Inaugurating the two-day Global Logistics Summit-2006 in Hyderabad, Dr Singh had a word of praise for all those who have been associated with the ISB 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 ISB and all other stakeholders concerned for their contribution to create this wonderfully creative facility. I hope the trustees and faculty at this fine institute will continue to renew the institution by investing in people," he added.
"Management education has come of age in India," noted the Prime Minister. He, however, urged for institutes like the ISB to define an 'Indian approach' to management.
"As we learn from the West and the East, we must evolve our own paradigm of management education based on our own social and cultural attributes. We must retain the relevant wisdom of the past, incorporating it into new methodologies of change. We need to develop a new idiom in management," he advised. "Think global, act local" was the Prime Minister's mantra for the ISB students.
The Global Logistics Summit with the theme "Logistics for global competitive advantage and rural growth" was organised by the ISB to mark its fifth anniversary. The Prime Minister said that the transformation of Indian agriculture and rural India would be the greatest development saga of the next quarter century.
Besides, there was a need to find new pathways to prevent degradation of land and water resources and to promote rational management of common property resources. "We have to evolve location specific and environment friendly strategies of rural industrialisation and urbanisation in our quest for sustainable and equitable development. We need fresh thinking about the management of energy resources in rural areas," he pointed out.
Dr Singh asserted that his vision was to build a new India by ensuring that rural citizens have the same quality of life as those living in cities. There was a need to accelerate the pace of rural development to create new jobs for the people who were away from cities and closer to their homes. Bharat Nirman programme was intended to build a new India.
He urged the participants to focus on the more immediate challenges of improving rural logistics, infrastructure and connectivity in order to improve rural life.
Closer interaction between researchers, managers and people on the ground who included administrators and stakeholders, was required to retain relevant wisdom of the past, to incorporate it into new methodologies of change.
Logistics would play a key role in integrating rural and urban India, contributing to employment creation and income generation, he added.
Chief Minister Dr Y S Rajasekhar Reddy said that the ISB was on its path to achieve global recognition in respect of quality performance. "The ISB has become a trendsetter right from its beginning and has earned the reputation of being one of the most prestigious business schools in India," he added.