Sanjiv Marwah, Director of JK Business School, Gurgaon, has led leadership positions in academic and corporate arenas for over two decades. Holding an MBA and a PhD in Customer Relationship Management, he was the Founder-Dean of School of Management and allied departments at MM University, Haryana. Earlier, he was a professor and Head of Marketing at Apeejay School of Management, New Delhi. Previously, Marwah was associated with Lincolnshire and Humberside University, UK, Thames Valley University, UK, Singapore Management University, Kathmandu School of Management and Philadelphia University, US.
He has authored many research papers and articles published at various national and international conferences. He recently published a book titled Project Management. An active member of various professional bodies engaged in imparting management lessons to budding CEOs, Marwah is also part of the Strategic Management Forum, an IIM consortium supported organisation. Presently, Marwah is the Vice-President of Centre for Education Growth and Research. Excerpts from a telephonic conversation.
This year, a separate Ministry for Skills Development and Entrepreneurship was introduced. Does JK have contributions to offer in this department?
JK is a large conglomerate with varied interests including industries, trusts and polytechnics. We definitely do have an interest in skilling manpower, as we need highly skilled people for our own companies as well other than for the market.
With mushrooming of B-Schools especially in the NCR region, what does JK bring to the table that makes it different from the others?
There is a multitude of B-Schools in the country that unfortunately doesn’t absorb the required amount of candidates. The mushrooming of B-Schools and engineering colleges in the country and the ill-trained candidates they have churned out have definitely made the industry doubt both the candidates’ and the schools’ credibility. For such a huge number of students that these B-Schools aim to train, the right kind of effort is not being put in. They should focus on curriculum design and delivery. In order to create work-place ready graduates, one needs to prepare professional programmes that are practice-based. This is what corporates seem to find lacking when they hire graduates and they need to do the training all over again. Even though for these precise reasons, the government started IIMs and other eminent institutions, the mere 150-200 graduates each of these premier institutes produce is not enough. This is where conglomerates like Birla and JK come into the picture and prepare industry-ready graduates.
What are the challenges you see in skilling?
The mere fact that we have a large population to skill! We have taken small steps, but have a long way to go before skilling becomes a right. There are certain countries which have taken upon themselves the onus of skilling their population. There should be a day in India too when citizens can approach the local government demanding to be skilled. It is the responsibility of the society to ensure that its citizens are gainfully employed. Government and society should work together and devise the right programmes for its citizens. For example, app development is the in thing now. Government and other players should come up with programmes pertaining to that.
What is your opinion on the industry-academia connect?
Historically, industry and academia have always learnt lessons from each other. When industry gave inputs, academia incorporated it into the curricula. Industry has a lot of useful models such as the Balanced Score Card, which rates a performance of an individual. Now, academia has started showing interest in rating their students in a similar way. A measurement tool, Balanced Score Card is even being incorporated to rate performance of cities. The gap between industry and academia mainly widened because academia was not willing to listen to the needs of the industry and this largely has to be blamed for graduates remaining unemployed. The majority of management and engineering graduates are not employable — only 20 per cent of the graduating population finds jobs, it is said. Industry and academia should lean on each other to bring best practices to the table. A lot of B-Schools have reported less intake than their capacity of seats and this is, in a way, a good thing as it shows that students too do not trust them to provide the best kind of education.
What do you do in your free time?
I mostly engage in reading magazines and browsing through news channels and keeping myself abreast of what’s happening around me.
shilpa.vasudevan@newindianexpress.com