The future for Infrastructure Management Education in India

The word ‘infrastructure’ immediately brings to mind images of roads and construction – but this is a common misconception. The field of infrastructure is vast; it encompasses roads, railways, power, water supply, airways to telecommunications, oil and gas, and so on. Infrastructure is considered as the backbone of a nation’s economy and tackling infrastructure problems is a key requirement for leveraging growth especially in developing economies like India. Amidst the changing global and domestic economic order, investments in infrastructure have become crucial in order to sustain the pace of economic growth. This has created a need for managers to lead and sustain organizations involved in infrastructure business.

Currently India is growing at a healthy rate of 8-9% per year. For a higher inclusive-growth we need to connect the 6, 00,000 villages and its 700 million rural population. Urban infrastructure needs proper housing facility, bridges, roads, business premises, water supply, drainage system, airports, railways etc.The Planning Commission of India, Govt. of India has stressed on the need and requirement of infrastructural development in India through a number of policies and initiatives for a growing economy of India. The initial projections for infrastructure in the 12th Five Year Plan (FY13-17) is at US $ 1 trillion. This indicates that there is huge investment potential in infrastructure and this certainly translates into a huge scope for careers and employment in this sector. Infrastructure is truly a dynamic sector where, exciting job openings are coming up like never before, which has started to surpass the IT boom witnessed 10 years ago.

With the government’s focus on the infrastructure sector there is going to be a need for educated professionals trained specifically in this field. The MBA (Infrastructure) programmes at most universities cover all traditional business administration disciplines such as marketing, finance, and strategy. In addition, these programmes cater to the need for a cadre of professionals with training for operation, management, and financing of infrastructure services. These provide knowledge on influencing public policy and regulatory practice in infrastructure industries. The courses are needed to be designed specifically to provide specialized training in the concepts and skills involved in the infrastructure service delivery, regulatory process, and competition policies, as well as helping the managers understand regulation from technical, economic, social, legal and political perspectives. The program not only imparts managerial skills in core subjects, but also the specialized domain related expertise in infrastructure management, contract administration and non-conventional methods of infrastructure creation. One must also learn about the financing of infrastructure projects, IT applications as well as accounting, specifically in the context of infrastructure sector.

• Uncategorized