INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT CALCUTTA

ANNUAL CONVOCATION

1nd April, 2006

Speech by
Professor Shekhar Chaudhuri
Director

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT CALCUTTA

ANNUAL CONVOCATION
Directors Speech
Mr. B. Muthuraman, our honoured Chief Guest, Mr. Y. C. Deveshwar, Chairman of
our Board of Governors, who is presiding over todays ceremony; Members of the
Board of Governors; Students and their Parents; Alumni and Distinguished Guests;
Faculty, Officers and Staff of the Institute; Ladies and Gentlemen.
It is indeed an honour and a privilege for me to welcome you all to the 41st Annual
Convocation of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. The Convocation is one of
the most important days in the Institutes academic calendar.

The whole IIMC

community, and especially the graduating students have been eagerly looking forward to
this day to earn academic recognition in the form of diplomas or titles.
We are indeed very fortunate to have Mr. B. Muthuraman in our midst today as the Chief
Guest. Mr. Muthuraman does not need any introduction. He is recognised as one of the
outstanding business leaders in the country today.

Sir, I am greatly honoured and

privileged to welcome you to grace our most important academic event. For the benefit
of all of us I wish to say a few words about his work and achievements.
Mr. Muthuraman is currently the Managing Director of Tata Steel. Over the years he has
been honoured with several awards, however, for want of time I shall mention only a few.
In 2005 he was adjudged as Business Standards CEO of the year. The award went to
him for his efforts in transforming the steel giant into one of the most efficient companies
in India and his triumphs on the global stage through aggressive acquisitions.
Mr. Muthuraman is also the recipient of the prestigious National HRD Networks
Pathfinders Award

2004 a CEO category recognition for steering a major

transformation of an organization through people and people processes. He was also

given the CEO with HR Orientation Award 2005 at the World HRD Congress held at
Mumbai.
Mr. Muthuraman received his education at two of Indias acclaimed institutions. He
graduated in Metallurgical Engineering from IIT Madras in 1966 and holds a Post
Graduate Diploma in Business Management from XLRI, Jamshedpur. He has also
attended the Advanced Management Programme at CEDEP, INSEAD, France. In 1998,
he was the recipient of the Distinguished Alumnus Award from his alma mater, IIT
Madras.
Mr. Muthuraman sits on the boards of several companies and organisations. He is
currently Chairman of Tata Sponge Iron Ltd., TM International Logistics Ltd., The
Tinplate Company of India Ltd., NIT, Jamshedpur, Natsteel Asia Pte Ltd. & Natsteel Asia
(S) Pte. Ltd., Singapore. He is Director of Tata Incorporated, New York, International
Iron & Steel Institute, Brussels, Tata International Limited, West Bengal Industrial
Development Corpn. Ltd., Tata Industries Ltd., Mumbai, and The Dhamra Port Co. Ltd.
He is also associated with several professional bodies and organisations. Currently he is a
member of the National Council of CII, President, Institute for Steel Development &
Growth, Chairman, Board of Governors, XLRI, Jamshedpur; Vice President (Ferrous
Division), The Indian Institute of Metals, Chairman, Research Council of National
Metallurgical Laboratory, Jamshedpur; Member of the Board of Governors of IIT
Kharagpur and Director on the Board of CEDEP, France.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Convocation is an occasion to communicate to our stakeholders and well wishers
how we have fared during the year so that they are assured that the responsibilities that
they have given us are being carried out satisfactorily. For want of time I shall only
mention the highlights of our various activities. Overall the year 2005-06 has been an
outstanding year. We have made progress on a number of fronts but are also aware that
much more needs to be done.

Our Programmes
The Institute offers three post-graduate diploma programmes and a doctoral level
programme leading to the title of Fellow of IIM Calcutta.
Fellow Programme in Management and Related areas
The Fellow Programme, launched in 1971 is a full-time doctoral level programme in
different fields of management and related areas. Its objective is to prepare students for
careers in teaching and research and for positions outside academics that require
advanced research and analytical capabilities.
2 year Full-time Post Graduate Diploma in Management
This flagship programme of the Institute launched in 1964 is designed to develop future
organisational leaders. The first year is committed to developing an understanding of
business fundamentals through compulsory courses spanning various disciplines and
functional areas which include economics, finance, production and operations, marketing,
management information systems, behavioural sciences and human resources; while the
second year is primarily devoted to the study of selected areas in greater depth.
2 year Full-time Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Aided Management
Eleven years ago in 1994 IIM Calcutta took the pioneering step to launch a 2 year fulltime programme called the Post Graduate Programme in Computer Aided Management.
This programme equips students with an indepth knowledge of IT and its applications
along with business fundamentals through compulsory and elective courses in IT, various
disciplines and functional management areas.
3 year Part-time Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management
This programme, launched by IIM Calcutta in 1994 is aimed at working executives to
provide them an opportunity to learn simultaneously through formal classes as well as
from their real life experience. During the first two years of the programme, all the
students undergo a set of compulsory core courses covering a wide range of disciplines

and functional management areas, which provides a foundation for the third year that is
devoted to increasing the depth of knowledge in areas of choice.
Common Admission Test (CAT)
Students are admitted to the above programmes on the basis of several criteria of which
performance in the Common Admission Test (CAT) is a very important dimension. Over
the years there has been a considerable increase in the number of candidates appearing
for the CAT. During 2003 a little more than a lakh of students sat for the CAT; in 2004
about 1.4 Lakh candidates appeared for the examination, and in 2005 about 1.6 lakh
candidates appeared for the test.
Student Profile in the PGP
During the academic year 2005-06 a total of 264 students joined the 2 year full-time PGP
which includes 200 students in the general category, 37 in the SC category and 16 in the
ST category. Also, 6 persons with physical disabilities joined the programme. Besides
these 5 NRI students were admitted into the programme. In terms of their academic
background, 93.5% of the incoming batch were from the engineering stream. A little
more than 55% of the new entrants had more than one year of prior work experience.
Elective and New Courses
IIMC prides itself on the number of electives offered to our students in the PG
programme. During the year the Institute offered a total number of 78 elective courses,
out of which 8 (eight) courses were offered for the first time. The details of the new
elective courses offered during the year are : MIS Group (3 courses); Strategic
Management Group (1 course); Finance & Control Group (1 course) and Regional
Development Group (2 courses).
Group
1)

MIS

Course Title
i)

Databases: Knowledge Discovery and Decision Support

(PGDM and PGDCM Elective)

ii)

Business Intelligence (PGDM and PGDCM Elective)

iii)

Secure Computation in E-Business (PGDM & PGDCM)

2)

RD Group

i)

Public Systems Management

ii)

Information

&

Communication

Technology

for

Development (PGDM & PGDCM Elective)

3)

Finance/OM i)

Quantitative Applications in Finance

(Cross Listed with the OM Group)

4)

Marketing

i)

Managing Retailing

5)

SM Group

i)

Strategies for the New Media Industries

Student Exchange Program

The Student Exchange Program (STEP) which was launched in the year 2000 is
continuing to be an important aspect of the PGP. Consistent with the Institutes vision the
objective of STEP is to give the students at IIMC an opportunity to understand the
emerging global trends in business, to expose them to cultural diversities, to enable them
to share their knowledge with peers in other international business schools and to extend
their academic and business networks. Under this programme selected students from
IIMC visit our partner institutions and attend classes during Term-V. Reciprocally
students from our partner institutions visit IIMC and attend classes in the PGP. During
Term V of 2005-06 thirtynine (39) students from IIM Calcutta visited various partner
institutions abroad, and a total of fortysix (46) students from those partner institutions
visited the Institute during Term-IV to Term-VI.

During 2005-06 two new MOUs for

student and faculty exchange were signed by the Institute; a) with KAIST (Korea
Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) Graduate School of Management, Korea
and b) with Cardiff Business School of Cardiff University, UK.
Academic Performance
Doctoral Programme
Ten candidates will receive the Title of Fellow of Indian Institute of Management
Calcutta. They are (1) G. S. Ramasubramanian MIS (Thesis title On conservative
approaches to learning for pattern recognition problems), (2) Satish K. Sehgal MIS
(Thesis title Finding Pareto-optimal frontier with minimum disclosure for multi-party
negotiation) (3) Arindam Mukherjee MIS (Thesis title Selected Issues on Workflow

Representation, Analysis and Verification), (4) Runa Sarkar Economics (Thesis title
Corporate Environmental Behaviour : A Comparative Study of Two Industries in India),
(5) Nilanjan Ghosh Regional Development (Thesis title A Scarcity Value based
Explanation of Transboundary Water Disputes in Water Scarce Economies), (6) Rajanish
Dass MIS (Thesis title Efficient Techniques for Real-Time Frequent Pattern Mining in
Business Applications), (7) M. Scalem MIS (Thesis title Disaster Management: A
model approach to an integrated real-time computer mediated information network
system through wireless and mobile networking as enabling technologies), (8) Sumit
Kumar Bose MIS (Thesis title Scheduling in Continuous Process Industry: Models
and Solution Procedures), (9) Tarun Bhaskar Operations Research and Systems
Analysis (Thesis title On Quality of Schedule for Resource Constrained Project
Scheduling Problem) and (10) Narasimha Kamath MIS (Thesis title Supply Chain
Management of Perishable Items: Channel Dynamics and Integrated Decision Making).
My congratulations and best wishes to them all. While we are on the Fellow Programme
I wish to inform you that Infosys has been very generously supporting us by instituting
several scholarships to Fellow Programme students. We are very grateful to them.
It is heartening to note that several of our Fellow Programme students presented papers at
international and national Conferences and Workshops during 2005-06.

The students

who presented papers are:

International Conference
Five Fellow programme students attended and presented papers at international
conferences with the financial support of the Institute.
1)

Shri Sumit Kr. Bose presented a paper titled A Heuristic Algorithm for
scheduling blocked out units in continuous processing industry: Preliminary
Results(co-authored with Prof. Subir Bhattacharya) at the biennial MISTA
conference at Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, USA
during July 18-21, 2005.

2)

Shri Arunabha Mukhopadhyay presented a paper titled e-Risk Management with

Insurance: A framework-using Copula aided Bayesian Belief Networks

presentation at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 2006 at

Poipu, Hawaii, USA during 4 7 January 2006.
3)

Shri P. Sinnakkrishnan presented a paper titled A Graph-Search Based Algorithm

for Verifying Workflow Graphs( co-authored with Prof. Ambuj Mahanti ) at the
1st International Workshop on Business Process Monitoring & Performance
Management 2005 held at Copenhagen, Denmark from August 22-26, 2005.

4)

Ms. Merlin Nandy presented a paper titled Antecedents of Website Acceptance

and Use: An Interdisciplinary View( co-authored with Prof. Sanjiv D. Vaidya ) at
the Eleventh Americas Conference on Information Systems 2005 held in Omaha,
Nebraska, USA during 11-14 August 2005.

5)

Shri Sethuraman J. presented a paper titled A Heuristic Search based Optimal

Wavelength Assignment Algorithm to Minimize the Number of SONET ADMs in
WDM Rings( co-authored with Prof. Ambuj Mahanti and Prof. Debashis Saha )
at the International Conference on Communications and Computer Networks held
in Marina Del Rey, USA from October 24-26, 2005.

National Conferences and Workshops

1)

Shri C. Ravindra participated in the Case Chase: Entrepreneurship Case

Writing Competition 2005 at ISB, Hyderabad during 14 16 April, 2005.

2)

Ms. Kirti Sharda presented a paper at the Seminar on The Development and
Management of Careers in Emerging Employment Sectors: Joining Theory and
Practice( jointly with Professor Leena Chatterjee ) on Walking the tightrope
Gender and Career issues in organizations.

Awards received by Fellow Programme students

The Indian School of Business, Hyderabad organized a case writing competition during
April 14-16, 2005. Out of a total 120 cases submitted for the competition, 15 were

finally selected as the winners of which 3 were from IIM Calcutta. The details of winners
from IIM Calcutta are as follows :
1)

Switz Foods Calcutta: Managing Survivability by Mr. Narasimha Kamath, Mr.

Munish Thakur, Professor Rahul Roy and Professor Subir Bhattacharya.

2)

Entrepreneurship at Work in an Academic Institution: The Case of WIMI

Long

Duration Executive Education by Professor Ranjan Das, Mr. C. Raveendra and

Professor Sougata Ray.
3)

Parivaar: Creation of a Social Organization by Professor Sougata Ray and Mr.

Munish Thakur.

I am happy to inform you that of the ten Fellow Programme students who are graduating
this year 3 persons have joined academic institutions (IIMA, IIM Indore and IIT Kanpur),
1 person has joined as a researcher in Tata Energy Research Institute, and 5 persons have
joined industry (Infosys, i2 Technologies, General Motors, IBM Global Services, GE
India Technology Centre).
Post Graduate Programmes
My heartiest congratulations and best wishes to the graduates of the PGDM, PGDCM and
PGDBM programmes. This year in the 41st batch 201 students will be receiving the
award of PGDM.

Shri Rajat Malhotra has secured the first rank in the PGDM

programme and will be receiving the Dr. B. C. Roy Gold Medal and other prizes for this
outstanding achievement. Ms. Neha Singh has secured the second rank and will be
receiving the Dr. B. C. Roy Silver Medal and other prizes for this outstanding
achievement. Shri Mayank Khanduja has secured the third rank and will be receiving the
Exide Award for Excellence. Their names would be placed in the Institutes Honour Roll
for this year. The other students whose name would be placed in the Institutes Honour
Roll this year are : Shri Varun Sharma (fourth rank) and Shri Nilaya Agrawalla (fifth
rank). In all 22 students of the PGDM Programme will receive prizes for meritorious
achievements in different spheres of activity.

10

Fortyeight (48) students of the 11th batch will be receiving the award of PGDCM. Shri
Aman Gupta has secured the first rank and will be receiving the IIMC Gold Medal and
Dr. Jogendra Kumar Chowdhury Gold Medal for this outstanding achievement. Ms.
Nancy Malik has secured the second rank and will be receiving Smt. Indira Chowdhury
Gold Medal. Both their names would be placed in the Institutes Honour Roll this year.
Ms. Priyanka Khurana has secured the third rank and will be awarded the ACC prize.
Thirtytwo students (32) have qualified for the award of the Post Graduate Diploma in
Business Management for the 10th Batch : session 2003-2006. Shri Bishnu Swarup
secured the first rank. For this outstanding achievement, he will receive the IIMC Gold
Medal and the Mobar Award for the best all round performance and his name will be
placed on the Institutes PGDBM Honour Roll. Shri Saikat Ray Choudhury secured the
second rank. He will receive the IIMC Silver Medal and his name will be placed on the
Institutes Honour Roll. Shri Sanjeev Kumar Kansal bagged the third rank. He will
receive the IIMC Book Prize and his name will be placed on the Institutes Honour Roll.
We are extremely grateful to various donors who have instituted the scholarships and
prizes.

These include Dr. Subir Chowdhury, one of our former Directors, Calcutta

Management Association, Dr. K. Nath Public Trust, Exide Industries, TIL Limited,
Duncan, Kolkata Port Trust, Balmer Lawrie, ABC Limited, TTK Group, DVC and Bharat
Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Aditya Birla Group, Bharati Telecom, General
Electric, Hindustan Times, the Tata Group, Mobar Group, P. C. Chandra Group, ACC,
Johnson & Johnson and Bengal Chamber of Commerce.
Co-curricular and Extra curricular Activities
Ladies and Gentlemen,
You will be glad to know that the Institute believes in the all round development of our
students. IIMC has always encouraged students to participate in and initiate major
activities that enable them to apply the knowledge learnt in the classroom and hone their
team building and leadership skills. During the year our students engaged themselves in

11

numerous co-curricular and extra curricular activities; in fact too numerous to mention
there all today. I shall only highlight a few major ones.
Intaglio - 2006
IIMC hosted the annual festival INTAGLIO to a large number of participants from
institutions within the country and abroad during December 22-26, 2005. The theme for
the festival was Motifs for Sustained Growth. INTAGLIO has evolved from a national
business school meet to one of the largest business school meet in asia which was
attended by participants from sister IIMs and management schools within the country,
Harvard, Wharton, Kellogg, Tuck, Yale, NUS and AIT.
During the festival we had eminent speakers like Mr. Ravi Dhariwal, Director - Times
Group, Mr. N. Chandrasekharan, Executive Vice President TCS, Mr. Kiran Karnik,
President NASSCOM, Mr. Sachin Pilot, MP, Ms. Kalpana Morparia, MD ICICI
Bank, Ms. Jessie Paul, GMO Wipro, Ms. Nina Nagpal, COO Morgan Stanley.
Carpe Diem 2006
The students organized Carpe Diem 2006, the annual inter-college cultural festival
during January 13 15, 2006 on the campus. The event included inter-alia a street play, a
quiz competition, music performances and a fashion show. It was a great success with
the participation of contingents from various reputed colleges and universities.
SPICMACAY IIMC Chapter
The SPICMACAY IIMC Chapter organized a classical music performance by
renowned flute maestro Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, as part of Virasat 2005
SPICMACAYs annual series of activities and events, on September 13, 2005.

Alumni Activities

12

1)

The Institute organized the Annual Alumni Meet in the campus during January 7 8, 2006. As per tradition, this meet was organized specially for the fifteenth
batch, which completed 25 years after their graduation. It was the Silver Reunion
for them. It is notable that around 60 alumni of the fifteenth batch attended the
meet; some also brought their families. The meet was also attended by alumni of
other batches, some of whom are based in Kolkata.
As part of the activities related to the reunion, Team Alumni, the team of current
students helping with arrangements for the Alumni Meet sought feedback from
alumni to select faculty for the best teacher award. I am happy to inform you that
for the second year in succession Professor Leena Chatterjee of the Behavioural
Science Group and Professor Anup K. Sinha of Economics Group, were voted the
two best teachers.
I am happy to inform you all that the 15th PGP batch used this occasion to
contribute about Rs. 12 lakhs towards the construction of the Gymnasium. On
behalf of the Institute I would like to record my gratitude to this batch. A few
alumni of other batches have also contributed financially for the upgradation of
Institutes infrastructure. I hope this is the harbinger of a new trend among our
alumni of Giving Back to the Alma mater.

2)

The PGP 11th batch held a reunion of their batch to commemorate the 30th year
after graduation during December 23-25, 2005. Around 20 alumni from this
batch, some along with families attended this meet.

3)

IIMC Chennai Alumni Chapter Workshop on Strategic Marketing: A two-day

workshop on Strategic Marketing was conducted for our PGP students by the
IIMC Alumni Chapter during October 22-23, 2005 for the 3 rd successive year.
Several case studies prepared by the chapter alumni were presented and then
discussed by the PGP students. On behalf of the Institute I wish to thank the IIMC

13

Chennai Alumni Chapter for their contributions and Professor Sudas Roy of the
Marketing Group for coordinating the workshop.
Foundation Day Celebration
The Foundation Day and Annual Prize Distribution function for the academic year 200506 was held on March 4, 2006 in the institutes auditorium. We were extremely fortunate
to have a very eminent person in Professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala to deliver the
Foundation Day lecture and give away the academic awards to the students. Dr.
Jhunjhunwala leads the Telecommunication and Computer Networks Groups (TeNeT) at
IIT Madras which works closely with industry in the development of telecommunication
and computer network systems. Dr. Jhunjhunwala was awarded the Shanti Swaroop
Bhatnagar in 1998 and the Padmashree in the year 2002. He also received a millennium
medal at the Indian Science Congress in the year 2000. Twenty-two (22) PGDM and four
(4) PGDCM students received prizes sponsored by the Institute and various companies
and trusts. On this occasion those employees who entered the 25 th year of service in the
Institute were honoured with mementos.
Initiative for Community Action (INCA)
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am very happy to inform you about an important social sector initiative of our students,
which goes to show that our students also have a strong community orientation besides
being talented budding organizational leaders. This is the Initiative for Community
Action INCA for short. This social service is voluntarily offered in the form of free
management consultancy service to voluntary organizations and others doing useful
social work under the guidance of faculty members. Students get no credit for their
projects, nor are INCA projects part of our academic requirements. But all those who
have participated in these projects have reported the satisfaction of a wonderful learning
experience.
Twenty groups participated in INCA projects this year. To name a few organization for
which projects were taken up included Ramakrishna Mission, Earthcare, CINI-Asia,

14

Karma Kutir, Ashadeep, the Social Legal Aid Research and Training Centre, Manovikas
Kendra, Netra Ashram, Sundarika Bartika, etc. The projects covered diverse areas of
management consultancy as per the requirements of the organisations. The whole
exercise involved around eighty students and twelve faculty members.
Through their projects, our students, who mass media only highlights as would be
business leaders and who are mostly judged only by their high salary levels, have been
instrumental in bringing about some change in their social environment. Three of the
projects were on education of marginalised children. Two projects focused on mental
patients, while one worked with drug addicts. Our students worked on projects to upgrade
the management of these organizations by helping them in their fund raising efforts and
improving their internal structures and processes. They have also worked on business
plans to open a new eye-care unit in Kolkata for the deprived, develop a self-sustainable
programme to support the underprivileged old age poeople under a support-a-granny
programme, and design a marketing strategy for mushrooms produced by the rural youth
of West Bengal. The last project has been chosen the Best INCA project of the year.
This was also the first year when our students decided to go beyond the physical
boundary of Kolkata by serving an organisation in Bangalore. This organisation,
Sumanahalli, helps people suffering from leprosy. Our students created a marketing and
communication strategy for marketing leather products made by the patients.
PARIVAAR
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am very happy to inform you that besides the Initiative for Community Action (INCA)
which I just mentioned there is another very important social sector initiative taken by
one of our recent graduates. Parivaar, a social service organization, was started by Shri
Vinayak Lohani, an IIT Kharagpur and IIM Calcutta alumnus of the 2001-03 batch. Shri
Lohani did not seek final placement through the Institutes Career Development and
Placement office. Inspired by the spiritual and humanistic ideals of Shri Ramakrishna
Paramhansa and Swami Vivekananda, he decided to devote his life to the upliftment of

15

homeless children. It started with just 3 children in a small rented building with almost
no financial resources, and today there are currently 162 children who have found a new
Home, Family and Future at Parivaar. Parivaar Ashram at Bakhrahat, about 30 km from
Kolkata in 24 Parganas (South) district, is spread over 2 acres of land. Currently Parivaar
runs two (2) Bal Ashrams. A facility with a capacity of 400 hundred children is now
under construction.
The children admitted into Parivaar Ashram can be broadly classified as homeless and
family less and are from categories like orphans, abandoned children, street and
pavement children, railway platform children, children from red light areas and other
such highly vulnerable children.

The children are admitted at a very young age

(generally 3 to 8 years) and have no exposure to any kind of education. It is a great

challenge to train them initially to enable them to get admission into a class that
corresponds to his/her age in a quality formal education school. To achieve this the child
admitted in Parivaar undergoes an in-house Rapid Learning Course for a period of one
year. The admission into quality formal schools is not easy as the children have to go
through rigorous competitive entrance examinations conducted by various schools. Thus
the child has to compete on his/her merit.
Since the category of children Parivaar works with needs total rehabilitation, which
includes meeting all living costs like food, clothing, education, recreation, etc., the
average cost per child is very high compared to education and other day-care initiatives.
Parivaar works with the idea of providing support to each child with a minimum
commitment of 12 to 15 years, right from his/her kindergarten stage till he/she grows up
and makes good in life.

Parivaar has been successful in this by attracting funds through

financial contributions from individuals. A point to note is that 300 IIM alumni have
enrolled as regular Parivaar donors and more than 200 IIM Calcutta alumni have donated
to Parivaar.
For one who is so well qualified, having graduated from two of the most acclaimed
institutions in the country getting jobs in top MNCs would have been a cake walk.

16

However, Vinayak chose a life of sacrifice for a larger cause. For one so young such
sacrifice is even more poignant. A visit to the Parivaar Ashram where the hitherto
uncared for children are laughing, playing and living happily in gay abandon is a most
humbling experience. The Institute community is extremely proud of the achievements
of our alumnus Shri Vinayak Lohani.
Placement 2006
Final Placements at IIM Calcutta for the batch graduating this year was like last year
once again an outstanding experience reaffirming it as the top choice of recruiters across
several industries; investment banking, consulting, marketing, manufacturing and IT.
From the114 companies that had confirmed their willingness to participate in Placement
2006, only 89 were able to recruit students from the campus, as all the students were
placed within a record time with 249 students having 505 offers to choose from. Major
companies that visited the Institute for placement during Slot-0 included global giants
like Merrill Lynch, UBS, ABN Amro, Bloomberg, BCG, Credit Suisse, and Ameriprise,
the private equity firm the SUN Group, and the manufacturing firm Johnson Electric.
Consulting retained its stronghold on the campus. Top tier consultancy firm McKinsey,
Boston Consulting Group, AT Kearney, etc., hired 17 students . IIM Calcutta became one
of the favourites with Wall Street with 15 full time hires and 15 summer interns. Bankers
from the top most echelons of the global financial industry were deeply impressed by the
caliber of IIMC students and commented that their knowledge and aptitude for finance
was of a level that they expect from a professional working in the industry for a
significant period of time. Other global commercial centres like London, Hongkong,
Tokyo and Singapore will also be swamped by over 70 IIMC students this summer. This
year the highest international salary was US$ 152,000 and highest domestic salary was
INR 23 Lakhs and the average domestic salary was INR 9.81 Lakhs which was the
highest across all IIMs. An another important aspect of Placement 2006 was that 72
students accepted lateral placement.
Other Important Activities

17

AIMS Eastern Region Round Table for Deans and Directors of Schools of Management
The Eastern Region Round Table for Deans and Directors of management institutes was
held at IIM Calcutta on November 29, 2005. The panelists included Mr. A. Mukherjee,
Head of HR & OD (East), TCS, Mr. S. Chakraborty, MD, Tata Ryerson Limited, Mr. A.
Lahiri, MD, ABP Group of Co. Ltd., and Mr. S. Chand, Director, Corporate Affairs,
Exide Industries Ltd..

The panel discussion was chaired by Professor Shekhar

Chaudhuri, Director IIM Calcutta.

Research and Publications
Journals
The Publication Division brought out two issues of the Institutes bi-annual journal
Decision. The Management Centre for Human Values also brought out two issues of
the Journal of Human Values, which is published by SAGE.
Books
Faculty members of the Institute published seven books covering different areas during
the year. The details are as follows:
1)

Prof. Ranjan Das, Complex Issues Management Strategies and Tactics (Tata
Mc Graw Hill, India), 2006 forthcoming.

2)

Prof. Asish K Bhattacharyya, Indian Accounting Standards (Tata Mc Graw Hill,

India), 2005

3)

Prof. Somprakash Bandyopadhyay, Enhancing the Performance of Ad Hoc

Networks using Smart Antennas (jointly with Siuli Roy and Tetsuro Ueda) (CRC
Press, USA), 2005.

4)

Sengupta, N. and J. Bandyopadhyay (Eds) Biodiversity and Quality of Life

(MacMillan, New Delhi), 2005.

5)

Professor Sudip Chaudhuri, The WTO and Indias Pharmaceuticals Industry:

Patent Protection, TRIPS and Developing Countries, (Oxford University Press)
2005.

18

6)

Professors Anindya Sen and P. K. Sett (eds.) Managing Business in the 21 st

Century (Oxford University Press) 2005.

7)

Professor U. Dinesh Kumar (jointly with John Crocker, T. Chitra and Haritha
Saranga), Reliability and Six Sigma (Springer USA) 2006.
Prof. Asish K Bhattacharyya authored the 2nd edition of his book titled, Financial
Accounting for Business Managers, published by Prentice-Hall, India, 2005

Publications in Journals, Conference Proceedings and Books

The Institutes faculty members brought out more than eighty papers, book chapters and
articles in national and international refereed journals, conference proceedings and edited
books. Additionally, around 50 working papers and occasional papers were brought out
by the faculty, doctoral students and research staff of the Institute. The Institute provided
financial support to seven faculty members to present papers at international conferences
abroad.
Scholarships and Awards received by Faculty members
I am happy to inform you that Professor Subrata Mitra of the Operations Management
Group was selected for the award of a Senior Fulbright Fellowship to pursue
collaborative research at the George Washington University, Washington, DC. USA and
Professor Tata L. Raghu Ram has been selected for the award of a Fulbright Environment
Leadership Fellowship at John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
during April mid June, 2006.
Management Development Programmes and Consultancy Projects
Executive Education is an important activity of the Institute. During 2005-06 36 short
duration management development programmes (up from 26 during 2004-05) were
organized by faculty members of various academic groups of the Institute. A total of 580
participants participated in these programmes. During the same period 46 in-company
programmes (up from 31 during 2004-05) were also organised that attracted 955

19

participants. The Institute also organized the Advanced Management Programme during
the year.
The number of long duration MDPs increased from 7 during 2004-05 to 13 during 200506 and the total number of participants increased from 415 during 2004-05 to more than
eleven hundred during 2005-06. Of these 13 Long Duration Programmes about 50% were
campus based involving direct face to face interaction and the remaining used a hybrid
mode of delivery involving direct interaction as well as through video conferencing
technology. The LDPs as a category of MDPs started with a very small beginning in
1999 and over the years have increased significantly the presence of IIMC in the
executive education market. Professors B. B. Chakrabarti, Leena Chatterjee, Vidyanand
Jha, Sudas Roy, Sougata Ray, Shekhar Chaudhuri, Manabendra Nath Pal and Ranjan Das
conducted MDPs and in-company programmes and provided consultancy services to
companies and organizations based in Dubai, Colombo and Dhaka. Several LDPs and the
AMP had as a component an international study tour to emerging markets like China,
South Africa, Australia, Brazil, Turkey, Singapore and Malaysia. These programmes
have helped IIMC in its aim to become known internationally. The Institute also
undertook 26 consultancy projects during the year (up from 23 in the last year).
Activities of Centres
Management Centre for Human Values
The Centre offered 8 elective courses in the Post Graduate Programme. Apart from PGP
courses 10 open enrolment MDPs were offered on i) Business Excellence, ii)
Organisational Excellence through Leadership, iii) Managerial Excellence, iv) Leadership
Excellence, v) Self Development for Global Managers, vi) Management of Stress, vii)
Emotional Intelligence and Management of Non-Government Organisation. Several incompany programmes were also offered on various subjects including the subjects
covered in the above mentioned MDPs and Values and Ethics in Management and
Building Managerial Effectiveness in Sexual Health Intervention. Faculty members of
this Centre also published 7 papers in national and international journals. The Centre also
brought out 2 issues of the Journal of Human Values published by SAGE.

20

Centre for Corporate Governance

The Centre for Corporate Governance started functioning actively during the year. This
Centre comprises faculty members from different academic groups. During the year one
management development programme on Corporate Financial Reporting and Corporate
Governance was organised. A Workshop titled Directors Leadership Programme was
organised in two modules. The first module was a round table on Regulatory
Environment and Corporate Financial Reporting and the second module was on
Corporate Strategy and Strategic Leadership. The Centre also organised a two-day
national conference on Corporate Governance. Faculty members of this Centre initiated a
research project titled Corporate Social Responsibility under sponsorship by Bharti
Televenture Ltd. Three faculty colleagues, Professors Asish K. Bhattacharyya, Anup K.
Sinha and Sougata Ray were selected by the World Bank to attend a Leadership
Workshop on Corporate Governance in Washington, D.C.
Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
The CEI was quite active during the year. Two new courses have been developed by
faculty members in the CEI. These are, Corporate Entrepreneurship and
Understanding Future Opportunities. These will be offered from the next year subject
to approval of the Post Graduate Programme Committee.
Several case studies of entrepreneurial ventures have been initiated Emmbee Forest
Products , Tata Chemicals, High-tech Castings, Pantaloon and Samtel. These have been
sponsored by Mr. Ajit Balakrishnan, one of the Institutes illustrious alumni. Several
additional case studies have been initiated with research support from PGP students
Parivaar, Genext Movers, Cyber Media, Hindustan Phosphates, and

Vietrans. Two

management development programmes targeted at small and medium enterprises and

entrepreneurs were organised by the Centre; a) Tomorrows Leaders jointly conducted
with CII on 14th 16th September, 2006 in Calcutta; b) Emerging Leaders jointly
conducted with ICC on 8th - 10th March, 2006 in Guwahati (sponsored by DONER).

21

Faculty members of the Centre made presentations on Entrepreneurship in several

educational institutions in Kolkata; i) Modern High School; ii) J.D. Birla College; iii) St.
Xaviers Collegep; and iv) Jadavpur University.
The Institute offers other courses related to entrepreneurship through existing academic
groups. The Sociology group has been offering a course in the PGP titled :Seminar on
Entrepreneurship for several years. This was offered during the last year also. Another
PGP course related to entrepreneurship and titled Managing New Ventures is offered
by the Strategic Management group.
Centre for Development and Environment Policy
Faculty members of the Centre were involved in research related to bio-diversity and
quality of life, forest development and water quality. One edited book on bio-diversity
and quality of life, was brought out by faculty members of the centre. In addition a
journal article and 2 book chapters were published. Besides this, two working papers
were also brought out.
Infrastructure Improvements
Several infrastructure improvement projects were undertaken during the year. Two Water
Treatment and Purification Plants have been installed one for the student hostels and
the other for resident employees. These plants would ensure supply of high quality
potable water. Reverse Osmosis water purification systems have also been set up. These
are linked with the water treatment plants.

Work on the setting up of a sewerage

treatment plant has already been initiated. New roads have been constructed in the
campus while the existing ones have been widened and improved.

Considerable

emphasis is being placed on improving the look of the campus. The auditorium in the
Library is being completely renovated. This would be used as a temporary classroom for
PGPEX participants. The reading hall in the Library has been renovated. Our plan is to
take up more renovation work in the campus in a phased manner without disrupting our
regular work. The swimming pool project which has been taken up would be completed
in the next few months.

22

We have already started the process for making major additions to our physical
infrastructure. A Campus Development Committee has been set up by the Board of
Governors with the objective of making our infrastructure comparable with the best in the
world. It has been decided to radically augment the physical facilities available on the
campus by constructing the following:
a)

a new PGP complex with several new classrooms, faculty offices,

syndicate rooms, student activities offices, etc.

b)

a new Management Development Centre;

c)

family housing complex for PGPEX participants;

d)

a new hostel for PGP students;

On the IT infrastructure side I am happy to inform you that we have recently upgraded
our internet connectivity by increasing the bandwidth from 2 mbps to 8 mbps, which is
probably the highest among educational institutions in the country. Sixteen high end
servers have been procured and installed.

The LAN has been upgraded to gigabit

Ethernet. The Library auditorium and the Computer Centre have been Wi-Fi enabled. A
fully equipped PC classroom is being set up in the Computer Centre. All the rooms in the
student hostels have now been provided with direct inward dialing facility. All the
faculty members and key officers and departments have been provided with laptop
computers and all employees have been given mobile phone handsets to improve
communication
A look to the Future
I would now like to talk a little about our vision for the future.
In order to respond to the burgeoning demand for management education in the country
we are planning several new initiatives over the next 5 years. In this context it would be
useful to keep in mind our vision and mission to provide the proper perspective :
To be an international centre of excellence in all aspects of management education,

23

To develop innovative and ethical future leaders capable of managing change and
transformation in a globally competitive environment,
To advance the theory and practice of management.
Consistent with our vision and mission we have announced the launch of the one year
full-time Post Graduate Programme for executives (PGPEX) from December, 2006. This
programme is designed to cater to executives with at least 5 years work experience and
who have strong leadership potential.

This programme has a strong international

component. Admission to the programme would inter-alia be based on GMAT scores

instead of CAT scores. This would facilitate participation by international students.
About 20 25 percent of the programme would be taught by professors from reputed
foreign business schools. We plan to admit 40 students this year. The intake will be
increased to 120 once the new physical infrastructure is created.
In the coming year we plan to lay considerable emphasis on offering high quality
management development programmes to strengthen our position as a leading provider of
executive education.
This year we are planning to increase the size of the first year batch from about 270 to
300 and by 2008-2009 to 400. It is also planned to increase the intake in our doctoral
programme to cater to the increasing demand for management teachers and researchers
and to help in the process of generating new management knowledge.
Currently we have student exchange programmes with about 30 institutions in Europe,
USA and Asia. Our long term goal is to provide opportunities to all our PGP students to
spend a term in a foreign partner institution to get exposure to cross cultural issues in
international business. This has become important given the increasing integration of our
economy with the rest of the world. This year we signed MOUs for student exchange
with KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute for Science and Technology) Graduate School of
Management, South Korea and Cardiff Business School, UK.

24

To implement our vision and mission, we will have to increase our faculty stgrength
significantly and qualitatively improve our administrative capabilities. I am sure you will
appreciate the difficulties and challenges of transforming a mature organization. We have
already began the journey.

We are currently in the process of simplifying faculty

recruitment procedures to reduce the time required for faculty selection without
compromising on quality. During this year for the first time the Institute organized four
training programmes for our non-academic staff members. Two programmes were held
in a training centre in Digha.

These programmes were organized by the State

Productivity Council, Kolkata. Currently a programme on Computer Operation in Office

Management is underway in which 25 staff members are participating. We plan to
continue to lay emphasis on helping people at different levels to learn new skills and
develop the right attitude and work culture. Several officers were nominated to attend
training programmes conducted by various organizations outside the Institute.
The Institute has over the years grown considerably in size and complexity; however, the
development of the organization has not kept pace. We are undergoing a transformation
process, albeit slowly. Our philosophy has been to implement organisational changes
with a human face. We are in the process of professionalising the Institutes management
through several initiatives; bringing in professionals to man some of the key functions;
appointment of a firm of chartered accountants for conducting internal audit; improving
work place discipline; providing training inputs to develop the required skills in our
people; designing and implementing proper systems; and through a change in the
organisational culture with an emphasis on achieving results. We have faced and are
facing many difficulties and shall face many more during this transition.

Like all

organizations, we are also facing strong resistance to change. In the next few years it is
our hope that we will be a more effective and efficient organization.
I wish to express my gratitude to all my faculty colleagues, officers, staff members and
the student community and the alumni. A large number of them have given unstinted
help and cooperation in all our efforts. I wish to express my sincere thanks to the
government; members of our Board of Governors and our Chairman, Mr. Y. C.

25

Deveshwar for their whole hearted support with a big Thank You. I would like to also
take the opportunity to thank all our well wishers including parents of our students and
the members of the Press for their continuing support to the Institute. I wish to thank the
alumni of the Institute for their help among others in strengthening the brand image of the
Institute; in conducting the admission process; and for their financial contributions to the
Institute. I wish to thank all the corporate donors who have supported various events. I
am happy to inform you that an IIMC Alumni Foundation is being formed by the alumni
of the Institute for the purpose of raising funds for achieving the Institutes vision.
I now turn to my young friends who are graduating today. My dear students, you have a
great future awaiting you, full of opportunities and challenges. It now seems we have
reached the take off stage. We are in an era of growth and confidence. We have the
potential to become an economic power house and a developed country. The task ahead
is to transform this potential into reality.

You will have to play the role of

transformational leaders.
Today India is being recognised as an emerging major economic and geopolitical power.
Recent visits by the U.S. and French presidents and the Russian and Australian prime
ministers and the landmark agreement on nuclear energy signed by our Prime Minister
and the U.S. President are the harbingers of a new India.
We have come a long way in the last almost 60 years since Independence. The average
growth rate of GDP has been 8% per year during the last 3 years this may increase to 9
to 10% within the next few years. These are indeed very happy tidings but I would like
you to keep in mind some sobering thoughts. There are large sections of our people who
have not been touched by the fruits of economic liberalisation and globalisation. The
challenge before you will be to think in totally non-traditional ways to come up with
strategies that address the issues of economic growth with equity and social justice.
Rural India should not be left out of the development process. We should aim to create
an inclusive development process which ensures that the poor young population gets

26

access to good quality education, food and basic health care and opportunities for
intellectual and professional development.
You, the young people have a great responsibility. The task is indeed very daunting. But
do not let the enormity of the task frighten you. Often the gigantic size of a problem
deters people from "doing". But let that not happen to you. Let us not be afraid of being
only a drop in the ocean. The actions of all of us will contribute to the making of a new
India. When in doubt repeat a simple prayer from the core of your heart which will help
you.
Asato Ma Satgamayo
Tamaso Ma Jyotirgamayo
Mrityor Ma Amritam gamayo
(Lead us from untruth to truth
Lead us from Darkness to Enlightenment
Lead us from Decay to Immortality)
Gandhiji had said that whenever you are in doubt about any action that you are
contemplating to take ask yourself one question. How is your action going to affect the
common man? This will help you to resolve many a knotty issue.
Hearty congratulations and my very best wishes to you all. From today you will become
our alumni and brand ambassadors of the Institute. We are all very proud of you. I am
sure you will do us proud and bring back laurels for your alma mater. Remember, this
Institute will be your home always. We will love to know about your achievements and
experiences. Keep visiting the Institute from time to time and keep in touch. My very
best wishes, once again.
Finally my grateful thanks to all our distinguished guests and Board members for being
with us on this important occasion.
Thank you.