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Cover Story
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B&E
An MBA for PM?
Politicians would have been the least expected to have mba qualifications. B&e’s priyanka rai found out quite a handful...
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 Lawyers have dominated national politics since at least the days of the struggle for Independence. A look at the educational qualifications of the new council of ministers shows the first signs of a culture change in Indian politics. Today, we have many with a black cap showing off their MBA degrees – at least three ministers from the young brigade, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot and Jitin Prasad are MBA graduates. In fact, many young MPs like Deepender Singh Hooda, Naveen Jindal, Milind Deora and P. D. Rai also belong to the not expected MBA brigade.
Deepender Hooda, son of the Chief Minister of Haryana and a Member of Parliament from Rohtak constituency believes that his MBA degree helps in adding value to his political career in many ways. “It helps you definitely; it trains your mind to adopt a particular approach to deal with situations in a more organised way. You get the bigger picture of the situation and you know then how to approach [the problem] in what way and solve it in very organised manner,” says Hooda. However, Jitin Prasad, Minister of State for Gas and Petroleum, also an MBA, though not denying the benefits an MBA degree has in politics, tales a different perspective, “I would like to see this in a different way that whosoever is entrusted with the responsibility in the electoral politics, a good education background always helps – whether it is a Law Degree or a Management Degree or some other qualification.
To take a conscious and judicious decision, a mix of your education as well as a sense of ground reality is always helpful.” But then, if contemporary politics is all about leadership skills and decision making abilities, wouldn’t having an MBA degree really help? “You start thinking in terms of projects not profits. There are many politicians I know with good intentions. They want to work but fail to deliver because I believe, they get engrossed in the process. Their approach, thinking is more process oriented whereas the other approach is deadline oriented (result oriented),” explains Hooda, who has worked with Reliance Industries Ltd, Infosys Technologies Ltd. (as a Software Engineer) and with Sabre Holdings, Dallas (USA) for two years. Hooda admits that he gains by applying the MBA strategies learnt in work to his constituency as well: “I apply the knowledge I have gained from my education, apply the strategies and I get the work done on time in my constituency.”
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 P. D. Rai, Member of Parliament from Sikkim, agrees that his knowledge helps him to do better planning with the funding he gets for performing activities in his constituency. “MBA is a capability qualification and so it can be said that analysis of issues would be done perhaps differently. An MBA is a professional degree and the attainment of professional outcome and values will certainly impact my own Parliament work and indeed in my political work. The domain is different but the principles of how to manage political issues versus say business issues do not change. In my own Parliamentary constituency, Sikkim, over the last 17 years, I have painstakingly built my political career and have balanced it with my professional work. This has been possible because of my educational qualifications.”
This is not to say that an MBA is essential in politics – in fact, it is not at all. For example, Rahul Gandhi, who formally joined politics in 2004 and has emerged within five years as a key strategist for the party, is not an MBA. But then, he too has worked as a consultant for a few years with management guru Michael Porter’s Monitor Group.
An MBA is becoming a more popular degree among current politicians in the US as well, especially experts in finance or management analysis. The most powerful woman in corporate America, Carly Fiorina, who once headed HP, plans to run for the US senate. She says that government spending is “out of control” and she may be able to make things better. Anne Mulcahy, Chairman Xerox, is a member of Obama’s Transition Economic Advisory Board. But popularity aside, from Manmohan Singh to Obama, it’s quite an accepted fact that qualifications in law, finance and related sciences beat management education hands down when it comes to the political circles. But then again, we have Chidambaram who not many know is an MBA graduate from one of the world’s topmost ivy league institutions, the Harvard Business School. Clearly, maybe one day, we could well have a Prime Minister who’s an MBA.
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