The Alumni Cell of IIM Calcutta hosted a two-day event to celebrate Golden Jubilee reunion for PGP Batch 6. 23 alums from the batch and their spouses graced us with their presence on this special occasion. Some of the alums residing in the city of Kolkata joined their batch mates who flew from different parts of the country to reminiscence their college days.

The alums started arriving late in the noon of February 15th. After being welcomed to the campus with t-shirts, light snacks and catching up, the batch proceeded to the MDC open air courtyard for interaction with the Director Prof. Anju Seth, Dean Academic Prof. Runa Sarkar and Dean NIER Prof. Prashant Mishra over dinner. The dinner was followed by cultural performances by the students of IIM Calcutta. The music band, JBS BaroC performed a euphonious medley of retro Hindi songs and the night ended on a beautiful note.

The next day at Joka comprised of a campus walk for the alums who attended college at the Emerald Bower campus. Post the campus walk, the alums went on a trip around the city accompanied by students of Alumni Cell. They visited Victoria memorial, Princep memorial and had a grand dinner cruise from Millennium Park in river Hooghly and the two day reunion ended with them grooving to the music on the dance floor by the river.

The reunion of the 4th batch of IIM Calcutta, the Batch of 1969 was held from 8th to 10th of February. It was attended by twelve alumni, and four of them were accompanied by their spouses. They arrived on campus on 8th February. The reunion started with an informal gathering followed by an interactive session with the new Director, Prof. Anju Seth, Dean Academic, Prof. Runa Sarkar and Dean NIER, Prof. Prashant Mishra. The session was very engaging, where the alumni shared their stories of their career post-IIM up to their retirement in most cases. Each story was unique, and there was much to learn from them.

This was followed by a cocktail dinner with the Director, Dean Academic and Dean NIER and they were joined by Prof. Amitava Bose’s family. The student volunteers from the Alumni Cell had an enriching experience and gained inspiring insights from the stories shared by the experienced alumni. The second day had the city tour. They visited the Eco Park and strolled along the streets of Kolkata, taking in the sights and sounds peculiar to the city. They observed how much the city had changed over the years, comparing it to their previous visits to the city.

They parted ways on 10th morning, musing over the two days spent in their alma mater after such a long time. Their stories showed how much their time here had shaped their lives and explained why they were eager to return after all this time. For the students who were fortunate enough to interact with them, this was a perfect example of learning outside the classrooms.

The reunion for the 18th batch was held on the 12th of January, 2019. The day started with a short campus walk and a few of them visited their old classrooms. A group photo was clicked in front of the Old Hostel, which the alums warmly referred to as Ramunajan.

After the walk, the alums proceeded to the amphitheatre for an interaction with their old professors. The professors included, Binod Kumar (BS), Sujit Basu (Stats), Gouranga Chattopadhyay (BS), Bani Sinha (Operations), Biswanath Sarkar (Statistics), Pradeep Kakkar (Consumer Behaviour), BN Srivastava (BS), Sudas Roy (Marketing), Ranjan Ghosh (OR), Suren Munshi (Sociology), Amit Sengupta, Amit Jyoti Sen (Org Structure and Design) and Ramanuj Majumdar (Marketing). This goes on to show the bond between the alums and the faculty. The Dean NIER, Prof. Prashant Mishra and Dean Academic, Prof. Runa Sarkar also joined the session.

The interaction session was taken forward by Mr. Gan Sharma, Director of Sales, Canada Central and East at Druva. He invited the alums to talk about the faculty such that each alum spoke about one professor and also thanked them for their contributions. The professors also shared their fond memories from that time. They were given a memento as a token of love from the alums. The professors who had departed the world were also remembered and a minute of silence was observed for them. Towards the end, the Dean NIER and Dean Academic did a short presentation on the latest developments in the campus.

Homecoming 2019, the first ever alumni reunion of PGPEX was held on 23rd Feb 2019. The event was inaugurated with a short video clip and welcome addresses by Dean NIER, Prof. Prashant Mishra and PGPEX Chairperson, Prof. Amit Dhiman. Prof. Mishra spoke about the latest developments in the campus and shared his vision to build deeper alumni relations. Prof. Dhiman shared his experiences with PGPEX program over the years in an evocative presentation while aptly summarizing the idiosyncrasies of each batch with a moniker.

It was followed by a lively panel discussion for which alumni were joined by our professors on stage. Alumni were represented by Mr. Subhrangshu Chattopadhyay, National Sales Head, CRIF and Mr. Subhro Sengupta, Co-founder, Merriant Fashiontech while the faculty panel comprised of Prof. Mrintunjoy Mohanty, Prof. Partha Pratim Pal and Prof. Sougata Ray. The discussion was about the changing nature of business and how the program can meet the demands of rapidly evolving business landscape. Also discussed was the evolution of the 1-year MBA program and the steps required for improvement. The panel also lauded PGPEX’s latest jump in FT ranking in which it is now ranked 49th among top business schools of the world.

After a refreshing break, alumni took the dais and shared their journey post the program with the current batch of PGPEX. It was felt great to hear their success stories and learn from their priceless experiences. The session ended with a presentation from current students apprising the alumni of the journey of class of 2019. The alumni then went around the campus to revisit their favourite spots and relive the good ol’ times.

In the evening, the event moved to MDC Courtyard for an informal alumni-faculty interaction. It was followed by a networking dinner where alumni, faculty and current students met for casual chat and discussions. The dinner was further enhanced by an entertaining musical performance. The event culminated with group photographs, farewell hugs and handshakes.

The Center for Development and Environment Policy (CDEP), organized a one-day workshop on ”Challenges in the Lives of Urban Slum Dwellers" on January  17th  in the institute. The event which was inaugurated by the Director (Acting), Prof Leena Chatterjee was co-hosted with Heritage Academy, and attended by more than 70 participants. The keynote was given by Mr NB Basu, Technical Advisor, KMC also former Chief Engineer (Civil) K.M.C. Mr Basu spoke about the requirements of civic planning and sustainable lifestyles that we need to maintain to maintain health, and hygiene in our lives.  A documentary film titled, “Ei to Jibon” (Such is life) was screened which documents the lives of three families living in the slums in Kolkata.  Before the screening, film director Prof Rajesh Shinde from Heritage Academy shared his thoughts and philosophy that went into making this film. The film screening was followed by a panel discussion which was moderated by Prof Scramjet Chakravarty, Associate Professor of Public Policy, IIM Calcutta. Among other panel speakers were, Ms Susmita Bhattacharya, Councillor (Ward 63), Kolkata Municipal Corporation who spoke about the aspirations of the slum dwellers and how the privileged section of the society should bring alive the aspirations of the slum dwellers as we are co-inhabitants of the same society. Dr. Dipayan Dey, Chair (Research and Planning): South Asian Forum for Environment [SAFE], another panellist also spoke about how slums represent a more sustainable lifestyle that runs on lower usage of resources compared to the lives of the privileged sections of the society, and he urged the need for introspection in our lives to reduce needless consumption and adopt a more sustainable lifestyle for more harmonious society in future. The event closed with closing remarks from Prof Madhupa Bakshi, Dean, Heritage Academy, and Prof Ramendra Singh, member, CDEP, IIM Calcutta.

The Economics Group of IIM Calcutta in association with the Centre for Environment and Development Policy, IIM Calcutta, organized a two-day Conference on ‘Perspectives on the Contemporary Indian Economy’ on the 21-22 February 2019. The Conference was inaugurated by the newly appointed Director of IIM Calcutta, Prof. Anju Seth who last served as Pamplin Professor of Management at Virginia Tech, USA. She highlighted the need for policy to be based on rigorous research. The two-day Conference witnessed discussion and debate across a wide range of topics from structural macroeconomics, general equilibrium models, open-economy macroeconomics to empirical and policy-related pieces of work.

Some notable names speakers were Prof. Ashima Goyal from Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (part of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council), Prof. Mihir Rakshit (former member of the Board of Governors, RBI, who has also taught earlier at Presidency College and Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata), Prof. Ajitava Raychaudhuri, Prof. Rajat Acharyya and Prof. Ambar Ghosh; all hailing from Jadhavpur University, Prof. Dipankor Coondoo and Prof. Asis Banerjee from Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata and Prof. Abhirup Sarkar from Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. From IIM Calcutta, Prof. Partha Ray (former Director of the Department of Economic and Policy Research, RBI) and Prof. Anup Sinha (former Professor of IIMC) presented papers on balancing the pushes and pulls of the impossible trinity in Indian policy and environmental policy in India.

A befitting end to the Conference was the presentation made by Prof. Anup Sinha, which took stock of the environmental legislation in the country and its implementation. The paper concluded by suggesting several alternative courses of action, each of which would take India and the world on different growth and environment trajectories.

The Management Centre for Human Values (MCHV), IIM Calcutta and the Association for Information Systems - India Chapter co-hosted the "Workshop on Being (more) Human in a Digitised World" at the MCHV Seminarium on February 1-2, 2019. The workshop was inaugurated by the Director, IIM Calcutta, Dr. Anju Seth. Professor Priya Seetharaman of IIM Calcutta and Professor Saji K Mathew of IIT Madras were the workshop chairs. There were 14 paper presentations, one panel discussion and one experience sharing session spread over one and half days. The workshop brought together 30 researchers and practitioners working on the various facets of behavioural and social issues relating to information technology. Researchers and doctoral students from institutions of national importance in India and universities abroad participated. These included IIM Bangalore, IIT Delhi, IIIT Bangalore, Xavier University Bhubaneswar, Australian National University, National University of Singapore, University of New South Wales (Australia), Towson University (USA), Nova Southeastern University, etc. Select papers from the workshop will be part of the special issue of the Springer journal Information Systems Frontiers.

The workshop ended with concluding remarks. Over lunch, the participants shared their experience of meeting a diverse set of people in working with many different areas and themes of research - from intensely technical areas such as twitter analytics and sentiment analysis to intensely social themes such as inclusion of the marginalized and differently abled. The opportunity to understand diverse research methods used by different researchers; debate the different perspectives on technology use by people, communities and society at large; apart from the comments and feedback on work-in-progress were greatly appreciated by the participants.

IIM Calcutta hosted the European Union Day on Feb 22, 2019 with delegates from the European Union. Dr. Anju Seth, Director, IIM Calcutta and Prof. Prashant Mishra, Dean, New Initiatives & External Relations, hosted the delegation and led the interaction. The Ambassador of the European Union to India, H.E. Mr. Tomasz Kozlowski who initiated his talk by praising the state of the art infrastructure the B-school has provided to its students, discussed why India is an important nation to the European Union in terms of working together to find solutions for issues impacting the globe, namely climate change, security concerns, global economic governance and science & education. H.E. Mr. Tomasz Kozlowski highlighted that there is a need for both nations to cooperate for sustainable organization, modernization, trading and finding business and financial solutions. There is also a necessity for partnership for ‘blue economy’. His speech was followed by a Talk on “EU-India trade and economic relations” by Marika Jakas, Counsellor and Head of the Trade and Economic Affairs Section, Delegation of the European Union to India. She established that the EU is India’s biggest trade partner and as a nation is extremely crucial in developing strategic ties with Asia. She mentioned that EU and India have policy dialogues to develop in the renewable sector and Government Procurement is where they would like to have equal footing. She even stated that EU has a dialogue with India in the macro-economic area. Dónal Cannon, EIB Head of Regional Representation for South Asia, delivered a talk on “EU, India and Climate Action – a Joint Implementation”. He described India as ‘Emerging Global Economic Engine’. He said that in order to address the infrastructure gap in India that could solve its issues in the areas of climatic adversity, it needs to source money from international finances. He stated that India received a grant of 8 million euros from the EU to set up prerequisite equipment in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat. India is predicted to have 5 gigawatts in offshore wind capacity by 2025. The session was concluded with Prof. Prashant Mishra, Dean, New Initiatives and External Relations, IIM Calcutta thanking the delegates on behalf of the institution for attending the session and enlightening the audience with their thoughts, insights and mutual concern for addressing global concerns jointly with India.

The 27th Institute's Lecture Series was held on February 12, 2019 and Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Institute Professor, IIT Madras delivered a talk, "Can India’s transport become all electric by 2030?". Dr. Anju Seth, Director of IIM Calcutta inaugurated the event, welcoming Professor Jhunjhunwala for the talk. The talk was on how, with the help of innovative approaches, India’s transport can become all electric by 2030. He began with the interesting story of how landline telephones in India had a typical waiting time of 8 years in 1980s. This shook him and he was motivated to bring connectivity to Indian masses at cheaper rates and lower waiting time. He then pioneered the work in Wireless Telephones which was a disruptive technology. He had the foresight that electronics may be costly but is driven by Moore’s law. Prof. Jhunjhunwala concluded by saying that India needs innovative approach to get its EV to scale. Start-ups and industries who are working towards the cause need to be encouraged and there needs to be handholding of the MSMEs of India’s auto sector. He believes that there should be more focus on R&D with attempts to pressure India’s GDP and grow jobs and that with the right steps, India’s transport can become all electric by 2030.

IIMC Case Research Center (IIMCCRC) hosted the 7th Case Method Workshop at the IIM Calcutta campus on March 29-30, 2019. The workshop brought together academicians, practitioners and doctoral students from different areas of management. The participants represented reputed organizations and many had decades of industrial experience. Prof. Anju Seth, Director of IIMC inaugurated the workshop and addressed the audience. She was followed by Prof. Bodhibrata Nag, Dean (Academic) and Prof. Indranil Bose, Coordinator of IIMCCRC who spoke about the importance of the case method.

The workshop was led by Prof. Shantanu Bhattacharya, Associate Dean (PG Programs) and Dr. Havovi Joshi, Director, Center of Management Practice at Singapore Management University. In the first session of the workshop, Prof. Bhattacharya demonstrated how to teach a case, based on guiding questions to lead the audience to answers. After a break, Dr. Joshi discussed how to design the template for a case study. The second day started with a group activity. The participants were divided into small groups and each group wrote a synopsis of a case. Prof. Bhattacharya and Dr. Joshi shared their feedback on each write-up and provided guidance on writing effective case studies. Prof. Bose conducted the final session of the workshop in which, he shared his years of experience in case writing and research. At the end of the two-day workshop, the participants realized that a case is not just a good story or an opinion or a solution to a problem. It is a teaching tool with specific teaching objectives for a select audience.

The Management Centre for Human Values, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta organized an international workshop on “Spatial Justice and Stewardship: Theoretical dialogues among schools of thought” in Pondicherry during March 20-22, 2019 jointly with the Institut Français de Pondichéry (IFP), a research institution under joint supervision of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the French National Centre for Scientific Research. The workshop brought together European and Indian scholars, who addressed issues of spatial inequalities related to development projects (creation of infrastructures or industrial zones, protected areas) and the differentiated access to ‘resources’ at the individual and collective scales. Faculty members from University Paris Nanterre, University Paris Est, La Réunion University, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD - France), National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture (IRSTEA – France), University of Leipzig, Liège University, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Institut Français de Pondichéry and IIM Calcutta participated in the workshop. The workshop started with a presentation by Philippe Gervais-Lambony from University Paris Nanterre, who explored the differences and similarities between spatial justice and other kinds of justice, including the diverse definitions of social justice. Valérie Deldrève from La Réunion University argued for an intersectional and socio-historical analysis of the processes interacting in the creation of inequalities (included participatory component), coupled with an analysis in terms of principles and feelings of justice. Nimruji Jammulamadaka from IIM Calcutta moved away from the more popular notions of co-operative sharing and argued that these are all rooted in a particular eurocentric notion of individual property rights. She extended the argument to suggest that the normative idea of inequality is also tied to the notion of individual property rights and thus of limited emancipatory potential in understanding notions of justice. The workshop ended with a notion of at least a special issue of a journal, either in Journal of Human Values published by MCHV and Sage, and/ or in the bilingual journal Spatial Justice published from France.

The Grand Finale of the 7th edition of Tata Social Enterprise Challenge 2018 to find India’s most promising early-stage social innovators was held in Kolkata on 12 January, 2019. The start-ups were from sectors such as agriculture; healthcare; water and sanitation; technology and development; education and skills development; housing; handicrafts; energy; and microfinance, among others. Out of 900 applications, the top 60 teams were shortlisted. This was followed by Regional Rounds at Kolkata, Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai in December last year from which the top 20 teams were selected. Besides these 20 teams, two entrepreneurs from Germany joined the Semi-finals. The Semi-final and the Grand Finale were scheduled on 11th and 12th January, 2019 respectively at IIM Calcutta. In the Grand Finale the top three start-ups in the social enterprises space were identified, namely, Mocxa, a healthcare-based start-up, was declared the winner, EzeRx, another healthcare startup held the second position and GiftAbled won the third position. Eminent personalities also attended the event to motivate the youth towards social entrepreneurship.

'Health Trail’- The Healthcare Accelerator Program is to foster start-ups endeavouring to offer innovative solutions to some of the largest health problems in our country, especially in the rural sector. It has a 15-member cohort, 7 Dedicated Mentors and up to Rs 50 Lakhs seed funding for selected start-ups.

The ‘Janhit Jagran Idea Challenge Bootcamp’ was hosted on 23rd and 24th February 2019. Nearly 30 start-ups attended the two-day bootcamp. The start-ups were mentored by over 5 mentors and guided on how to make a winning pitch. In addition, a team from VR SAARP & Co, a reputed CA firm, deliberated on compliance. Pitching sessions were also held during the bootcamp.

The ‘Learn the Art and Science of Pitching’ Workshop was organised on 2nd and 3rd April 2019. All the 43 incubatees of IIM Calcutta Innovation Park attended the two-day workshop where they were mentored by Mr Srikant Sastri, Board Chairman of IIM Calcutta Innovation Park. Sessions were conducted on topics such as Funding landscape & how one should think about funding; Estimating one’s own funding needs and the Art of Story-telling.