blatant manifestation of the management principle of making money. For all of Arindam’s tendency to evade questions about his businessby referring to the elite IIM mafia, it was true that the initial criticism had been started by Bansal, an IIM Ahmedabad graduate and then picked up by Sabnis, who had studied at IIM Lucknow. It was equally true that there was a marked element of snobbery in the remarks of the bloggers. Along with the more substantive criticism of IIPM and Planman, there were many comments on the way Arindam and his acolytes dressed and spoke, with an element of resentment and surprise that such pretenders could claim to belong to the corporate world that most of the bloggers came from.
None of the bloggers seemed willing to consider that the corporate practices they cherished necessarily spawned imitators. IIPM had the same relationship to IIM as knock-off goods do to branded products, which is to say that there is always a market for the knock-off version among the aspirational crowds. In other ways too, the cult represented by Arindam – and the bloggers were puzzled by the vehemence by which IIPM students, the people apparently being defrauded, defended him – was only part of the larger cult that was India Shining.
Arindam’s management factory produced something less tangible but more resonant than durables or consumer products. It took people who aspired and had a fair bit of money but little cultural or intellectual capital and promised to turn them into fully fledged partners of the corporate globalized world. The students at IIPM were not from impoverished backgrounds. They couldn’t have been, since the courses were expensive. Many came from provincial towns, from small business families that had accumulated wealth and were canny traders and now felt the need to upgrade themselves so that they could compete in the realm of globalization. Arindam gave youth from these backgrounds a chance to tap away at IBM laptops, wear shiny suits and polished shoes, and go on foreign trips to Geneva or New York. All this involved a considerable degree of play-acting, and the students spent the most impressionable years of their lives in what was in essence a toy management school – mini golf course, mini gym, mini library – but play-acting was what most of the Indian middle and upper classes were doing anyway, wandering about the malls checking out Tommy Hilfiger and Louis Vuitton.
There was an occasion when I saw the overlap between the pretenders and the legitimate management schools on proud display. One morning, I dropped in at Taj Palace Hotel, walking past the smiling women at the front desk to the venue where the Indian Chamber of Commerce was holding a marketing conference. I was there to hear a talk on ‘luxury brands’ in India by Vijay Mallya, a liquor baron, an airline owner and one of the wealthiest individuals in the world. Mallya was also a nominated member of parliament, and when he arrived at the Taj Palace Hotel, he came with gun-toting government bodyguards in tow. A crowd of photographers and cameramen followed him, trying desperately to record every facial crease and every sparkle of his diamond earrings as he walked to the stage.
Mallya had a pale, fleshy face with a salt-and-pepper goatee, and his hair was rakishly long at the back. He was a portly man, handsome in a grizzled lion sort of way, keenly aware that his status in that gathering was something close to royalty. When a panellist asked him to share his ‘wisdom’ with the crowd, he began a rambling speech that contained words shouted out very loudly, which, when I looked at my notebook later that day, seemed to come to this:
VODKA – WINE – YOUTH – ROCKING – DEMANDS – DRIVES – SMIRNOFF – ROMANOFF – SURVIVE – WHITE MISCHIEF – CAMPAIGN – EVE TEASING – FUN – MISCHIEVOUS – BORE – OLD-FASHIONED – POISON – YOUNG – DARING – CONTROVERSIAL – POISON
LAO
.
After the speech was over,
None of the bloggers seemed willing to consider that the corporate practices they cherished necessarily spawned imitators. IIPM had the same relationship to IIM as knock-off goods do to branded products, which is to say that there is always a market for the knock-off version among the aspirational crowds. In other ways too, the cult represented by Arindam – and the bloggers were puzzled by the vehemence by which IIPM students, the people apparently being defrauded, defended him – was only part of the larger cult that was India Shining.
Arindam’s management factory produced something less tangible but more resonant than durables or consumer products. It took people who aspired and had a fair bit of money but little cultural or intellectual capital and promised to turn them into fully fledged partners of the corporate globalized world. The students at IIPM were not from impoverished backgrounds. They couldn’t have been, since the courses were expensive. Many came from provincial towns, from small business families that had accumulated wealth and were canny traders and now felt the need to upgrade themselves so that they could compete in the realm of globalization. Arindam gave youth from these backgrounds a chance to tap away at IBM laptops, wear shiny suits and polished shoes, and go on foreign trips to Geneva or New York. All this involved a considerable degree of play-acting, and the students spent the most impressionable years of their lives in what was in essence a toy management school – mini golf course, mini gym, mini library – but play-acting was what most of the Indian middle and upper classes were doing anyway, wandering about the malls checking out Tommy Hilfiger and Louis Vuitton.
There was an occasion when I saw the overlap between the pretenders and the legitimate management schools on proud display. One morning, I dropped in at Taj Palace Hotel, walking past the smiling women at the front desk to the venue where the Indian Chamber of Commerce was holding a marketing conference. I was there to hear a talk on ‘luxury brands’ in India by Vijay Mallya, a liquor baron, an airline owner and one of the wealthiest individuals in the world. Mallya was also a nominated member of parliament, and when he arrived at the Taj Palace Hotel, he came with gun-toting government bodyguards in tow. A crowd of photographers and cameramen followed him, trying desperately to record every facial crease and every sparkle of his diamond earrings as he walked to the stage.
Mallya had a pale, fleshy face with a salt-and-pepper goatee, and his hair was rakishly long at the back. He was a portly man, handsome in a grizzled lion sort of way, keenly aware that his status in that gathering was something close to royalty. When a panellist asked him to share his ‘wisdom’ with the crowd, he began a rambling speech that contained words shouted out very loudly, which, when I looked at my notebook later that day, seemed to come to this:
VODKA – WINE – YOUTH – ROCKING – DEMANDS – DRIVES – SMIRNOFF – ROMANOFF – SURVIVE – WHITE MISCHIEF – CAMPAIGN – EVE TEASING – FUN – MISCHIEVOUS – BORE – OLD-FASHIONED – POISON – YOUNG – DARING – CONTROVERSIAL – POISON
LAO
.
After the speech was over,
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