SL Raos book From Servants to Masters traces the journey of Indian management

The book traces the journey of Indian management education, and reviews the contributions of Indian management thought leaders. It also commemorates AIMAs Golden Jubilee which is being celebrated this year: the book gives AIMA due credit for its role in propagating management education in India since the late 1940s.

In the book, Rao relates economic policies in Indias development to the management organizations and methods during each stage. Starting with the practices during the British Raj to the modern day, he looks at how organizations and management thinking has undergone seismic changes.

The book is divided into nine chapters: Under the Masters: Management during British Rule; Under the New Masters: Management in the Command Economy; Managers as Masters: Freedom to Manage in a Liberalizing Regime; Creating Managers: The Role of Management Education; The Management Context: Corporate Organizations; Thought Leaders from India; Selected Achievers; Promoting Professional Excellence: The Role of AIMA and Local Management.

In a chapter titled Creating Managers: The Role of Management Education, Rao traces in great detail the history of management education in India, the issues confronting the sector in the current context and then makes recommendations for reform. Making a case for closer industry-academia interaction, Rao writes, Management is a subject that is experience-based. It must interact closely with the sector that it is teaching how to manage: whether industry, hospitals, arts or any other. Management institutions that are unable to ensure this live interaction for students through the visits of practitioners, summer assignments or faculty research projects, are not doing their job properly. Hence management institutions that have neither substantial core faculty nor are situated close to the sector that they are teaching how to manage are unlikely to be offering useful teaching.

Some of the management thought leaders from India who now have a global influence have been talked about in the book: people like CK Prahalad, Ram Charan, Vijay Govindarajan, Rakesh Khurana, Sumantra Ghoshal, Udai Pareekh and Krishna Palepu.

Commenting on the book, R Gopalakrisknan, Executive Director, Tata Sons, said, As professional management comes into powerful focus in India, Raos book tells the story of its evolution in a collage of fact, perspective and commentary. A terrific must-read for all aspiring and practicing managersif you dont understand the journey, how can you reach the destination?

And now, something more about the author. SL Rao was part of the founding team of the Delhi Universitys department of business administration that was set up in 1955 and is now called Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) Delhi. He was the first executive chairman of the National Management Program at MDI Gurgaon. He was adjunct faculty at different times at Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Mumbai, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, and IIMBangalore, and has served on the boards of the Bharathidasan Institute of Management (in Tiruchirapalli), MDI Gurgaon, IIM Bangalore and IIM Lucknow. Other than that, he has been president, Madras Management Association and Association of All India Management Association.