Aiyar calls for more humanity in IIM education

India’s development aspiration needs a facet of humanity to it. It cannot be measured merely in terms of growth statistics. While growth is about statistics, development is about people, said former Indian Diplomat and senior politician Mani Shankar Aiyar.

He was addressing the gathering at the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore here on Friday on democracy and development, as part of IIMB’s 15th Edition of Vista 2015. He spoke to students on how India should structure its development agenda and why institute’s like the IIMs must focus on humanities along with learning other subjects related to the management profession. “There is inadequacy in inputs of humanity and humanities in institutions like the IIM. These aspects require the attention in IIM education,” he said.

Pointing out the flaw in basing development only on GDP, he said if the GDP had grown at 9.4 per cent, it meant that 0.94 per cent of Indians got a hike of 9,400 times their earning while 94 per cent got only 0.94 per cent increase in their earnings. The inadequacy of a development structured only on industrialisation was that it failed to consider the vulnerable sections of society. In Gujarat, for example, 76 per cent of those displaced in the last years are tribals. “There is a myth that any one with an aspiration can achieve it. However, the state of several Indians is like that of flies within a glass cage. They are seeing the opportunities and development around them but cannot access it. The result is frustration and anger,” he observed.

He also resented the proceedings of the recent monsoon session calling it a ‘wipe out.’ Compared to the last 20 years in Parliament this was the unproductive part in his life, he stated adding, “I do not want to be in such a Parliament.”

Aiyar also voiced for a strong primary education in the country. Money was not the problem but lack of administration and the measuring success in education in terms of just the number of classrooms and toilets instead of measuring the learning was the biggest loophole in Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan’s approach, he said.