A humor piece

By oohi ashu

I am a big fan of my friend Rajaram. Armed with an MBA from Harvard Business School (aka HBS -- the two-third of which is BS) and a two-year stint at McKinsey & Company's New York office, Rajaram happens to be a living, breathing example of a young Nepali nationalist's returning to his native country to use his capitalist training to fly the socialist "Afno Nepal Aafai Banau" program to the Himalayan heights.

"I am going to open up a business school," Rajaram informed me over chicken chilly and chilled San Miguel. "Not just any business school. But THE business school of South Asia ... the one with the best all-around curriculum to train the best and the brightest Nepalis to make as much money as they can."

Well, well, well. How could you possibly disarm such charm? No way, right? So, wide-eyed, I kept on chewing and nibbling on the boneless chicken chunks.

"You see, I have two problems with top American MBA programs," Rajaram continued. "First, they are only good at cranking out graduates to take charge of IBM, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs and other big-name companies. What this means is that our own Gorkhali students in the US never get to practice how to run and profit from Nepal-compatible businesses that can only bloom in our kind of economy. And the other problem is that so widely has the generic American MBA model been copied, even at Nepali management colleges, that there isn't much room to teach and learn native skills that are necessary to profit from a business... any business... in Nepal."

From a Hahvahd grad throwing me a free dinner at Nanglo Rooftop Restaurant, all this sounded impressive indeed. But what kind of skills was Rajaram talking about? And how would his business school teach them?

"Well, let me not bore you with abstract ideas," smiled Rajaram."Here, why don't you look at something concrete?"

With that, Rajaram clicked open his briefcase on the table, and took out a blue folder. He pulled out a few sheets of paper and pushed them forward. I had no choice now but to put down my fork and pick up the neat, fresh-off-the-Jagadamba-press pages.

"To earn an MBA at the Rajaram Business School (RBS), you must give an up-front donation of Rs. ten Lakh (1,000,000), exclusive of tuition and other fees, to the institution," read the first page.

On page two was: "The faculty and the staff of the RBS FORCEFULLY recommend that all RBS MBA candidates take all of the following courses, each of which has been carefully designed to teach only the necessary professional skills that the students are most likely to make use of in the big, wide world of Nepali finance, commerce and business. Case-studies have shown that the lessons learnt in these courses can also be applied in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh for equally, if not more, lucrative results."

So far so good. Now on to the names, numbers and the descriptions of the "challenging courses at the Rajaram Business School."

FINANCE 420: "An Introduction to Black Marketing"

Just as fish need water, Nepali businessmen dreaming of profits need black markets. Finance 420 will sharpen your skills to evade the formal market to buy and sell dollars, movie-tickets, sugar and all kinds of commodities. Learn ways to smuggle gold and export ancient and neglected idols. Master 101 ways to hobnob with the politicians, charm the police and seduce the customs officers to bend the laws and the rules in your favor.

MANAGEMENT 530 : Fundamentals of Cartels and Monopolies

Competition is bad for your business. In Management 530, learn how to get together with your alleged competitors to form a cushy all-Nepal association of your trade. Doing so, makes it easier for you to fix prices and devise ways to deter newcomers from entering your industry. Learn how you can pass on your costs to the consumers by driving up the prices and thereby capturing huge producers' surplus. Discover ways of killing anti-competition bills, and learn to protect your expanding millions and comfortable monopolies.

SCIENCE 150: Physics and Chemistry for Business

Science 150 will teach you to mishandle the weights, the measurements and the "taraju" to your ultimate profit. Get paid for one kg of rice when you sell only 950 grams; collect money for one liter of kerosene when you give out only 900 milliliters. Also, get a solid grip on the 101 ways to throw in all kinds of impurities in various kinds of food and sell them all as "taja, taja suddha, suddha" stuff.

SOCIOLOGY 290 "Creating the "Afno Manchhe" Network

In Nepal, nothing gets done without an "Afno Manchhe". That sums
up the best-selling insight of anthropologist Dor Bahadur Bista. Sociology 290 will train you to apply Bista's theory by teaching you ways to cultivate the afno-manchhe network by personal visits, flattery, gifts, favors, bribes, extortions, threats and "chakari". Learn how to win friends and influence people in all the right places -- from the political parties to golf clubs, from the HMG bureaucracies to the airport. After all, the more afno manche you have, the more insider information you will have. And the more insider information you have, the more rapidly your business will grow.

MARKETING 101: Giving Hell to the Customers

Remember, the customer is there in Nepal to serve you; you are not there to serve the customer. As such, figure out ways to prey on that vulnerable, believing-everything and never protesting idiot called the Nepali customer. Find out how to sell foodstuff such as biscuits that carry no date of manufacture, no date of expiry, and no mention of ingredients and other mis- and missing information. Learn how to hoard scarce commodities now to sell later for huge profits. Also, practice the fine art of humiliating Nepali customers by loudly shouting at them, "Janoos, janoos, you don't have the money to buy this." For foreign-looking patrons, however, learn to bend over backward to provide special service.

ECONOMICS 230: Policy-making for profit

Learn to fight against copy-right and patent bills. Imitate and steal other people's products, goods, ideas and styles without paying them any fees. Learn to say no to quality, customer service and reliability. Get the inside tips on how to produce quality goods only for export, while dumping shoddier products on the general Nepali public. Master ways to manipulate the inside info on various shares. And be well-versed in ways you can influence the government, of any political party, to help you get away with the least of taxes, that is, if you must pay any at all.

POLITICAL SCIENCE 350: Entrepreneurship in Infant Democracy

Not many people know that Nepal's democracy has opened up lots of opportunities for business. Learn, for example, how to run the highly profitable "julus for hire" business. Find out how the lazy days of Nepal Bandh can be turned into busy days of business by hand-delivering DVDs, cards for Marriage game, beer and ?sekuwa? to Kathmandu?s newly-rich. Discover ways to win the contract to supply paan to Kishunji for life; and beer, whisky, cigarettes and luscious babes to other political leaders who spend all their waking hours thinking of ways to make Nepal as developed as Singapore.

ECONOMICS 345 The Subtleties of Maoist Thought

The karya-kartas of CPN-Maoist have threatened to burn down our school if we don't offer this advanced course. So we have no choice but to teach this course. This course, conducted by a comrade whose name we can't divulge, will teach you the guerilla tactics that you need to survive in corporate jungle. Learn how to call up company-wide bandhs and hartaals when you don't get what you want. Master ways to cadge free dinners and lunches from villagers, and extort money from salary-wallahs. Know how to.call your bosses "you, reactionary dogs" every time they worry about markets and profits. Yes, free market in this course really means free market, as everything is available for free. Extra motivated students will be taught the fine art of looting banks and the houses of capitalist fat cats who wallow in their bourgeoisie squalor.

ANTHROPOLOGY 201 The Mystery Called Marwari

Why are Nepali businessmen so jealous of the Marwaris? What makes the Marwaris allegedly so successful? Explore these concerns in depth by studying the history, family networks, religious rituals, immigration patterns, language, sex life and the business practices of the Marwaris, Nepal's most prosperous minority. Do not just sit back and criticize them; you too can learn all their clever tactics to beat them at their own game. By the end of Anthro 201, you will be able to sell Banarasi saris even to the Marwaris.

RELIGION 103 Desperately Seeking Protection

Learn to run away from competition against better and stronger foreign or domestic companies that can give quality goods at lower prices to customers. Whip up the sentiments of nationalism, patriotism, ?unfair competition?, socialism and "Naulo Janabad" to raise tariffs on imports. The idea behind seeking protection is that when you block competition from outside yet are free to create internal monopolies, you are all set to make millions from idiotic Nepalis who have no choice but to buy your products at prices you dictate.

ETHICS 175: The Brighter Side of Child Labor

For the purpose of sponsoring NGO conferences once in a while, Ethics 175 will teach you to be against child labor in theory. But come on, who are we kidding (pun intended!)? Children, after all, are too tempting a source of unused labor: They eat less, take up little space, are easy to train, don?t need pension and health benefits, can be yelled at, and don't hit back when slapped and beaten. All these make their services cheaper and easily replaceable. In this course, you will learn to justify child labor as a self-less act of social service: Think, for example, if you don?t hire the child, what will his parents eat?

Well, talking about eating, the chicken chunks on my plate were already cold by the time I finished going through Rajaram?s catalog. And what could I say, except to be lost in the thought that with management gurus like Rajaram, our beloved Nepal is well on its way to be the Kera Republic of South Asia. After all, it's only through the efforts of visionaries like Rajaram who act global yet think local that a few Nepalis can get super-rich at the expense of million others.

Long live, I say, such management principles.

(This article, in a slightly different form, was published in The New Business Age monthly magazine.)