IIMA Society

IIMA Society and its Presence on the Board of IIMA

T. V. Rao

IIMA is Registered Society under the Societies Registration Act (1860 Bombay Societies Registration Act). It has membership of over a hundred members. Most of them are from in and around Ahmedabad, a few PSUs, and Banks and a few from the Tatas, Murugappa Group, TVS, HUL, Bajaj, Mahindra, and the like. It is represented in the Board of IIMA by four of its members who are elected once in two years. Recently the Society’s memorandum got changed where the term has been extended from two to three years with a restriction that elected members could serve a maximum of three terms of three years each.

IIMA Society membership consists of Donors (corporate or individuals), any individual who donates Rs 15 lakhs and any corporate that donates Rs 50 Lakhs can become a member. Corporations are represented by the representatives they chose and individuals are registered as individuals. For former faculty and Alumni the individual Donation is 50% of the others (i.e. Rs 7.5 Lakhs). After I left IIMA in 1994 after getting my 20 years of service medal I always cherished the desire to be on the IIMA Society. At that time the membership fee was around Rs 25,000 if I recollect correct. However I went on delaying and finally joined about five years ago when they introduced the new category of membership. When I became a member it is just with the feeling that on the convocation day there should be enough Society Members present during the Convocation to say “Yes” on the stage when the Chair asks for approval of the Society for graduating the students. I used to feel bad to see hardly three or four members of the Society on the Convocation dais at that auspicious time.

Since the time I joined I used to feel bad about the thin attendance in the IIMA Society meetings. My feelings are due to the way we had run National HRD Network and the Academy of HRD where we used to make sure of a good attendance for the AGM and other auspicious occasions. It was not gelling with me that a place like IIMA should have such low attendance in its society meetings.

I also explained to the Director a couple of times that if we make effort and get 100 members from the Alumni we will have added to the corpus  5 crores (at that time the Donation was Rs 5 lakhs for Alumni and Rs 10 lakhs for others) and we get 500 it would be 25 crores. If we get corporations about 100 of them we would add about 50 crores to the corpus and 100 then 500 crores. It is not too difficult for the Institute to get about 500 to 1000 alumni and another 100 corporate if we make a sincere effort. However other priorities made the Institute and its Board not pay attention to this. They appointed a Committee which hardly added any members in the last two years.  

During last elections of its representatives on the Board Praful Anubhai a long term associate and Society member of the Institute encouraged me to volunteer to be on the Board. He proposed my name and Prof. S C Bhatnagar another Ex-faculty on the IIMA Society seconded my name. I was informed that it by convention IIMA Society presented unanimous choice. I decided to with draw if there are enough candidates who are likely to get unanimity. However I wanted to make sure any of them elected will do a good job on the Board. I wrote the following letter to all the members of IIMA Society.:

On February 23, 201.

Dear Fellow Member of the IIMA Society:

Sub: Seeking you active involvement in the IIMA Society

I am a new member of the IIMA Society, since last two years.

I have been associated with IIMA since 1973 as a full time Professor until 1994. I had the privilege of working with Ravi J Matthai very closely and along with Ravi I was one of those instrumental in starting the education systems group at IIMA and also worked on various Institution building issues. As some of you may know I have founded the National HRD Network which now has its presence in 40 cities and about 8000 members. I left IIMA in 1994 after completing 20 years and started the Academy of HRD and subsequently TVRLS. Both these are progressing well as Societies registered in Gujarat. In the last two years I found that very few members of the society take active role in the affairs of IIMA.  Their attendance at the meetings is rather poor. 
 

I am writing this to seek your active involvement in IIMA Society affairs. As you all know IIMA has always had the distinction of the top level Management Institute in India and got worldwide recognition. Over a dozen of their former/current faculty and alumni are Padma awardees including Padma Vibhushan. Top Management Guru’s like late Dr. C. K Prahalad, V Govindarajan and many others who are getting recognition are faculty/alumni of this institute. Recently IIMA was ranked as No. 11 by Financial Times globally and surpassed many other Management schools based in the USA and Europe. This is the Golden Jubilee year of IIMA.

Inspired by the success of Management schools like the IIMA, B, and C, and to cater to the need growing need for quality management education, the Ministry of HRD has decided to start a number of other IIMs in India. This is a welcome move.  However sometimes with good intentions and given the system as it is, the MOHRD may make the mistake of treating IIMA in same way as the other new IIMs. Understandably government would want to exercise more control on the new IIMs as largely Govt. funds them and may want to treat all IIMs equally, so as to be seen as equitable and not favouring any one. They may not always subscribe to the philosophy of management that “the best way to create inequality is by treating everyone equally”.  There is a move to down size the Boards and also down size the Society membership etc. While this may be applicable to other IIMs the character and origins of IIMA are different. IIMA Society is a Society of donors and it has 50 years of tradition and culture nurtured by people like Dr Vikram Sarabhai and Ravi J Matthai and various Chairmen like Dr. Prakash Tandon, Mr. Kirloskar, Keshub Mahindra, Dr. V Krishnamurthy, IG Patel, Narayana Murthy etc. 

We need strong people on the Board who can spare time and also when necessary work with the MOHRD and convince them and enable IIMA to retain its leadership position and autonomy.

There are seven candidates who expressed their interest to represent the society on the Board. I have written to each one of them requesting assurance from them to do the following:

1. Should commit sufficient time and at least eight days in a year (for about four Board meetings) for attending Board meetings and guiding the Institute.
2. Work with the Ministry of HRD and convince them to recognise the value of IIMA’s culture, and ensure autonomy and academic freedom for IIMA like in the past and support it.
3. Mobilise funds for IIMA to enable it to continue to have its financial independence.
4.  Be willing to link up periodically with the other society members, expand the society membership

5.  Be willing to interact with faculty and other stake holders and provide some amount of continuity and linkages between the Institute and the environment at the same time help the Institute to change to make it into the next orbit of success.

In response to my note six of the seven contestants have agreed. Though I have indicated my interest to also to represent the Society on the Board, since six out of the seven are established business leaders and have assured that they will play the above mentioned role, I have withdrawn my own candidature from contesting elections.

As this is an important decision I request all the Society members to participate actively in making the right choice of the candidate to represent us on the Board. I also request the Society members to take active part in the affairs of the IIMA Society and make it a vibrant Society in taking IIMA to new heights. I have requested the Director IIMA to identify one of the Board members to liaise with the other Society members and enable them to play an active role. The Director IIMA, Prof. Barua has already indicated his desire to have an annual or bi-annual Conference of the IIMA Society members.

I thank you for your time and hope we will have more involvement from your side.

Warm Regards

T. V. Rao,

Member, IIMA Society and Chairman TVRLS, Founder and First President National HRD Network and First Honorary Director, AHRD

E mail: tvrao@tvrao.com

Four members were elected on to the Board two from Ahmedabad (Sanjay Lalbhai, CMD Arvind and Chintan Parikh, CMD Ashima) and two from Mumbai (Hasit Joshipura, VP, JSK and Ashank Desai, Chairman Mastek). The two from Mumbai are alumni and business men or Professional managers from the Corporate Donor category and not individual alumni category. From the individuals there are only four of us- two former professors (‘PROF. S. C. Bhatnagar and T V Rao) and two alumni (Varun Arya and Pramod Agarwal). Three of them I am not sure when they have become Board members for the third time. In the mean time as per the Society’s new MOI those completing three terms may have been required not to seek election. However the Chairman got legal advice and clarified that they could contest as per the new MOI since they have not completed nine years or three years of three terms. However I personally felt that they should retire to make way for others. However it is their choice. They may be wanting to provide continuity on some of the things they were involved in the Board.

This time I again offered myself as I thought that not much has happened in terms of the assurances given by the elected members on the Board. I also felt the Board is constantly changing and needs thoughts and experience sharing on the Institute’s culture from senior faculty like me. I volunteered again. All the four members who were elected last time decided to seek re-election, the contest was inevitable.  I even wrote to all the four requesting them to think carefully about the extent to which they have been able to fulfil their commitment made during the last elections. They have made the assurance to me as an individual and not to the Board or to the Society, so they are not required to respond to any one. However I expected them to respond. To my disappointment they did not. I also appealed to the members to give chance for other Society members to serve the Institute. They did not respond. Hence I decided not to with draw this time. In the final contest there are Four Business men and Four Alumni (One ex-faculty, two professional Managers who are also IIMA Alumni, and Four Business one of whom is again IIMA alumnus). I started looking at the Society members and started contacting as many as possible explaining the reasons for my getting into the fray. I am happy that a few of the Society members on their own started calling me offering their support and good wishes.

I never contested any election in my entire life. I was one of the lucky ones to be either invited. I have at times when I started bodies like NHRDN even self declared President. It is not my nature to contest. However I started working for it. I have one important agenda: To get as many IIMA Society members as possible to attend the Convocation and the AGM and take active part and also to expand the base of the IIMA Society. I believe that a strong Society makes a stronger Institution. I also believe that IIMA Society should be different. It has some excellent members like Reliance, L&T, The Lalbhais, Sarabhais, Mafatlals, Jyoti, Escorts, and Murugappa group, TVS, M&M, PSU CMDS (EIL, BHEL, STC, LIC, New India, and MECON) and the like Waghbakri, GSFC, Citibank, HUL, Tata Group etc. It needs to activate and IIMA should expand its base. There should be as many as a hundred to five hindered alumni who will come during the convocation perhaps by turn and make it a great day. The convocation should become a great day of activity. They should participate in taking their Alma matter forward in nurturing excellence and make IIMA “THE BEST” in the world.

Irrespective of whether I win or not IIMA Society should become vibrant. MHRD should look at the IIMA Society with pride and say that MHRD continues to support its Institutions to strive for excellence and may even make a special provision in the Bill for Institutions like IIMA to have its own Societies to govern themselves.