These self-made women and their rural business school—set up by Chetna Gala Sinha with a $17,500 grant from HSBC—have now caught the attention of business students around the world. Students of France’s ICN Business School are in the village on a two-month internship programme to study the concept of rural entrepreneurship and micro credit. Earlier, students from Johns Hopkins University SAIS and Harvard Kennedy School had spent a couple of months trying to understand the challenges faced by these women.

Sinha, an economist and activist who founded the Sahakari Bank, set up this B-school as she wanted the clients of her bank to be “self-sufficient and combine economic activity with educational tools and healthcare that are necessary to lead a good life”.

“I am a Yale alumni and Yale has been encouraging students to come here and understand what makes women entrepreneurs in rural India click,” she says. With requests pouring in from the University of Michigan Business School and the Yale School of Management, Sinha sees it as an opportunity to spread the word to other parts of the world. “These foreign students also help by working on the entrepreneurship programmes run by MDU,” she says.

Sinha’s big moment came when MDU found a mention in the Economist’s May 2007 Global Executive Education report that ranked the rural B-school alongside the Harvard Business School.

Padma Kuber, coordinator of these programmes, explains that the 24-odd courses are designed according to the needs of the women. “We have trainers and sometimes our students end up training the other members,” said Kuber. The course fee is an affordable Rs 100-150.

... contd.