New Delhi: In sleepy Chakradharpur, a part of Jharkhand known for its mines, a vocational course in computers is the best a young man seeking a fortune can do. So it wasn’t surprising that Ashish Gupta, now 25, a poorly paid instructor at a local computer school, decided to look elsewhere as he sought to chase his three-letter dream: an MBA, or master of business administration, the passport to a high-paying job in a bank or consumer products company and all associated trappings.
Road to fulfilment? Motorists on the highway drive past ads for a training institute. Despite the increasing number of B-schools in India, demand still exceeds supply. Ramesh Pathania / Mint
It isn’t just television that has helped fuel the aspirations of small-town men such as Gupta. Private business schools that have mushroomed across the country have played their part. At last count, there were 1,194 such schools recognized by the All India Council for Technical Education, the regulator for such schools, with a sanctioned strength of 121,919 seats.
For young men such as Gupta, such private business schools present a more accessible and, therefore, attractive option than the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs).
Gupta’s quest took him from Chakradharpur to the outskirts of Delhi—to the Institute of Productivity and Management (IPM) in Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh. He went through brochures and publicity materials—including ads released by the schools touting the salaries their graduating batch received the previous year. He liked the fact that IPM was recognized by AICTE. He liked its proximity to New Delhi, which meant access to companies. And he liked the Rs2.76 lakh a year salary, IPM—most B-schools in India are big on abbreviations—claimed as the average its graduating batch received. In Chakradharpur, 276,000 is a big number.
Aspiration road
IPM’s building, on the busy road that connects Delhi to Meerut, in Uttar Pradesh, is a relatively nondescript one in a neighbourhood where elaborate construction would appear to be a hallmark of educational institutions. Here, as in parts of Delhi and its suburbs, and indeed several parts of India, the correlation between an ostentatious edifice and the quality of education imparted within would appear to be high. And these structures reflect not just the aspirations of people such as Gupta with MBA and dollar dreams in their eyes, but also the glaring gap between demand and supply.
It is to schools such as these on the Delhi-Meerut road that students from Bihar, Jharkhand, and Jammu and Kashmir come.
Yet, when they leave, few realize their dreams.