CRADLE OF LEADERSHIP : IIM-C: QUANTUM LEAP

'WE HAVE A CERTAIN VISION FOR THE INSTITUTE; WE SHOULD TRY TO MAINTAIN THAT AND TRY TO IMPROVE AND THE RESULT WILL AUTOMATICALLY FOLLOW. ONE RANKING ONE YEAR DOES NOT MAKE ANY INSTITUTION A GREAT INSTITUTION. SIMILARLY, ONE BAD RANKING FOR A GENERALLY GOOD INSTITUTE DOES NOT MAKE THAT INSTITUTE GO DOWN THE DRAIN'

The Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, India’s premier management institute, has asserted its reputation over the decades, thanks to strong leadership and faculty, active student involvement and timely innovative intervention—be it placement, curricula introduction or faculty selection, research, academics or industry interaction—points out its dynamic and matter-of-fact director, Prof. Saibal Chattopadhyay, of this ‘quanty’-centric institute

Prof. Saibal Chattopadhyay is the Director of India’s premier management institute, the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C). A senior faculty member in the Operation Management Group at this institute since 2001, Chattopadhyay did his PhD in Statistics from the University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA and MS (Statistics) from the same institution after his MSc (Statistics) from the University of Calcutta. He has more than 30 years of academic experience in India and abroad including over 15 years with IIM Calcutta. Prior to this, he was Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics, Presidency College, Kolkata, where he started his career as lecturer in 1983.

He has also been a visiting professor at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA, Department of Statistics, University of Connecticut at Stamford, USA, and Department of Statistics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA.

His research interests include ‘Sequential methods in estimation and in selection and ranking problems’, ‘Multistage sampling methods in environmental health and in clinical studies’, and ‘Quantitative techniques in advanced marketing research’. He has also provided consultancy to various projects across different sectors in the public and private domain.

Dr. Chattopadhyay spoke to Corporate Citizen about the birth of the first-ever Indian Institute of Management, IIM-C and its achievement to keep up the label of a premier management institute, through innovation and changes made in student learning/teaching experience, and keeping up with the times

Corporate Citizen: You have just had a fabulous record of campus placements, where most of your students got job offers within two-and-a-half days. How good do you feel about it?

Prof. Saibal Chattopadhyay: It being a business school, the media always talks about placements, but from an academic perspective, we’d love to hear about the effort behind that success. For a business school, if I can’t place my students, then I know I am not doing a good job, I agree. And if that is the only parameter, then certainly we are doing well, but we would like to see in the media, more of what all new things we are trying to bring into the education space. And these are things which really make the difference, if I may say that.

All these years, my faculty colleagues, the administration, including the Society and Board of Governors, have always tried to bring in new things to the system so that the students have a better teaching- learning experience.

Two-and-a-half days is kind of a standard time frame for campus placements. This year was a pleasant surprise because people were talking about the impending disaster in the business sector, but this did not reflect adversely on our placements.

Could you elaborate on the innovations that were brought about?

Since you started with placements, let me tell you how we go about them. Whenever a student joins us, our placement office creates his or her personal record document which comprises his strengths, his weaknesses, his interest areas, his communication skills and so on. And we monitor it for two years. So when companies come to the campus just before the completion of the sixth term, we are also very well briefed about what kind of people they want to have. Not every company is looking for the same set of skills. I may have 460 students but not all of them are of the same skill sets. Some people are very good in investment consultancy, some are good in numbers and this gets reflected by the courses that they take. This is what I mean when I say the process behind it.

Of course we look at someone’s progression through us, and then we advise the recruiter accordingly. There’s a student’s team which does the campus placements; we give it a support service. It is this team of students who talk to the industry, and get the assessment of the industry in terms of its requirement. This matching of requirement and resources available is the key to success in placements. It is not magic. It requires constant effort and that’s why a two-year programme gives ample space to monitor and assess. Initially, there were challenges in the one-year programme. The time was so short that to assess them and then to match them with the requirement had always been a challenge.

Now, even for the one year executive programme, students do not stay with us all the time. They go abroad for internship or orientation or industry visit. Considering all this, I believe a placement is just an outcome of so many good things that we do throughout their staying with us.

So this categorisation which you are referring to, the placement, is led by the students; but in terms of identifying, speaking to the companies, on their requirement—do you have faculty aligned to it?

Not aligned, in fact, there is a faculty leading this entire placement process. The students’ body reports to that faculty, which also has a set of faculty colleagues helping the placement team. Except for the initial interaction at the high level, let’s say, with a new company that would be coming to the campus, the placement coordinator or what we call here as the chairman of the placement cell who is a faculty member, initiates the process with one or two of his senior colleagues, but the students ultimately take the decision.

Is it a requirement for the institutes’s faculty who are engaged in consulting assignments with corporate, to capture their learning or experience in the industry as a case?

It’s not showcasing, it’s a mutual match. I give CVs of all of them. But then I also have my ‘analytics’ giving their background, which I share with them. I can assess the kind of CVs they will possibly like. I don’t want to bias them in their decision-making and I don’t dictate who they should interview. They would be hiring them. Who am I to decide?

Tell us about the history of IIM-C, Calcutta, the first and premier IIM institute.

In 1961, when we were created by the Government of India, the idea of the founding fathers was that it will come out of the shadow of the university system. The universities are so dominant in our Indian education system, so Jawaharlal Nehru wanted some sort of independence from them.

IITs came first and then they wanted managers, so the objective was to create managers, depending on the needs of the industry. This was to be one experiment with the industry and academia joining hands. With that objective, this institute was born. Of course, when we came up that time, Ford Foundation laid the

basic pillar, supported by MIT and Harvard. Ford Foundation agreed to help in resources and finances too if required, to create IIMs. So, Harvard mentored Ahmedabad and MIT mentored Calcutta. These two institutes started almost simultaneously, and then after 10 years, Bangalore IIM was born.

So IIMs are autonomous institutes?

Under an Act of Parliament, you can create autonomous institutions also. We are autonomous, yes. But we were not created under an Act of Parliament. This is the basic difference. Universities or even IITs were created under an Act of Parliament. So IITs started giving degrees, to start with. Because we were not under a Parliament Act, but under the Indian Societies Registration Act, we all give diplomas. It’s a different matter that these diplomas became the most sought-after, over a period of time. But, at the end of the day, it is still a diploma.

The government of recent has been contemplating a legislation to empower IIMs to give degrees instead of diploma in management. What are your thoughts on this?

I am a supporter of that. I have already made my views public. I feel it is very important now to give degrees in MBA as IIMs have become a brand. And this being a very high-value brand, our students should not face any difficulty when they go abroad. These are IIM ambassadors. Particularly, it affects those who have done PhD. When this fellow student is a PhD and is applying to an institution abroad, every single time the poor fellow has to explain how is it equated to PhD, because he holds a post-graduate diploma, and not a degree? We call it PGDM - Post Graduate Diploma in Management. PGDM is not MBA, strictly speaking, by law.

What about PGDM students—do they also face problems?

Their problem is one of plenty because the companies love them, but for ‘Fellow’ students who want to pursue academics, it is a rough ride due to the diploma tag. Sometimes when they go for some specific applications, they need a master’s degree. But if they call it a master’s degree, they are lying, technically speaking. Even though our PGDM is much valued, is more exhaustive and rigorous than a master’s MBA anywhere in India or abroad, at the end of the day, it still is a diploma. So these are technical issues and this is where I support it—the Bill should come.

There is a flip side to this. If IIMs give degrees for MBAs, what about all the other MBA institutes in the country? Do you think their reputation would get affected?

I don’t think it that way. I take this position because I look at my students. Not everybody is suffering from this defect or discomfort, but a large part of good students are suffering from it. I want to overcome that. If the country can resolve it, if by an Act of Parliament, why not? This is my question. But then I am not in a position to comment for other MBA institutes. I am aware of the fact that there are 1000s of other management institutes which are similarly offering diploma programmes. I don’t know what kind of delivery they have, what is the teaching-learning experience of their students. Certainly some of them are doing extremely well, as I can see. But at the end of the day, whether I should equate all of them as one—I am not the right person to comment.

‘WE TRY TO GIVE THEM A PER- SPECTIVE OF BUSINESS NEEDS OR SOCIETY NEEDS; THE COURSES ARE GRADED AND DESIGNED ACCORDINGLY, AND WE HOPE FOR THE BEST. SOMETIMES, IF WE FIND THAT SOMETHING IS NOT GOING WELL, WE GO BACK TO THE HUDDLE ROOM, BRAINSTORM, AND TRY TO CHANGE THE CURRICULUM, AND THIS IS THE NORMAL PROCESS, NOTHING IS MAGIC’

What do you think makes IIM-C, Asia’s finest business school?

Well, I again really don’t know whether something is the finest. It is a process. I would only say that we should always try to do the good things. We have a certain vision for the institute; we should try to maintain that and try to improve and the result will automatically follow. One ranking one year does not make any institution a great institution. Similarly, one bad ranking for a generally good institute does not make that institute go down the drain.

But for the world, IIM Calcutta is like a crowning glory, so from your experience, what do you think are the reasons for it?

It is difficult to get acknowledgment externally. It is always better to have ranks and accreditations from other people, from peers. I would love to have a national ranking, I would love to have great acknowledgment from international bodies and that is our objective.

Okay, let me put it this way—what inputs here are exclusive to this institute, which have helped in the development of the intellectual faculty of a student? You may have also brought in some unique ideas.

For a moment, give credit to the students too. Look at these very bright students. Let’s not underestimate them and imply something about this institute that we don’t really truly deserve. Yes, we give them the right, holistic education. We try to give them a perspective of business needs or society needs; the courses are graded and designed accordingly, and we hope for the best. Sometimes, if we find that something is not going well, we go back to the huddle room, brainstorm, and try to change the curriculum, and this is the normal process, nothing is magic.

I don’t want to take credit for any of these things. This is what a decent and good academic institution should do.

Yes, that’s very humble, but if you could tell us one or two innovative ideas you introduced in the institute that has made a difference...

See, in the last 18 years that I have been here, there were about two-three major curriculum reforms that I have seen. At the broader level, it is because of our historical association with MIT and Ahmedabad’s historical association with Harvard. You may be aware of the basic difference in education in these two great institutes—while MIT is more mathematical or quantitatively-inclined, it attempts to teach you through numbers, Harvard discourses through examples. This is the fundamental difference of the two ways of management education: one is education through numbers, and other is education through examples. Your choice. Some people like to get taught by numbers and some people by examples. Those who like to learn by examples, go to Ahmedabad. There are other schools which are somewhere in-between these two teaching methods.

IIM Calcutta has been historically a ‘quanty’ school. We do assess the quantitative ability of our products and we select them for this ability, but over time we have also noticed that the business demand really forces us to think of examples, so slowly we have moved towards examples and cases. Similarly IIM Ahmedabad also realised that they had also gone to the other extreme, which was not proper without getting into real hard-core analysis of things which you may not achieve just by examples, all the time. So they also slowly converged to some of the quantitative style. So now both schools have a wonderful mix of ‘quanty’ as well as case study based teachings.

What is the role of the faculty in shaping the students?

A faculty member is someone who would share what is there in theory, what he can teach through his own example, and teach case studies which are already documented. We must complement this with the individual faculty’s own research ability. Unless a person can relate whatever is being taught in the class with his or her own experience, students don’t find it a learning experience. So we noticed that we needed to change the teaching/learning experience. So, we too have slowly changed. For example, about four years back, we did not have a case research centre. Now we have a formal Case Research Centre where I invite industry people saying we will provide you with facilities required to document the cases. I tell them that I have a fantastic professor heading that centre, who will help you, so please bring your live, industry experience and let’s write the thesis. One thing we lack is India-specific cases. Even after all these years after independence and industrialisation, we still depend on Harvard or Ivy cases.

What kind of cases does your Case Research Centre undertake?

Indian cases. All types of cases—pure analytical cases, cases from say, Infosys, cases from other places where we have real data which we try to analyse. Even cases from social concerns. I will give you one example of a very interesting case which we developed here. Alokananda Roy, as you know, is a famous danseuse. She actually had done an innovative experiment with correctional home (jail) reforms. Her experiment went thus: yes, there are hardcore or soft-core criminals, but then they should be given another chance to rectify themselves. So, through her dance drama, she produced it using correctional home inmates as performers. She would take them out in the open to stage performances. I brought them here to my campus once. It was a moving experience. About 50 inmates came to this IIM campus in prison vans. The DIG of Prisons also came, on my invitation. Only for those four hours were they free, without handcuffs. The creative talent of some of them was amazing.

One of them has actually made it very big. I requested him to help me build the case. He has been released after serving his sentence for a hard-core murder case. Now he has opened up a security agency. He is doing very well. These are the people who know security weaknesses. It’s certainly a moving story. Initially, there were difficulties in getting a job. Who will employ a murderer? Obviously, nobody. But then slowly he got accepted, got the recognition and now he is doing very well. I invited him here and said you just document your life, your case.

So how many such cases have been documented?

So far, in the last two years, roughly 20-21 cases, which I think is not bad.

Do students work on these cases?

Yes, but purely under the supervision of faculty. We have hired case writers from abroad. They can write the cases very effectively as they know how to ‘pitch’ a story. There are fantastic case writers who will listen just like you are listening to me and when I read what they write, I can’t believe it, oh my God, I provided the thought and it has been so well expressed in black and white. That is an art.

Academics, Industry and Research – do you have a perfectly cohesive institute in that sense?

Not yet. We are a decent academic institute and of course our one major job is research. So not only do we teach, we also do serious research. Teaching and research are the two established works of the institute. But in the third one, which is industry, we have a disadvantage as we don’t have too many industries and stock exchanges around here. We do have a presence here and there, but to have an association with the industry on a continuous basis is, in my own assessment, difficult when you are here in this part of the country. This is not an excuse by the way, for not having industry interaction, so now we have embarked on something unique. From last year, we have started a new programme. We said unless we go to them, they will not come here. So, we have collaborated with the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur. By the way, these three institutes are the stellar institutes of Bengal. All are firsts—first management institute, first IIT, and the first and only statistical institute for management. ISI is an experiment in the sense that even globally, you cannot have a competitor.

We have started a two-year MTech-level Business Analytics programme from 2015. All three institutes are involved. Each institute takes care of one semester. The final semester, we give 100 percent to the students. We want the industry to come and adopt this great scheme. Someone selected through a process of ISI, IIT Kharagpur and IIM Calcutta would be very highly qualified. The first semester has statistical and mathematical input by ISI; the second semester has technological input by IIT Kharagpur and then the third semester has business input by IIM-C. The business input teaches how to apply business analytics in HR, marketing and stuff like that. The course culminates with the industry coming here for recruitment. This, in my own assessment, will be one fantastic way to bridge the gap between academics and industry, which we have not been able to do so far.

We do provide executive education, but if you really look at industry-sponsored education or research, that is not happening much, anywhere in India, but definitely not in IIM Calcutta. The idea is to have more industry-sponsored serious research. This is what the IITs are doing, because they have a formal laboratory. We now have the Financial Research and Trading Lab, again first time in India. We are very hopeful. We have to keep doing new things.

With technology coming in, hasn’t that eased out the distance from the commercial capital?

Of course, we have the largest presence of technology-enabled education in India. But this is in the executive education space, not in the diploma course. We offer our faculty members to go to a studio and via satellite, through a web-enabled process, offer classes. This is being beamed to, I think, about 70 or 80 centres in India and some centres abroad. It has a large presence now and a good part of our revenue also comes from that satellite-based education.

You have been here for so many years. What changes have you seen as far as the quality of the students is concerned?

Overall, I believe, the competition has become intense. Twenty years back, you had 150 students, and only one programme, so the faculty members also had a much more easy-paced programme. Students also could enjoy a direct individual relationship with the faculty members. Today, we have a much more brilliant, young population in India and now we have to teach 450 students with almost the same set of faculty. And I am teaching more than 2,000 - 2,500 corporate learners through that technology education, again drawing my resource from the same pool of faculty.

How many faculty members do you have?

Earlier, we had 60 -65, now we have 85. So we have 20 additional faculty and we have several programmes now. We have PGDM, PGDBA, PGPEX, PGPEX-VLM a manufacturing programme with IIT Kanpur and IIT Madras also, MBA in manufacturing, and we have our Ph.D. programme.

Why is there such sluggish increase in faculty? Why does it not match with the number of students?

It’s a difficult question. All I would say is, this institute has its own standards. We are not getting teachers of that calibre.

So that is a cause of worry.

I will only say that we are extremely careful in selecting the faculty. Because remember, when you select one faculty colleague, he or she will stay with you for 40 years. If you select four or five faculty who are not up to the mark, they can take you down. So, more importantly, you have to select the right faculty who will take the institute forward in the years to come, with new courses, new thinking, new pedagogy. So a progressive outlook should be one of the main qualities of a faculty. Now we top it all with research ability. Not everybody is a great researcher. But that has become a non-negotiable thing for IIM Calcutta.

With most youngsters more interested in getting into the corporate sector with those high-fly salaries...

I don’t blame them.

What about the students?

Students require more deliberations from their side. It is incredibly competitive now. If I only want to look at the negative side—that the students don’t interact and don’t look at the bigger issue, I will be possibly doing injustice to them. They also have their own constraints. In IIM-Calcutta, we try to give them a general feeling of comfort.

Youngsters have so many temptations. Do you have any kind of alcohol or drug addiction problems?

We certainly have very specific rules and do’s and don’ts. We have a student affairs committee which constantly keeps vigil on such matters and reminds students of their responsibilities towards the institute. But then this generation is a little different. This is a social media generation.

What is your opinion on the quality of MBA students churning out from institutes across India?

It’s a mixed quality. Some institutes are producing brilliant students, some institutes not so good. But it may not be as simple as that to infer that the quality of students is bad. It also has something to do with the quality of the instruction that they receive. We also have great responsibilities towards the next generation to impart the right education. But if we fail in our duties, it definitely affects the outcome.

‘IIM CALCUTTA HAS BEEN HISTORICALLY A ‘QUANTY’ SCHOOL. WE DO ASSESS THE QUANTITATIVE ABILITY OF OUR PRODUCTS AND WE SELECT THEM FOR THIS ABILITY, BUT OVER TIME WE HAVE ALSO NOTICED THAT THE BUSINESS DEMAND REALLY FORCES US TO THINK OF EXAMPLES, SO SLOWLY WE HAVE MOVED TOWARDS EXAMPLES AND CASES’

You have most prominent alumni like Indra Nooyi and others. How do they connect with their alma mater?

They always connect and they always give back—depends on what exactly you want them to give back. In the Indian scenario, it’s not about money, but more than that. Although, in the last 15 years, the government has not extended any support to us. Obviously, not that we badly need it, but it is always better to have some support from other places.

We had a silver jubilee batch reunion. After 25 years, we called them back, saying let’s share our diaries on how we both have grown in the last 25 years. These alumni are doing extremely well in life. Some of them have donated gyms and many other facilities for the students.

What is the shift, if at all, that you see in the profile of the students?

The students are more concerned about their grades these days. The reason is, they have to get a very good job and grades have become an important parameter for the industry to select. Students nowadays look for international experience and industry exposure.

They are concerned about their ability to lead teams.

All these things put enormous pressure on them. This was not so 20 years back.

By Vinita Deshmukh And Sumitra Das