Inclusive Education

My colleague Dr. T.N.Ravi, an eminent scholar, and I presented a paper at the 2011 IACBE Asia Regional Conference on July 16, 2011 at Alliance University, Bangalore, India. The title of the paper is "Academia-led Industry Interface: The Pro-active Initiatives for Inclusive Education and Employment Opportunities".

In India our micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) contributes almost 8 - 10% of our GDP. The majority of these enterprises are unlisted firms and sole proprietorship in nature, and mostly family owned businesses. Traditionally these businesses have been running maybe for a very long time but somehow the experience of running these businesses have not been brought under the ambit of business education.

A petty trader or grocery shop owner (the mom-n-pop stores) does mainatain the business' cash receipts and payments in a rough format without even realizing the potential benefits of maintaining his books of accounts using a simple double-entry book-keeping system. If he can be taught how to do so, and get guidance to maintain his business transactions he can easily ascertain his profits, cash flows and determine his financial position.

This simple step can give him better eligibility to avail business/trade credit from the public banks at a lower rate of interest and bring him under financial inclusion. This cannot be achieved through a formal setup (which is more prevalent) and needs a non-formal channel for delivery. Inclusive education conventionally have covered only school drop-out children, children with disability, are from ethnic minorities, or are underprivileged. It failed to cover the target beneficiaries like petty traders, shopkeepers, farmers, women, daily wage labourers, etc.

The pro-active initiatives by the business management schools, partnering with industry, can be at the center for non-formal inclusive education for the otherwise neglected classes and help them to scale up their businesses by imparting simple but practically important things.