Srinagar: The Mahatma Gandhi National Council of Rural Education (MGNCRE) and the University of Kashmir jointly organised on Sunday an online workshop to raise awareness on the importance of introducing rural management courses and programmes in the J&K and Ladakh Union Territories.
The day-long workshop was organised in collaboration with the varsity’s School of Business Studies (SoBS).
Chairman MGNCRE Dr Prasanna Kumar, Director Rural Management Prof Chethan Chittalkar, Dean School of Business Studies at KU Prof S Mufeed Ahmad, Prof Arti Guar from Chaudhary Devi Lal University, and Abilasha Bahugana from Leh were the chief resource persons at the workshop-cum-awareness programme.
In his speech, Prof Mufeed talked at length about the status of management education in the J&K UT in general and the University of Kashmir in particular.
“There is enormous scope for introducing MBA (Rural Management) in J&K to make students more employable. It can be introduced as a full-fledged course or as an area of specialisation in existing MBA programmes which can contribute towards raising awareness in rural places about the key management areas like marketing,” he said.
Prof Mufeed urged the MGNCRE to facilitate conducting case studies in rural management issues in the UTs of J&K and Ladakh.
In their presentations, Dr Prasanna and Prof Chetan discussed the significance of the rural management programmes in universities and colleges. Such programmes, they said, have to be designed to enable students to address the needs and requirements of people of the country living in the rural areas vis-à-vis rural management.
“MGNCRE is focusing on developing students as job-givers rather than job-seekers,” they said, assuring their full support vis-à-vis academics, study material, joint workshops etc. to the introduction of rural management programmes, alongside holding of faculty development and capacity-building programmes at the University of Kashmir, its affiliated campuses and colleges, and also at the NIT Srinagar.
Kumar Abhishek, J&K Coordinator of MGNCRE, gave a comprehensive presentation on the MBA (rural management) curriculum. He thanked KU Vice-Chancellor Prof Talat Ahmad, Director NIT Srinagar Prof Rakesh Sehgal, Prof Mufeed Ahmad, and faculty members of KU, Islamia College Srinagar and NIT Srinagar for extending their support to the workshop.
