Welcoming India’s Scholar Prime Minister to IIM Calcutta
Our cup of joy is overflowing in this, the 50the year of our founding!
First, we show up as Number 1 in the All India Management Association survey of management schools for 2011. We have all through our 50 year history been in the Top 3 but it is especially sweet to be in the top spot in our 50th year. This reaffirmed our belief that concentrating on better pedagogy and better curriculum matter more than anything else for an educational and research institution like us.
We had the best placement record of all IIMs last year as judged by the starting salaries our students commanded. We don’t spend a lot of time aiming for this but nevertheless it is gratifying to get such an acknowledgement from important stakeholders like recruiters
Then, our faculty published more articles this year in international peer-reviewed management journals than all other management school in India. This proves to us that the decision we made three years ago to fund our own research has paid off.
Then we have commissioned a quarter-of-a-million square feet of new classroom and hostel space in our campus this year to ease the pressure of having nearly doubled our student intake in the last four years. You can see all these beautiful new building around you outside.
Finally, this past year, 10% of our revenue came from online education, a percentage higher than the Harvard or Stanford business schools. In the coming battle to deliver high quality higher education at an affordable cost, this is a very big step forward.
A second reason why our cup of joy is full: our state Chief Minister is with us today- welcome Madam. You have proved yet again that what Bengal thinks today, the rest of India thinks tomorrow. By focusing the national attention on the need to sensitively and justly deal with the great and millennial transition from agriculture to industry that our country is going through, you have helped refine our country’s approach to this issue. Madam, your predecessor, Bidhan Roy was the man who energized the Sarkar Committee which recommended the setting up of the IITs and IIMs in India. So, welcome to IIM Calcutta, Madam.
A warm welcome to our Governor, Mr Narayanan. You have dedicated your life to making our country a more secure place to live in. You have our heartfelt appreciation for this life work of yours , sir. Welcome to IIM Calcutta, Mr Narayanan.
Topping up our cup of joy is the visit today to IIM Calcutta of our beloved scholar-Prime Minister. Sir, we watch with admiration as you tackle the many complex issues that face our nation. We particularly admire your exhortation that we grow our GDP fast, and your insistence that we do it in a way that the benefits of growth include all Indians. We want you to know sir that at IIM Calcutta we have a large group of scholars from diverse fields such as Economics, Statistics, Sociology and Operations dedicated to research in just this: how to mathematically model the welfare impact of public policies.
We only wish we had a little more time with you today to show you some of that work. In any event, we want you to know sir that our appreciation of the dilemmas of inclusive growth is not merely emotional but intellectual as well.
Welcome to you sir, our scholar-Prime Minister!
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