Thiruvananthapuram: Grassroots MBA, a concept that had worked wonders for poor women in Caribbean Islands like Jamaica, has been recommended to stoke entrepreneurial spirit in the rural areas of the state. The Planning Board, which has mooted the idea, wants 'grassroot MBAs' to be created with the involvement of top business schools like Kozhikode IIM and Indian School of Business. It is felt that the ground is fertile in the state for the introduction of the grassroots experiment in managerial education. “We already have lower middle class women engaged in various entrepreneurial activities through the Kudumbashree project.
We are attempting to take off from such experiences,” a top Planning Board official said. Tourism is another area where local-level enterprise is growing in the state. (The grassroots MBAs in Jamaica, mostly women, are mainly in the field of tourism.)The Grassroot MBA project has been recommended as a measure to add to the employment and skills development activities of the state. The experiment will not just inculcate entrepreneurial fervor among youth but it also “up-skill” persons at the bottom of the pyramid.
That unemployment among the skilled is increasing is the biggest argument for grassroots MBAs. As per the figures of the Directorate of Employment, the number of professional and technical work seekers as on September 2012 is '1.70 lakh. Data as on September 2014 reveals that ITI certificate holders and Diploma holders together constitute 89.10 percent of the total professional and technical work seekers.
“This indicates that unemployment is increasing among skilled persons,” a report of the Planning Board states. The number of registered engineering graduates’ increased from 8,143 in 2010 to 14,477 as on September 2014. This suggests another failure of the system. “Our youth are not appropriately trained,” the source said. “The need of the hour is to develop appropriate training modules for the development of both skills and managerial capabilities,” he added. The trick is to pull out entrepreneurs out of wage/salary earners.
