Former students lend a hand to IIMC

Mou Chakraborty
Kolkata, April 16, 2007
The former students of Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIMC) will now collect funds for their alma mater by offering consultancies to various industries.
The Alumni Association of IIMC, in their executive council meeting held on April 14, decided to offer consultancy on behalf of the association. The fees collected from the consultancy services will be handed over to the association, which in turn will contribute the money to IIMC’s development fund.
“We will charge lower fees as part of our social commitment and also to be competitive. The consultant will keep his logistics cost and hand over the rest of the fee to the institute through the association,” said Ashok Banerjee, secretary of the alumni association.
Top consultants in the city charge up to Rs 50,000 per day but the alumni consultants would charge much less. “With many IIMC alumni having more than 30 years experience, and the reduced rates, we feel it is good enough to attract quite a number of projects,” said Banerjee.
Elaborating on the decision, Banerjee said, “Generally people are reluctant to give donations for the institute. But, if we offer them consultancy projects, where the alumnus can keep a part of the fee, they would not mind if the rest is donated to the institute. In fact, many budding managers will be able to enhance their portfolio by doing good consultancy projects.”
The association will be launching its official website shortly, where the consultancy project offers will be advertised. Interested alumni members can apply for the projects. “We are also roping in IIMC faculty to participate in the consultancy,” said Banerjee.
But a quality check will be kept over the matter. “We will not allow alumni to do lousy projects or handle a project lousily if he is working on behalf of the association,” he said.
The alumni of IIMC have always complained of getting less importance compared to IIM Ahmedabad. But with Ajit Balakrishnan, ex-IIMC and head of rediff.com taking over as the chairman of the board of governors at IIMC, hopes are high about strengthening the IIMC brand image.
“For the first time, a chairman has been chosen who is also our alumnus, so we hope that he will give importance to the alumni’s opinions,” said Banerjee. The association has already bagged 3 projects. Starting from this year, the association will also donate Rs. 1 lakh as scholarship for the needy students of IIMC.

If the OBC quota is implemented from the 2007 academic session, IIMC will need more funds. For infrastructural development, IIMC had asked for Rs. 147 crore (approx) and 50 acres of land. But, the Ministry of Human Resource Development has allotted only Rs.47.5 crore. Apart from this, there is a huge deficit from tuition fee. In its 2-year post-graduate diploma in management programme, there is a deficit of Rs 1 lakh per student, which cannot be covered by tuition fee. And with 600 students currently on campus, the deficit has gone up to Rs. 6 crore, which the IIMC is already paying through consultancy and other such programmes. To work things out, IIMC from 2007, has increased its course fee by Rs 20,000 to make it Rs 2 lakh.mou.hindustantimes@yahoo.com