B-school trends come and go, but one that seems to have legs is the creation of specialized MBA programs, particularly by second-tier schools. The schools find them useful for attracting students and cementing their brand identities at a time when competition among schools for the best students is intense. In recent years, they’ve becoming increasingly common (BusinessWeek.com, 7/19/07) even at high-profile schools. Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, and the Wharton School now offer specialized MBAs, majors, or dual degree programs in areas like real estate, sports management, biosciences, electronic commerce, and health care.

But is a specialized program always a good choice for an MBA student?

Not necessarily. While established programs have placement records on par with those of their general MBAs, many newer programs have not yet established the kind of recruiting relationships that guarantee students high-paying jobs at graduation. And graduates always run the risk of getting hamstrung by their specialties later in their careers, when an industry downturn forces them to look outside their specialties for opportunities.
Chart Your Own Path

Some who have gone through the specialized programs say they are best for those with a firm idea of their future goals, and who are keen to chart their own path. “I knew what I wanted to do,” said Carrie Stern Rathod, who received her MBA from Wisconsin’s Brand ‐ Product Management Center in 2005 and now works for Procter & Gamble (PG), which recruits regularly from the program. “There’s a range of people for whom this program is ideal. If you have an entrepreneurial bent but are not sure you’re ready to take the leap yet, the program might be right.” But, she added, “I think it would be tough if you wanted to go into consulting or something like that.”

For students who aren’t comfortable breaking away from the pack or seeking out professional contacts in unconventional ways, a specialized MBA might not be the best choice. This is especially true at less well-known schools, where big companies often don’t recruit. Students in these programs agree that making industry connections can require a lot of initiative from the student. “If you have a very specific company in mind, you might need to be a trailblazer in making relationships with those companies,” says Rathod.

More : businessweek.com

State governments still harbouring a legacy of the control and licence raj will have some tough questions to answer now.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) is set to scrutinise the liquor and passenger transport polices of state governments to see if there are any practices that blunt free market competition.

Sources told ET, the commission is also looking at sectors such as pharmaceuticals, telecom, transport in western India, retail food and food grains for anti-competition practices.

Vijay Kelkar, advisor to former FM Jaswant Singh, has been appointed to oversee this analyses outsourced to professional institutes like the Delhi School of Economics and the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

The commission, empowered to penalise a corporate or government body for anti-competition practices, will, however, restrict its action to ‘competition advocacy’ till it gets fully operational. At present, the commission is not adjudicating any matter as the issue of appointing a chairman is entangled in litigation at the Supreme Court.

“Many state governments exercise strict controls on liquor and passenger transport business through permits, while controls remain minimum for setting up bigger industries. We are going to look into such practices adversely impacting competition,” said sources.

The challenge now facing the commission is to get fully operational. The appointment of a chairman has been embroiled in a tussle between the executive and the judiciary.

While the government believes adjudication in cases involving complex economic analyses requires an economics expert, the judiciary feels arbitration in such matters is its domain.

The commission in the meanwhile is doing preparatory work. Sources said CCI is also contemplating to establish a ‘Centre for Competition Law and Policy’.

It has set up taskforces in areas like competition advocacy, predatory pricing and determination of costs and research projects.

Developing countries can jubelnd, impedes investment and competition from registration issues on the agenda of the WTO in Cancun. But it is perhaps too early to celebrate.

In an article in schools, the former Secretary General of Finance of India and WTO negotiators in the Uruguay Round, Mr. SP Shukla, reminds us, as in December 1988, at ministerial level in Montreal had the same divided on the issue of patents.

But, he said, in Montreal, “the Government of India has failed bilateral pressures, particularly from the USA, withdrew its opposition and agreed in April 1989 on the material aspects of property rights intellectual in the negotiations … The seeds of the WTO system, coercive measures, which in 1995 were sown in April 1989, ironically, soon after, and despite the success of manoeuvre at the Montreal meeting. “Mr. Shukla warns that the USA are enormous bilateral pressures on Brazil, China, India and South Africa to cancel its victory of Cancun.

Furthermore, continue to invest part of the WTO system. The study groups formed on these issues during the year in Singapore in 1997. It is only that the study groups are not yet in “negotiations”. This situation will prevail until an explicit resolution of deposit investments of the WTO is adopted.

Developing countries have been able to maintain investments of the WTO in Cancun, only because of the intransigence of developed countries on the issue of agricultural subsidies. They asked for concessions in agriculture in exchange for the inclusion of one or more of the Singapore issues at the WTO. Rich countries, particularly the USA, could not, because this compromise on the presidential elections in the USA in 2004. But it can accept this compromise in the future. This is not an advantage for poorer nations, such as the role of agriculture in the global economy has dropped dramatically. According to the World Development Report, the share of agriculture in the GDP of rich countries is 6 per cent in 1960 to less than 1 per cent in 2001. And for developing countries, it has fallen by 48 per cent to 23 per cent.

Thus, the reluctance of rich countries for agriculture is really with emotion. Economically, they have little to lose and much to gain in agriculture, in exchange for investments. Indeed, the collapse of Cancun, it is easier for the rich an internal consensus to “try” Agriculture in such an exchange.

It is necessary to change our strategy proactively so that we can end the small gains in agriculture and large losses on the Singapore issues. We must ask for cross-border trafficking of individuals instead of seeking concessions in agriculture.

In both rich and poor nations are poor towards poverty reduction. The rich say that the welcome is investment, transfer of capital in poor countries in order to facilitate and increase their wealth and reduce poverty. That can not happen because:

– World capital can no longer travel to poor countries;

– The long-term exposure to repatriate profits May débilitent economies and

– The predatory nature of multinational kill national entrepreneurship and an economy dependent. On the other hand, poor countries feel that agriculture, the opening of their open new markets, leading to higher prices for their agricultural products and improving their conditions of farmers. This should not happen again, because:

– Prices for agricultural products would decline as the growing competition between poor countries;

– There are limited opportunities for investment in agriculture, and therefore low potential to generate high incomes.

– The share of agriculture in the economy is declining.

These links doubtful on improving the prosperity must be abandoned. Eminent economist Mancur Olson showed that the increase in world income would be equally, if not more, by the free movement of natural persons as the free movement of capital. Some difficulties are noteworthy in this regard.

First, it is said that a multilateral agreement on free movement of labour allows free access to undesirable elements as terrorists. This can be processed into a right to deny access to certain people or groups. The USA, for example, can say it does not give free movement of certain groups.

Under pressure from local industrialists who fear they are losing out to foreign competition, the Indian government is reviewing a number of free-trade pacts, including those pending with Thailand and Asean.

“Bilateral agreements having divergent standards with different countries may not help India remain competitive in the international market,” said R.V. Kanoria, a international trade expert with the Confederation of Indian Industry, a New Dehli-based trade group.

“Liberalisation of tariffs by the Indian government should be calibrated with internal reforms in labour, infrastructure and agriculture,” he said in an interview with the Bangkok Post.

In October 2003, India signed a signed a limited trade deal with Thailand that came into effect in September 2004. Under the so-called “early-harvest” agreement, which expires in 2008, Indian and Thai firms can freely import and export 82 items. The deal calls for tariffs to be reduced by 50 percent in 2004-05, 75 percent in 2005 and 100 percent in 2006.

Bilateral trade in these 82 items consequently doubled to US$430 million in 2005 from $217 million in 2004, with Thailand recording a trade surplus of $253 million.

The lopsided numbers soured the Indian business community, particularly the automotive components makers, and talks on a more comprehensive deal that would cover thousands of items has since stalled. Recently CII said it was working to modify existing FTAs and implement a new set of industry recommendations for future trade deals, while claiming that multilateral agreements under the World Trade Organisation would benefit the country more than bilateral agreements.

“Toyota, Honda and Procter & Gamble are the three multinational corporations that have benefited the most from the Indo-Thai FTA,” said Sharif D. Rangnekar, an economic analyst and editor of the Indiabiznews.com website.

He added that “these three companies find the logistics of doing business with India rather attractive because they have major manufacturing units in Thailand and find it easy to launch their products in India”.

Indian products, on the other hand, “don’t have a large market in Thailand even if they have the required certification,” Mr Rangnekar said, explaining that this is partly due to the fact that India’s population of 1.1 billion dwarfs that of Thailand.

Criticism of the India-Thai FTA has come from a wide range of sources, including industry groups, independent research think-tanks and columnists. In 2004, the National Council of Applied Economic Research slammed the pact, primarily because of the complicated issue of “rules of origin”. It also questioned if the “early-harvest” agreement is compatible with WTO rules.

Last year, India’s Ministry of Commerce undertook an impact assessment study of the limited trade scheme with Thailand, which analysed trade flows and drew inferences for the future. The Tariff Commission also submitted a similar study to the federal Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion in New Delhi.

The CII committee headed by Mr Kanoria will soon come up with guidelines for the Indian government to consider before negotiating FTAs. These are expected to include guidelines relating to negative list, common floor prices and rules of origin.

A survey by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), one of the largest apex industry associations in India together with the CII, found in 2005 that imports from Thailand rose phenomenally under the limited FTA, while exports from India to Thailand actually declined.

Icon NR Narayana Murthy, often Infosys as a shining example for economic reforms undertaken during the year 1991, said economic liberalisation has not touched the arm and did not make sense, except to address their needs commodities.

“I always tell my colleague Nandan (Nilekani, CEO of Infosys), he’s funny in this country, that we can buy, regardless of the BMW … … We have 800 TV channels … This “The chairman and Chief Mentor of Infosys said.

“But the real progress of India did not take place because the reforms have not yet reached the poor,” he said in a book Release function here today.

“Unless you on the basic needs of the poorest of the poor, which is decent for primary and secondary education, decent health care and adequate food … All of this (reforms) makes no sense” .

Murthy, one of the most admired country, driver’s license, wanted to censor with the authorities for not delicensing primary and secondary education in the country.

“One of the strange things that I did not understand (and) I have in the centre of many ministers, including Prime Minister - I have no answer - why delicensed our industrial sector in 1991. But today, our primary and secondary education is not delicensed “.

“If you want to start an English medium school, you must obtain permission from the government. If you want to start a university, it must be authorized by the central government. It makes no sense,” laments - he says.

“Unless we are quite delicense the primary and secondary education, unless we create an environment where more and more investment in primary health care, I do not think we can really asserting that the reforms hugs. ”

Murthy expressed the view that in urban areas, where the market and competition, the government did not need the primary and secondary education.

But in villages control of schools are required to associations of parents.

Referring to a study, said that lasts 89 days, a company in India, it is out rued that the responsibilities at government level, is under no obligation to report to the government and bureaucracy.

The evidence of positive effects of economic reforms, India said Murthy, there are signs on a strong market in the world.

“Who had thought that as a private bank, Icici Bank SBI to exceed market capitalization?” “Who would have ever thought that people would be to sell your mobile home? Who had ever thought it would be adverstisements, said: “We are going with 800 television channels.

He recalled that three foreign banks has declined to grant a loan of Rs 50 lakh Infosys to import computers in the year 1982, and a year later, the company is not as a telephone.

“Who would have thought that you (today) banks arrive at Infosys and Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, day after day, on loans?”.

He said that economic reforms has been a paradigm where the focus has been on producers to consumers. “This is the first sign of a strong market, in which the consumer is the hallmark,” Murthy added.

Perhaps Mumbai Happening to the hip and global financial and maybe some competition, Singapore and Dubai? Given the City of bröckelt infrastructure, you are forgiven for thinking this is another future of music.

But Top-20 forces of USA and India believe that it is in the realm of possibility. And on March 2 William Harrison, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Sons, a report on exactly as India and the USA should consider improving the “enabling environment” for operations India, which is on strengthening capacity of financial sector in Mumbai.

That was part of the work, the Presidents of 20, Manmohan Singh and Bush met at the White House. And while the top-Presidents of India accompanies hour, Washington, a selection of the best Presidents and the USA are of the opinion that a trip to India by Mr. Bush at the beginning of March 1.

For the moment, it consists of five Top 10 Presidents, and it is anticipated that over time we stop the train. On March 2, Bush and Manmohan are scheduled for the Presidents of their delegation-level discussions and a one-to-house in Hyderabad.

The idea of the President “to circumvent the forum has been steady and commissions from government, you learn the heart of the problem - like India, more friendly investor, which ideas directly to the heart of the USA and Indian entrepreneurs .

Manmohan’s court was easy for them - and I think Think big, out of the box. The Presidents report thereon, such as India, for a hot destination for USA business will focus on six areas - physical infrastructure, energy, security, human resource development, technology, Trade and investment and intellectual property.

After his meeting with donors of order, the President is expected that intensive meetings with leaders of India and the USA economic dialogue, Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Al Hubbard.

While Bush hobnobs with India, the CEO are geschlitzt long for the same calendar, with Montek Singh, Kamal Nath et al eat and drink the leading U.S. business. There are good reasons.

The U.S. exports to India rose by 30% during the last year, compared to an increase of 20% of exports from India to the USA - all trade is still a miserable 40 billion dollars (including goods and services), a fraction of the US-China-commerce.

Indeed, it is because the home can not place Hyderabad 70 people, that the PM’s lunch for George Bush Taj Palace for a flexible assessment of the list of 150

And when it does not attempt to solve nuclear issues with Singh, M. Bush is also in Hyderabad, for part of the March 3, an initiative of knowledge in agricultural production university.

Then, on the Indian School of Business, where apart from a High-Tech event, Bush takes a selection of 20 of the best young Indian entrepreneurs. And then to Pakistan at the 4th March.

US President George W Bush on Friday said that American relation with India was closer than ever before. He also said India in the 21st century is the natural partner of the United States of America.

He said that the partnership between India and the United States begins with democracy. The Indian Americans have made tremendous contributions in various fields.

Earlier in the day, the US President ruled out protectionist measures to address domestic concerns on outsourcing and favoured easy access for Indian students to American universities and schools.

“I have taken a position, the US will reject protectionism. We won’t fear competition. We welcome competition,” he said interacting with young entrepreneurs at the Indian School of Business, which has collaboration with Wharton School and Kellog School of Management.

Noting that people lose jobs as a result of globalisation, Bush said, “Losing job is painful. But the fundamental question is how the government reacts.”

He said one way was to resort to protectionist laws and the other was to educate people so that they found jobs in the 21st century.

“Let us make sure that pro-growth economic policies are in place — it means low taxes, less regulations, fewer lawsuits and wise energy policies,” the US President said…

…

Bush said globalisation provides “great opportunities” and asserted that his country would not “pull back” from competition.

Highlighting India’s importance in terms of business, he said the country had a 30 crore middle class market.

“If we make a product they want at a reasonable price, it becomes viable. It will have a market in India,” he said, adding the people of America should maintain their confidence about their future.

Bush, whose audience included several entrepreneurs educated in the US, said the American Universities and colleges should be accessible to Indians.

He said it helps change the perception of the country. “We welcome people to the US so that you can see first hand good side and bad side and you can draw your own conclusions.”