Name: Arman Mohapatra Roll No: UR18059

Class: MBA (RM) Section: B

Assignment Type: Class Assignment (Guest Lecture).
Theme: Rural Development
Speaker: Sasanka Sekhar Singh
Date: 9 February 2019

Effectiveness of Govt. Incentive(s) as a tool to promote agri value chain

infrastructure and/or activities
1. Summary:
The speaker started with the dilemma as to by the time we enter into the job arena, hardly
30% of the people would be employed in rural India and rest would be up for corporate
jobs. He gave us an insight as to what creates the difference between a person with a generic
management degree and the person with a degree in rural management. He gave us ideas
to put a thought on a career projection that takes down over next 5 years. Just like a product
life cycle, every professional goes through 5 stages of transformation as his career
progresses. By innate nature, we all wish to assume the role of managers. The one of a kind
who heads in a few personnel. However, contrary to most of our expectations we would
get a basic level entry job where we need to handle on field operations for the first two to
three years. Then we progress on to the next level where the job role thrown upon you
teaches how to work and think independently going beyond the shackles of receiving
information and transforming them into asset of well-coordinated acts. You are just given
an output or desirable outcome and it becomes completely at your discretion as to how to
go about achieving the target. The third stage of job cycle is the most aspired for, that is a
stage where you have complete autonomy in the decision-making process. We actually
handle a group of individuals who are there to take instructions and in turn we act as a
guiding force throughout the implementation phase of the project. The next phase is the
most tempting as well as most demanding. Here you have an abundance of resources and
time complexity management and personnel management all of these segments have been
left at your disposition. However, the phase of professional career that this phase begins
with is such that it might induce complacency thus marring efficacy on a broader scale.
The last stage is a highly hedonic state in terms of workplace aspirations. The last stage is
the stage of mentorship which means that you occupy such a position where you have so
much knowledge and experience that you share it with the beginners in the field. He then
moved on to the needs that are to be addressed by the rural managers in the future. A
plethora of issues were touched upon. A few to start with was the market infrastructure.
Market infrastructure is very weak in rural areas. So, as a rural manger we need to search
for options to strengthen the rural market linkages such that a product produced in the

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remotest corner of the country using the local produce of an area reaches the best of the
city stores and is sold at a competitive pricing. This will not only generate a healthy income
for the producer of the good. The benefits of such a change will trickle down through the
layers of the value chain and generate a sustainable livelihood for everyone within the
chain. He tried to explain as to how to lookout for funding projects that we are planning to
undertake and to keep monitoring them at regular intervals.

2.Critical Reflection
This gives a moral diabolism as to where does the loyalty of a rural manager lie. It creates
a sense of confusion in the minds of the budding rural managers as to are they really serving
the fraternity they are morally supposed to and does it have any ethical implications on
bigger scheme of things in the society. The difference in the viewpoint is the major
differentiating factor. A generic MBA graduate will look at everything from the lenses of
economic feasibility and profitability. A rural manager sees all of it with a similar approach
while in addition to all of it, he also looks after the social reward and the loss or gain to the
community as well leading to a much more harmonic society. The corporate culture divides
its lifecycle into stages and the very first of it is all about learning to get the job done by
undertaking instructions. Here, absolute dry knowledge of the field and the learnings from
the management course are to be used and any deviations are to be noted. Learnings from
the first job or first switch over are crucial to build a strong fundamental base to set your
future goals upon. The initial stage however limits the scope of innovation or leadership
abilities to groom. The next stage is where your thought process is allowed to build up as
an individual decision maker. The third stage actually imparts a lot more liberty and
individuality in decision making process. It is the stage that garners the budding creativity.
Beyond this point, there is a difficult phase as many of the professional careers virtually
die down at this point in time. Because in this phase either there is much less
professionalism left than being demanded by the occasion or much less time or zeal left to
start from scratch and eventually reach a conclusive point. Hardly 3-4 percent of the
professionals in the field can reach the last segment of the cycle. Most of the projects are
initiated with the noble cause of achieving developmental goals at the maturity of the
project and to make them sustainable in the long run. However, a lot of them are marred
by the deficiency of funds or eventually lack of funds as a lot of it is wasted up by the
callous attitude of the project managers. So, a robust mechanism has to be put in place to
look up for matching ideals of funding agencies such that there is a smooth flow of desired
amount of funds. One of the biggest issues that we come across even with appropriate
funding is the misappropriation of funds leading to failure in sustained project as much of
the money and resources are being siphoned in the process. We need to look up for a
monitoring mechanism that can be held accountable for each stage of the process

3.Questions:

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1. Why is the branch known as rural management? Why don’t we consider it as development
management?
Ans- The field is known as rural management because the field is very diverse. It encompasses
every form of management domain in addition to which it also includes a huge domain in itself
i.e. the development. The field is not only limited to development but most of its work lies in the
rural arena. Hence the name rural management is aptly justified
2. What are your thoughts on the divide of rural and urban regions based on any special
requirements for separate policy framework?
Ans- Policies at the central or state level are hardly based on the landscape. They are very
generic to be applicable to the whole of the state/ country. Hence, we hardly find any policy
that is strictly rural/ strictly urban. Until there is a very specific need that is local to any
particular time and space, special policies aren’t framed.
3. After years of experience in a deviant field from the core ideals, how do we differentiate
between a rural manager or a general manager?
Ans- Rural manager has all the basic management skills intact and hence can be found
working in the same zone as a general manager. But being a rural manager there is always
a sense of morality where for example before we take the idea of any project in
consideration apart from its economic viability and feasibility, we take into consideration
of the projects impact on the environment and in the broader sense all the stakeholders that
are directly or indirectly associated or affected by the project.

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