‘Learnt in one year at IIM what would have otherwise taken 10 years’

Gold medallists on their learning experience at the premier institute

March 22, 2019 09:07 pm | Updated March 23, 2019 06:33 pm IST

Students of the Executive Post Graduate Programme in Management, at IIMB, celebrate at the convocation on Friday.

Students of the Executive Post Graduate Programme in Management, at IIMB, celebrate at the convocation on Friday.

Some quit their well-paying jobs in the IT sector or a coveted posting in the civil services. Others juggled work commitments and family life to attend classes over the weekends. In the end, their resolve and determination to succeed paid off. On Friday, eight students from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB) were awarded gold medals.

One of them was Xelene Aguiar, 36, a geologist from Mumbai who worked with a private company and later joined the Indian Revenue Service (IRS), but quit her job in 2016 to start her own enterprise. She bagged a gold medal for the best all-round performance in the Executive Post Graduate Programme in Management.

“I want to start my own venture in the agriculture sector,” said Ms. Aguiar, who is inspired by her father who took to cashew farming. During her stint at IIMB, she developed a business model for a free market place. "The learning that I got in one year at IIMB is something that would have taken me 10 years if I had to do it on my own.”

Hariram Thirukarugavur Ramesh, 35, from Bengaluru was awarded a gold medal for best all-round performance in the Post Graduate Programme in Enterprise Management. “There were lots of ‘aha’ moments that we experienced as we moved parallely between work and the classroom. This helped us get different perspectives," he said.

Many of the graduates are hoping to change their career trajectory.

 

Kushagra Mittal, 36, from Uttarakhand, who completed the Post Graduate Programme in Public Policy and Management, won the gold medal for best academic performance for securing the highest CGPA. He works with the Ministry of Railways and aspires to secure a senior public policy position in the central government in the urban planning and logistics sector.

Many graduates want to use the lessons they have learned to contribute to society. Sukanya P., 41 who hails from a village in Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu and secured the first rank in the Post Graduate Programme in Enterprise Management, was in the IT sector in the insurance domain. Now, she’s hoping to bridge the urban-rural divide and make premier education more accessible to children irrespective of their socio-economic background. "Having personally confronted these challenges and stereotypes, it is my long cherished dream to create awareness on various career opportunities for children from modest rural backgrounds," she said.

From demonetisation to public consultation

Many gold medallists spoke about various policy changes, including demonetisation and the role of public consultation in projects chalked out by the government. When asked about public consultation for the elevated flyover project in Bengaluru, Ms. Sukanya said, “There is absolutely no necessity for public consultation for all projects. India, being such a large country, we cannot afford to do it. It is not feasible for every project taken up by the government.”

She went to add that while at an exchange programme to Switzerland, she learned that every initiative of the government faces a vote by the public. “Democracy works that way there because it is a small country. But, here we cannot do it.”

Ms. Aguiar said implementation of demonetisation could have been better arguing that the move had caused recession as a large part of the Indian economy is dependent on the unorganised sector, which relies on cash.

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