US MBA -a panacea for India's growing hunger for managers?

Steve Hamm of Business Week in an article earlier this week

India faces a slew of business challenges, including its infrastructure deficit, salary inflation in the IT sector, and high attrition rates in IT and BPO. But perhaps its biggest HR challenge is developing and deploying the next generation of middle managers. With the top Indian IT companies growing into sprawling global behemoths with 60,000 to 80,000 employees, large numbers of middle managers are needed to keep these huge organizations running efficiently. Right now, most of these managers are grown on the job. But, for the industry to continue to flourish, India will need to graduate far more high-quality MBAs than it does now. "

He prescribes

“ The US has a great higher education system. India has a fast-growing private sector hungry for young managers. It’s a true win-win—but only if the barriers come down and the American institutions make bold moves into the Indian market. “

Isnt this too a simplistic solution?

Me thinks an high quality MBA is great only for youngsters to have a very good insight into how a business works-and more importantly-to appreciate how different functions need to be integrated to leverage on the latent strengths of the organization-to be able to be proactive in a globally competitive world. (and,ofcourse, the alumni network helps in opening many doors right thru one's career and is perhaps the single most critical take away !! )

It is operational excellence and the performance on the job that’s more relevant. And especially in the Indian context-where even –where the core strategy/marketing/finance roles are still the bastion of the corporate office elsewhere- and it is only the R&D/operations/back office/ support /transactional chunks are being outsourced

There are a lot of unsung MBAs in non IT/non ITES industries-who are perhaps languishing in the lesser glamorous industries..who would be a greater fit for the ramping up/consolidation phase of most of the MNCs now present in India!

Till then, I suspect-most MNCs would look at the familiar solutions...it is a great boost for returning Indians/ those aspiring of relocating to India!