First Batch of Students walk on to IIM Modest Campus in Tiruchi

Tiruchi: The country’s 11th Indian Institute of Management (IIM) started functioning from a modest campus in Tiruchi in central Tamil Nadu on Wednesday. Classes for the flagship postgraduate management programme will commence from Thursday.

As IIM-Tiruchi is functioning from the campus of the National Institute of Technology, students will have to wait for a couple of years to enjoy state-ofthe-art infrastructure. For now, the IIM will have to make do with two classrooms, rooms for faculty, a library and an administrative office, located about 20km from the city on the Tiruchi-Thanjavur highway.
IIM-T director Prof Prafulla Agnihotri had said that his focus was on roping in the best possible faculty, rather than getting the permanent campus ready. And during the inauguration, he had good reason to boast about the faculty.

“IIM-T is possibly the only one in the country where European faculty applied for positions. Fifteen persons with PhDs from the best institutions across the world have been recruited,” he said.

All members of the faculty had worked in the US and Europe and other IIMs and IITs, Agnihotri said, adding that 12 had joined and three more were expected to do so soon. Madoun Molud, a Frenchman with 23 years of teaching experience, had been roped in to handle organisational behaviour and human resource management.

Agnihotri said 88 students, including 15 women, had enrolled for the post-graduate programme.
The chairman of IIM-T’s board of governors and former SEBI chairman M Damodaran underlined that faculty was the key asset of an institute. While the other IIMs began functioning last year, he was insistent that IIM-T should not go ahead without a fullfledged team.

IIM-T was part of the seven institutions announced by the Union ministry of human resource development in 2008 under the 11th five year plan. IIMs in Raipur, Rohtak and Ranchi commenced classes in 2010 itself, though from temporary campuses.