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Across institutes, the Outlook survey found a number of new activities in the syllabi that go beyond conventions. "We don’t believe in classroom teaching only. Modern management requires overall human skills and a hands-on experience right from the student stage. It requires intellectual and emotional development as much as knowledge," explains B. Shukla, director (corporate resource centre), Amity Business School, Noida. In fact, Amity also evaluates its students on intellectual, emotional and personal traits. Says Naresh Kumar, CEO of the Alliance Business School, Bangalore: "We tell our students that they cannot learn management by just sitting in class. Physical and emotional development is as important."

At Delhi’s Indian Institute for Planning and Management (IIPM), students are asked to climb rocks covered with fishnets. Says A. Sandeep, dean at IIPM’s Centre for Advanced Consulting and Research: "These are like health audits at the end of which students’ physical fitness is assessed. The exercises are of course combined with managerial learning."

Amongst the various clubs for areas like theatre, advertising and the environment, IIPM has a Health Industry Club—to make students realise that good health is a prerequisite to being a successful manager. The club regularly holds a sports week when students are put through rigorous fitness routines, largely imported from commando training programmes. Fitness is also given prominence at Mumbai’s Welingkar Institute of Management and Research. "We tell our students that physical fitness leads to fiscal fitness," says director Uday N. Salunkhe. Under him, the management realised that they wanted students with ‘soft skills’, so they included psychometric tests and management games in the admissions procedure.

Salunkhe was a wizard at turning around sick units before joining Welingkar. Housed in a swish new building with rooms named Logic and Nirvana, Welingkar is now buzzing with unusual but exciting ideas. Here, students recently went on an outdoor camp and were put through management games mingled with adventure sports by mountaineer Charuhas Joshi. Even the faculty wasn’t spared: they too were put through a three-day camp where, in one of the games, an individual was made to stand on a wall and fall backwards, with the rest of the group there as a safety net. Says Joshi: "The idea is to take them out of their comfort zone and make them learn through their experiences and from each other."

Apart from physical fitness, B-schools try and ensure that their students have the right emotional balance to react to crises and work comfortably with their colleagues. At the Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business (ISB), a black belt champ runs karate classes on campus. The students are also put through a seven-day ice-breaker/induction programme in the first week of the course where they build a missile launcher using odds and ends like sticks, paper clips, and screws.... Or, they rappel down a 30-ft wall a la Mission Impossible. The idea: to break down inhibitions and help students know each other better.

Explains T.C. Alexander, dean, Xavier Institute of Management Entrepreneurship (XIME) , Bangalore: "The main purpose of these programmes is not to stereotype the student into the ‘ideal manager’s role’ but to cascade their unique talents into a dynamic skill set relevant to a manager performing in a highly competitive environment." Since the new manager is likely to work in a globalised world, business schools are paying attention to foreign language skills. At Welingkar, it is now compulsory for students to learn at least one foreign language. The hot favourites are French, German, Japanese and Spanish. Some, like Amity, have even started courses for regional Indian languages.

One area that management schools are paying attention to is spirituality amongst its students. Delhi’s Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) held an Art of Living course over6-7 days for second-year students earlier this year. Besides this, one of its faculty members, Mala Sinha, has developed a programme called the Spiritual Quotient under which students read the original and interpretations of the Isha Upanishad and then present a term paper on it. Sinha describes these workshops as transformational. "These two-day workshops bring out the very non-competitive and non-commercial personality of the students. Many of them even start crying." A truly cathartic experience.

Similarly, Bangalore’s Alliance Business School puts all its students through a week-long session on the Art of Living at the beginning of the academic session. Subsequently, students are made to go through other sessions of meditation and concentration from time to time "to fine-tune their inner faculties". Says Kumar: "We had strong endorsements from CEOs of leading companies about the effectiveness of these sessions with their managers." So, the institute decided to try it out with students to engage them into the routine right from the beginning. And the results, Kumar claims, are phenomenal. "The changes that we see after the sessions are qualitative. Our students have attained a greater degree of maturity because of this," he adds. At isb, students can choose whether they wish to take classes on yoga, salsa dancing, aerobics or all three.

Amity Business School wants to go beyond all academic linkages. The school plans to train its students in cross-cultural etiquette. Says Shukla: "Shaking hands with ladies differs from country to country. Exchanging business cards in Japan is so different from that in the US. You need to learn all that in a business school." Amity even plans to bring in chefs from abroad to introduce its students to different cuisines and the routines and disciplines associated with them. What if a business deal has to be signed over a cup of tea in Japan? Or over dinner in Korea? And since a lot of deals are signed on the golf course, Amity is planning to push students to play golf.

But at what point does one draw a line as far as the teaching these diverse skills goes? No one knows. One thing is certain, however: suddenly, mba courses have become a whole lot of fun.

By Arindam Mukherjee with Gauri Bhatia, Saumya Roy in Mumbai and Vaishna Roy in Hyderabad