A study in the U.S. last year showed that companies like Amazon were hiring

more MBAs than techies, because they found that a business education was

more holistic than a tech education. Which may well be the case, says deputy

editor Ashish Gupta, but it doesn’t mean that an MBA today gives a new

manager everything needed to deal with an uncertain future. Online universities, as well as companies, are also offering specific courses that will make up for what they

don’t teach you at business school. That’s on page 89.

The government is also trying to prepare its vast workforce to deal

with change. Senior sub-editor Tania Kishore Jaleel spoke to leading online

course providers which are talking to the government

(and working with some corporates) to re-skill and up-skill employees to handle

the jobs of the future in an increasingly digital environment. That’s on page 102.

Even as the government looks to change the way it works, it’s working to keep

some things the same. For one, it doesn’t plan to change the monopoly status

of one of the better performing public sector undertakings, NBCC (formerly

National Buildings Construction Corporation).

Talking of West Asia, Prime Minister Narendra Modi plans to visit Israel soon. He will be the first Indian Prime Minister to visit that country, and this is widely being hailed as a diplomatic coup. But what it will also do, says editor-at-large Hindol Sengupta, is expand India’s trade ties with Israel. Israel might be set to become India’s biggest weapons supplier ahead of the U.S. and old ally Russia, but it has a lot more to offer India than just defence, says Sengupta, who was in the Promised Land a few months ago.