Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM A) Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla has pressed for maintaining the autonomy of the Indian Institute of Managements (IIMs) in the proposed Indian Institute of Management Bill, 2015.
Birla, who is the Chairman of Aditya Birla Group, was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors of IIMA in October. “I haven’t seen the draft bill yet as I am new to this world. But I would only like to say that autonomy of institutes like IIM-A should not be fettered to even the slightest extent,” he said after attending the first board meeting following his takeover of the top post.
The draft Bill, introduced in 2015, had evoked criticism from various quarters, especially regarding a few provisions that critics said would restrict the autonomy of the top management institutes that has at present gone up to 19, from just six, a decade ago.
The objections were regarding the selection process of IIM Board Chairman, composition of the Boards with regard to Government nominees and other such issues.
However, these issues are understood to have been ironed out during subsequent meetings with the Union HRD MinistEr and officials.
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Regarding international rankings, with IIMA dropping one spot from 15 to 16 in the Financial Times (FT) Masters in Management 2016 rankings, Birla said these have many components which all Indian institutes may not necessarily want to score high.
“One element of rankings is the number of global students one has on campus. My own belief is when you have such a dearth of quality management education in our country and when you have the youngest working population in our country as compared to anywhere else in the world, as an Indian, I would feel proud to head an institution that imparts knowledge to our own youths so that we can reap a demographic dividend advantage,” he added.
About the Chairman’s role, he said it was a non-executive post that primarily involves presiding over board meetings and also taking up issues faced by the institutes with the central government.
“My role in this position is to create an even stronger bond so that both academia and industry can connect and learn from one other,” he said.
“The linkages between the industry and academia have to be made stronger. My role will be to create an even stronger bond. The faculty here has an insight that we, in the industry, can learn from. The loop of contribution between the industry and academia must be made stronger,” Birla added.
Birla succeeded L&T Chairman A M Naik as the new chairman of Board of Governors (BoG) at IIM-A, with Cadila Healthcare CMD Pankaj Patel holding the post in the interim till his appointment.
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