The Hindu Business Line : Getting a taste of the Indian village life

FOR this year's Pongal festival, Cheyyur, a hamlet with a population of about 2,000 people, near Pondicherry, had a bunch of unusual foreign visitors.

Off the beaten tourist track, Cheyyur's guests on that festive day were around 50 high potential executives, drawn from among the top global corporations: British Telecom, Colgate, Corning, John Deere, and Wal-Mart.

Their agenda: to understand an Indian village at close quarters. And how. Divided into teams, the executives helped in Pongal decorations at the local temple, studied traditional farming techniques in the fields, interacted with the youth, the elderly, and the women in the village, worked with local artisans and spent time at villagers' homes, enjoying their hospitality.

"While they were touched by the poverty, the team was greatly impressed by the harmony and spirit of entrepreneurship in the village," says Dr Vijay Govindarajan, the Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of International Business at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, among the top B-schools in the US.

Global leadership programme: The village odyssey was Dr Govindarajan's way of letting the executives experience India up close and personal. Global Leadership 2020 is a programme initiated by the Tuck School, which, as the school's director, Dr Govindarajan created seven years ago. The purpose of the programme is to help develop global leaders.

As he says: "China and India are going to be the big markets of the future and if these future leaders are looking for growth markets they need to understand them inside out." The programme modules: The programme has three modules: the first is in the US, the second in India, and the third module is in China. There is a three-month gap between each module; during this period, participants work on a project of strategic importance to their organisation. In the past, he has brought similar teams to Bangalore once and three times to Hyderabad. This is the first year executives were brought to Chennai.

"The purpose of the India module is to expose them to the opportunities and challenges of doing business in India," he adds. Remarks Dr Govindarajan: "The visit to India made participants realise that solving India's problems requires out-of-the-box thinking: coming up with radically new business models that can offer world-class quality at very low cost. Such business models have the potential to disrupt well-established industries in the West."

Innovation the key: Participants were impressed by a presentation given by Mr Sivakumar, CEO of ITC's Agri-Business Segment, on eChoupal. They realised that the eChoupal innovation was needed due to the fragmented farming sector in India - an innovation that might not have naturally happened in the US due to its scale efficient farming.

However, participants also recognised that eChoupal is a sophisticated e-commerce platform that can potentially have wide applicability in developed economies, he explains. The programme "immerses participants in cultures different from their own and introduces them to the process of trans-cultural business."

The perspectives offered by these successful leaders in only a few weeks would otherwise require years of personal contact, he said. Participants also learn about the world from each other.