"I am delighted to be here at the Indian School of Business, and to inaugurate the Global Logistics Summit. This is my first visit to this campus. I would like to compliment all those who have been associated with the creation of this wonderful facility in Hyderabad. It has been a team effort. This is a fine example of public–private partnership and I compliment the State government, the trustees and management of the Indian School of Business and all other stakeholders for their contribution to this wonderfully creative enterprise. We need more such partnerships if we have to fulfill the challenge of building a hundred such campuses across the length and breadth of this vast country.

I have just been around the campus and am impressed by the top class facilities that have been created here. I hope these environs also inspire top quality research and teaching. I am sure each one of you who is associated with this institution, recognizes that it is easier to build facilities than to run institutions. People make institutions, rather than the other way round. We must never forget this.

I say this because in India, we have created many top class institutions but we have not been able to sustain top class effort in them. Unfortunately, many such institutions have suffered over the years because of the decline in the quality of the talent manning them. I sincerely hope the trustees and faculty at this fine institution will never forget this and continue to renew the institution by investing in people.

Management education has come of age in India. We have several institutions of international repute across the country. We probably do now have a critical mass of faculty, research and case studies to enable us to define what may be called an Indian approach to management. Management, like any discipline dealing with people, is more of an art than a science.

There is, quite understandably, a difference in approach to management philosophies and practices as developed in the United States, Europe and Japan. Perhaps one can even talk of a Chinese model of management. Clearly, there should be an Indian model too. Even as we learn from the West and the East, we must try and evolve our own paradigm of management education based on our own social and cultural attributes.

After all, one of the guiding principles of modern management is - 'think global, act local'. To be able to "act local" it is necessary to be familiar with the "local". I am sure Indian management institutions will pay greater attention to this aspect as development spreads across the country and firms and managers have to deal with an extremely diverse and rich social, cultural and economic landscape.

I say this today because your summit has a special focus on rural development. The ideas and models that may have been developed to deal with more universal urban management situations will need to be modified when dealing with rural India. The production, financing, marketing, and logistics possibilities of rural India will require new, innovative approaches, new tools of analysis and new solutions. This is the challenge for business schools and researchers. This conference addresses the issue of logistics. In a large, diverse nation such as ours, logistics is not just about time or space. Nor is it about the mechanics of movement of goods and people. Logistics is, above all, about managing people. We need to have a logistics model that reaches out to the potential in rural India a model, which delivers goods and services there in a cost effective manner, a model, which provides cost effective access for rural produce to our urban, industrial markets. Nowhere in the world does one see a paradox as immense as we have here - where agriculture contributes slightly more than 20% of our GDP but supports nearly 75% of our population. Logistics can play a key role in integrating rural and urban India, contributing to employment creation and income generation.

My young friend, Sunil Munjal, spoke about rural business hubs. I can assure him that we are now in the process of formulating the 11th Five Year Plan and therefore, the ideas association with the encouragement of rural business hubs will receive adequate attention when it comes to launching the 11th Five Year Plan next year. Sunil Munjal has experience of working in Punjab and Haryana and with the Japanese, who have developed quality control and Just in Time logistics to an art. I am sure he can offer a course at the ISB on handling multi-culturalism while managing logistics!

Before spreading your wings into rural development, our management institutions should work closely with sociologists and anthropologists to develop an Indian idiom in management. I would caution against adopting a "helicopter" model in taking modern management practices to rural areas. Grassroots experience should inform management concepts, so that new management techniques can transform grassroots practices.

The focus of your summit is on improving the competitive advantage of our rural economy. Indeed, this is also the focus of some of the most important initiatives our government has taken so far. I notice that you have devoted a session to Bharat Nirman and to providing urban amenities in rural areas.

As the global market becomes more open to the Indian farmer, we must be able to take advantage of the new opportunities. Last year the United States opened its market to Indian mangoes and so has Japan. We have to ensure that we have the logistics in place to make use of this new market opportunity. Global demand for Indian agricultural produce will be supplemented by rapidly growing domestic demand. This demand will rise in quantity and will also change in composition with rising incomes. The demand for horticulture and marine products has been on the rise. We need investment in rural infrastructure for our farmers to reach new markets. This is where Bharat Nirman has a vital role to play.

Bharat Nirman is, without doubt, about providing urban amenities in rural areas. However, it is not just about that. Bharat Nirman is something more than better rural roads, rural housing, rural connectivity, rural schools and hospitals. It is all these, but most importantly, Bharat Nirman is about building a new India. An India in which the urban-rural divide is no longer a visible one. An India in which our farming community can rub shoulders with corporate India and feel as an equal in wealth creation. An India in which our rural citizens have the same quality of life as those living in cities. This is my vision of a new India. This vision is not an empty dream. It is doable and we have to do it in our lifetime.

The change I see coming will accelerate the pace of urbanization, and we must be prepared for it. However, the coming change must also accelerate the pace of rural development so that we can create new jobs for our people away from cities and closer to their homes and hearths. This is the vision behind Bharat Nirman. Hence, while your conference may well focus on the more immediate challenge of improving rural logistics, infrastructure and connectivity, the greater challenge is to improve due quality of rural life in its totality.

This requires more than logistics, more than infrastructure modernization and more than improved connectivity. We have to invest in the capabilities of people living in our rural areas. We have to enable an agrarian transformation that will uplift millions and millions of our citizens from subsistence living into the 21st century. This, I recognize, is a heroic challenge facing administrators and managers in India today. This is, of course, not a new challenge. This has been the focus of our development effort since Independence. Indeed, we have created many institutions and policies to address this challenge. The Indian experience with rural extension services, with the Green and White revolutions and with rural marketing has been an impressive one. We have many ideas and institutions but I also recognize they have not always worked. How do we make them work? Institutions like yours should avoid the mistake of re-inventing the wheel in terms of ideas and institutions. Rather, your effort should be to see how we can retain the relevant wisdom of the past, incorporating it into new methodologies of change. This requires closer interaction between researchers, managers and people on the ground, including administrators and stakeholders. I hope your conference will address this challenge. The transformation of Indian agriculture and rural India will, I believe, be the greatest development saga of the next quarter century. We have to think big and think anew, retaining inherited wisdom and building a new edifice of creative thinking on it. We do already have many examples of good effort in agrarian transformation in different parts of the country. Be it the experience of tenancy reforms in Bengal, or of infrastructure development in Baramati; be it the experience of AMUL or of ITC's e-chaupal. These are all inspiring examples that have to be scaled up so that the entire country can be transformed. We have to find new pathways to prevent the degradation of our land and water resources and to promote more rational management of common property resources. We have to evolve location specific and environment friendly strategies of rural industrialization and urbanization in our quest for sustainable and equitable development. We need fresh thinking about the management of energy resources in our rural economy. I hope the creativity and imagination of those gathered here can help us address these challenges in a more resolute and purposeful manner. ISB has started very well, you have an inspiring vision, may you live up to that vision. I wish your conference all success."