IIM idealism

Every year, we hear stories about the big money offered to graduates of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs).

This year too, almost as a matter of routine, we have been told of a student of the Kolkata IIM who received a job offer with a salary of Rs1.36 crore a year only to be topped the next day by a student from the Ahmedabad chapter who got Rs1.44 crore a year from an international finance company. It reflects the esteem students from these centres of excellence enjoy in the corporate sector.

But the institutes are also about opening minds, raising social awareness, and most of all, creating an entrepreneurial mind-set.

The founding fathers had envisaged institutions that would turn out managers who would work for the country’s advancement and the original IIMs have, to a substantial extent, managed to fulfil that charter.

This is evident in the fact that the young man offered the Rs1.44 crore salary turned it down. Instead, Neela Nageshwar Vittal of Wadala wants to start a processing unit for medicinal plants.

Vittal is an example of the new India, which is moving upward with dignity and awareness. He has grown up in the slums of Mumbai, when his father was a driver for the Lijjat Papad cooperative. The family’s fortunes improved in time and he went to IIM, Ahmedabad while his siblings became computer engineers.

The IIMs of course were not created to make high-class babus and managers for multinational corporations, legitimate though those jobs may be. The past few years have produced more than one story about young people like Vittal who want to use their training to become entrepreneurs or look at social betterment.

Many of the people who go to IIM are not from rich or comfortable backgrounds. They come from families which have struggled with the tougher side of life.

This is the kind of story which is worthy of shining India. The young man has rejected the chance to go abroad on a massive salary — surely the dream of middle class India — to follow a dream of his own.

This is making best use of his IIM training to suit his own needs. It cannot and should not be only about the money, though the bright students are perfectly entitled to expect the financial rewards that come their way after all the hard work.

There must be many more Vittals around, in IIM and elsewhere. Their story is inspiring and their example worth emulating. There is enough hand-wringing about this
generation’s materialistic aspirations; it’s time to also see the idealistic fervour among them.