myriad of lovely palaces and gardens, and to learn the history of Rajputana.  But we are here as part of the India Global Consulting Practicum (GCP), offered through Fuqua's Center for Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE).  Our mission was to apply our business skills to the social sector.  Our hosts worked in various social sectors- urban education, rights- and needs-based rural empowerment, microfinance, and empowerment of street vendors and marginal workers.  Our students were bright, motivated, and came with a wealth of prior work experience in other developing countries, different social sectors, and consulting.  It is this mix of skills that ultimately complemented each other and enabled us to deliver.

The CASE folks initiated the GCP program in 2008, with student teams to South Africa and Nicaragua.  When Matt Nash, executive director of CASE, asked me if I was interested in starting up a GCP to India in 2009, I seized the chance.  Fuqua and Duke have made a major commitment to India as a critical partner location for global education and research programs. As for me, as many of you know, I have been taking students to India each year on the GATE course (some of you have met these students when we have corporate social events in Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad or Mumbai).  However, as I learned pretty quickly, when you take students to India, you had better prepare them for the social and development aspect, otherwise the business insights get completely lost in the flood of experiences.  Thus, it was a short step to transition from a course where you learn about India, to a course where you learn about India AND consult in India (albeit for a short period of time).

So, this year we added the India GCP to the mix.  I was the faculty lead, and with me was Wendy Kuran, an associate dean at Fuqua and formerly director of CASE who had never been to India before.  We had the nineteen students--seventeen first-years and two second-years-- split up into four teams- each team was assigned to one of these NGOs:

  • Nidan, working to empower street vendors, and led by Arbind Singh, (winner of the 2008 Indian Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award).
  • The Center for Microfinance, Rajasthan, a nodal agency bringing together policy makers, practitioners and researchers in the field of microfinance.
  • CECOEDECON, a rights-based rural development agency, working in a broad spectrum of activities in specific villages.
  • Bodh Shiksha Samity, led by the Ashoka Foundation Fellow Yogendra Upadhyaya, building and running schools in the underprivileged neighborhoods of Jaipur.

Course prep began in mid-December, and students spent the first two months learning about the organizations and sectors' their client NGOs worked in, as well as researching similar organizations in the rest of the world.  Their first week on location was spent making field visits to various villages, schools, slums, banks and student hostels where their clients worked.  Finally, after a couple more days of work in collating their experiences and evaluating additional first-hand information, they presented their findings and recommendations.

For both Bodh and CECOEDECON, the projects involved streamlining their fundraising processes.  While their activities were quite different, it was interesting to see the similarities between them when it came to fundraising.  Both organizations believed in their core mission to such an extent that they assigned every resource to those activities, and almost nothing to marketing, fundraising or publicity.  In fact, the hosts found the recommendations and resource lists compiled by the student teams to be quite radical- one of them even mentioned that this may be a paradigm shift from the way they worked.

The Nidan project involved figuring out ways in which to improve the lives and stabilize the livelihoods of street vendors.  The students met with various groups of street vendors, went to their homes, visited the wholesale market in the early morning, and attended a conference of the street vendor organizations from the various districts of Rajasthan.  They focused on ways to improve the street vendors' supply chain negotiating power, and to improve their image among the various groups who affect them.

Finally, the Center for Microfinance project involved improving their knowledge dissemination process and knowledge offerings.  The team visited villages where microfinance organizations operated, national banks which lent money to commercial banks at subsidized rated for development, and policy influencers who work in this area.  They identified specific needs of each group, as well as the types of information each could provide for the others, even delivering a template for a newsletter.

For each of these projects, the students' work completely amazed me.  Given the opportunity to make a difference, each one of them made a difference with a vengeance.  This made me very proud, since I really do occupy the bridge position between Fuqua and our host NGOs, and even, to an extent, between the US and India.  When I am with the students I strive to make sure that they understand India in all its colors, and when I am with the NGOs I try to make sure that they know what Fuqua stands for--our values and sincerity.  The only sustainable way to succeed in this activity is to make sure that both the students and the hosts come away from the experience with positive feelings and concrete deliverables.

On this first India GCP we made a lot of friends- personally, and also for Fuqua.  We all did our own parts to further Fuqua's mission to be more global, and to further social impact.  On behalf of Fuqua, we provided another great opportunity for our students to realize their potential.  As Fuqua moves forward with our plan to globalize by localization--"embedded and connected" is the phrase we use--the GCP furthers our mission in multiple ways.  The best validation for this comes when the NGOs themselves turnaround from their initial skepticism to a realization that this indeed is a partnership that can "completely change the way we do things here."