Indore, Oct. 25: The roads can stay potholed. Madhya Pradesh believes it has found the easy way to attract investment — by getting IIM Indore students to campaign for the state before big business.

The Shivraj Singh Chauhan government has drafted 150 students from Indore-based B-schools to tell 400-odd businessmen at its “global investors’ meet” why they should invest in the state.

Chauhan is confident that the two-day event that begins here tomorrow will translate into MoUs worth Rs 100,000 crore.

“Madhya Pradesh is at the take-off stage. We have several advantages like cheap manpower, easy connectivity, industrial peace, adequate mineral resources, surplus power, land and industry-friendly government,” he said.

However, most of the roads in and around Indore, down which the 120-odd NRI and foreign businessmen as well as other delegates will travel, are in poor condition. Heaps of soil and construction material line the roads everywhere — under welcome banners tied to logs of wood — speaking of the patchwork repairs that were attempted and then abandoned.

At the meeting venue, a thin, green piece of cloth has been spread across the coarse ground between the entrance and the auditorium. The preparations have been “poor”, even some senior ministers admitted.

The idea of getting the B-school students — including those from the Indian Institute of Management and Prestige Institute of Management and Research — as cheerleaders came from public works department minister Kailash Vijayvargiya. “They were keen to be part of the global meet to showcase Madhya Pradesh and Indore before the investors. So many students wanted to join that I had to discourage them,” said the minister, who is from Indore.

IIM Indore director G.P. Parashar said a workshop was held recently to train select students and brief them about the state’s policy initiatives in IT and other sectors.