Affordable management courses are the need for the hour, said Mr. Vajpayee in the inaugural function of Indian Business School, where the course fee is 10 lakhs per year.

Dec 3: Hyderabad: Prime Minister A B Vajpayee necessitated the need for teaching basic management skills in colleges in regional language. He described this as a "national need". He was inaugurating the Indian School of Business (ISB) at Gachhi Bowli.
"Basic management education should be affordable and not have a prohibitive price tag. I would like a serious thought to be given to fulfill this national need," he said. Aptly or ironically this appeal was made to a gathering consisting of top names in the Indian corporate world and in view of the expensive fee structure of the ISB where a 12-month course costs about Rs 10 lakhs.

Formulating affordable short-term courses in the field of management for small businesspersons are also require high priority, according to him. Mr Vajpayee said management is applicable and necessary in nation building and it cannot be confined to the corporate world. He said the country needed a management education system that enriched the skills of every one, from farmers to factory workers to corporates.

"In olden days students on completion of their education gave Guru Dakshina to their teachers. What you have done is what I call Rashtra Dakshina. This is in line with the same hallowed Indian tradition applied to modern times." PM said.
The audience were such corporate giants as Mr Rahul Bajaj, Mr Adi Godrej, Mr Anil Ambani of Reliance Industries, Mr Deepak Parekh, CEO of HDFC, Mr Aman Mehta of HSBC, Mr Anand Mahindra of Mahindra and Mahindra, Mr Y C Deveshwar, Chief of the ITC, and Mr Rajat Gupta, MD of MacKinsey and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu. ISB is Rs 300-crore venture and has been funded by corporate majors of the country with affiliation with several international management institutes.