Dabbawallas keep alive the lunchbox tradition, driving back home by bicycle from Churchgate Station in Mumbai. Rotman EMBA students got a taste of the service on a recent study trip.Fawzan Husain/The New York Times
Raj Bhatnagar, with 15 years in the information technology industry, manages training and business readiness for customer relationship management (CRM) projects. He is enrolled in the Omnium Global Executive MBA program at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. This is his first submission to EMBA Diary.
What separates one executive MBA program from another is not just the school reputation, the professors or the curriculum. It is the experiences the schools provide.
That's what drew me to Rotman's global EMBA program, which teaches you to be a leader in global business by throwing you right into the thick of it while providing a lifetime of memorable experiences. My program took me and my classmates to a complex, colourful and culturally rich destination for part of our studies: India.
India is my ancestral home. My parents often recount childhood stories – some of the struggles during the last years of British rule and others that represent a more innocent India, where respect took precedence over money. Today's India often leaves them distraught, yet still proud.
Going to India to visit family and as a tourist several times, I was always taken by its unparalleled hospitality. Entering an Indian home is akin to visiting family, where you instantly feel a sense of belonging and are fed beyond expectations, hungry or not.
But travelling to the country for a completely different purpose – my EMBA – was eye-opening and the most I have learned about my family's motherland.
Much to the delight of our class, especially my female classmates, the overseas module began with a visit from two female guest speakers. With the amount of negative publicity on the treatment of women in India, it was heartening to see the fire and passion with which both speakers spoke about their home country – passion that was mixed with hope that India can get past its difficulties.
There is no doubt gender inequality is still one of the biggest problems in the country. But when women are given opportunities there, they often succeed in grand fashion. I was happy the rest of the class saw that.
Indians face many other challenges and they find a way to deal with them. They experience 50 C heat, unbearable traffic and infrastructure, corruption, terrorism, discrimination and poverty, but somehow they find a way around these issues and survive. The Indian people quietly display an inconceivable resilience to nearly any challenge. My favourite word learned on this trip was jugaad – the closest English translation is "workaround." When faced with a challenge, there is always a workaround.
Guest speaker Seema Khanvilkar stoutly declared: "Whatever you have heard about India is probably true, but the opposite is also true."
We saw this with our own eyes – the extreme poverty and extreme wealth; far-right conservatism and far-left liberalism; thousands flocking to pilgrimages, others flocking to rooftop nightclubs. The list of contradictions is endless.
One of the valuable set of courses in our overseas module was about managing innovation, taught by the engaging Hitendra Patel, an innovation consultant and Rotman professor. Those cool business ideas that pop into our heads are referred to as idea fragments. This course provided a methodology to develop an idea fragment into an opportunity. It's exhilarating to huddle with your group and collectively create business opportunity maps to turn ideas into innovation.
Of the site visits we made, the dabbawala service (or lunchbox delivery and return) was the most fascinating. Students wore traditional white hats to help deliver dabbas or lunchboxes to customers at their offices in the Churchgate neighbourhood of Mumbai. The massive manpower it takes to push carts of dabbas through the narrow streets and on crowded local trains mesmerized and exhausted the entire class. With literally no use of technology, the dabbawalas collectively make less than one mistake for every six million deliveries.
The most humbling experience of the module was the visit to a school established by the SRF Foundation in the Mewat district located in the northern state of Haryana. A once regressive village is now producing engineers and skilled labour.
The young students gazing at us in awe and with beaming smiles, as if they had been awaiting our arrival for years, was both endearing and touching. The highlight was when our classmate Bruce Guo told them they are all brilliant, courageous and can become anything they want. This came from Bruce's memory of his own childhood attending a school with a similar setup in China. This was, undoubtedly, one of the most beautiful moments of our trip.
A guest speaker described the Indian experience as "an assault on all your senses." Seeing will cause shock; tasting will stimulate every one of your taste buds; smelling will leave you either suffocated or hungry; hearing will push you to dance or block your ears from noise pollution; and feeling will strike your heart in more ways than one. India leaves a permanent impression on your mind, body and soul.
Rotman's Omnium program equips you with the knowledge needed to succeed in the global business world. Yet it provides a stark reminder that in order to understand the complex global market, experience must complement theory. India has left our entire cohort enriched, stronger and, of course, more tolerant to spice.