From the editor

The economy is slowing down, inflation is at a 13-year-high and the central government is careening on the brink of a precipice. But this downcast picture does not appear even as a speck on the horizon of students at India's leading B-schools. Also, in stark contrast to the rest of the world, zero is not a dirty word to this universe of young adults-not surprising since the only zeros they can see appear in the last five or six digits of their (expected) future pay cheques. The sixth Business Today-Nielsen Survey of India's Best B-schools throws up a few expected findings, as well as some new trends. IIM Ahmedabad continues its reign as India's leading B-school, the sixth successive year it has held on to that position, but I must add a caveat here. The Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, was recently ranked #20 on a list compiled by London's Financial Times of the Top 100 Bschools in the world-the only Indian school to make it to that list. But it offers only one-year management courses, and, so, does not qualify for our survey, which considers only B-schools that offer two-year programmes.

Nevertheless, we have a feature on ISB, which, if eligible, would definitely rank among the best, if not at the pole position. While on the subject, let me add that IIM-A and IIMC have recently launched one-year programmes, which have already become hugely popular, prompting several other B-schools to follow suit.

You think all management grads think only about money? Well, yes and no. We have profiled two young ladies, both students of IIM-A, who have very different ambitions for themselves. As India globalises and the world "shrinks" even further into a so-called global village, managers will be increasingly called upon to manage cross-cultural teams across geographies. Can the skills required to succeed in such an environment be taught in a classroom? Our cover package, which ranks India's top B-schools, also deals with such, and many other, issues.

Malvinder Singh, erstwhile promoter of Ranbaxy Laboratories, India's largest pharmaceuticals company, has sold his flagship to Japan's Daiichi Sankyo, and has agreed to stay on in the company as a professional CEO. Why did he take this step? And what does it mean for the Indian pharma industry? Read about it in Malvinder's sweet deal. Rahul Bajaj's younger son Sanjiv has taken the recently hived off financial services arm of Bajaj Auto and carved out a significant financial services empire (read Sanjiv's Bajaj). And, as mentioned at the beginning of this letter, the feel-good factor of six months ago has been replaced by a more circumspect let's-see-whathappens kind of a feeling. So, Is the India Growth Story dead? I don't think so, though the economy will certainly go through a period of pain.