-by Bhaskar Basu 24th Batch Alum

Tracing a much-traversed path of ‘middle class’ Indian child growing up in the ‘70s & ‘80s, graduated as a Mechanical Engineer & then worked for two years to fund my MBA. Joka was a ‘mixed bag’ experience to begin with for me:

• Trepidation of getting back to classrooms after a gap
• Adjusting to the available hardware’ gap moving on from Mumbai
• Cohabiting with a sea of mosquitoes as yet not experienced
• Adjusting to the new group of bright persons with stellar credentials with a sense of “unknown.’

The two years @ Joka were slow to sink in in terms of its future impact. Borrowing a phrase from Steve Job’s famous Stanford Commencement Speech of “Connecting the Dots” - “It was impossible to connect the dots looking forward, but it was very clear looking backwards 10 years later. You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only connect looking backwards”. Reminiscing the 2 Years spent @ Joka as an institution shaping lives of thousands of bright young Indians giving them:

• The foundational Values they live shape their own & lives of countless ‘others’
• Solid Principles of Reciprocity, Sustainability, Diversity, challenging the status quo
• Most importantly giving back instead of merely taking

"Uncompromising Professionalism and life shaping experiences that continues to breed some of the top leaders running their organizations around the Globe with the rapidly fading ‘humane’ touch in our enterprises sets apart IIMC uniquely from other Top Tier Management Institutes."

After an initial adjustment with my new life @ Joka ,came a huge trauma of being persistently afflicted by severe breathing problems for the first time. Around Diwali 1987 there was an incredibly tough morning which made me virtually immobile & I had to skip a Test scheduled that morning. By noon, it was so bad that a group of my friends moved me to an Alipore Hospital ‘Casualty’. The attending Doctor, after treating me mentioned in the passing “another ½ hour delay would have rendered him ‘past tense’”. That was the first time experienced a ‘close encounter’ of a severe nature & thanks to my friends who sacrificed their evening taking care of me am now surviving.

Post IIMC traversed a typical path of starting off as a Management Trainee @ Mumbai with Hindustan Lever Ltd. ending as a Partner with a Private Equity Fund @Gurgaon after three decades of intervening stints @ Bangalore, Calcutta, Delhi & ‘overseas’ with few Corporates with last decade being in largely C.E.O /C.X.O roles.

Post my P.E.Fund stint with my advancing age had a serious question to answer - “Should I do more of the same or do something ‘different’?"

Admittedly scope for ‘doing the same’ was getting limited due to the fading relevance of my vintage. Thus decided to switch from a Corporate Career largely lived for ‘self-fulfilment to the exclusion of others’ to engagement with a Non-Profit NGO working amongst the Tribal / Rural poor in Karnataka. Thus in my mid-fifties started a new life with a new language, fresh food, new living standards on the fringes of Bandipur Forest working with Tribals primarily on community development projects of Tribal Women.

Being an independent ‘Non-Profit’ NGO, we are totally dependent on Donor contributions. Whenever I pitched for help for any of our endeavours, there has been an overwhelming response from my ‘ex Joka’ batchmates including in the last three months of COVID pandemic to the extent that I started looking for causal correlation with IIMC Selection parameters. The founding Promoter of a major North Indian NGO recently told me “How come IIMC alumni are so helpful? I am from IIM_ & whenever I pitched for supporting any of our initiatives there was no help from our alumni” further reinforcing that this generosity of IIMC Alumni is indeed rare truly living up to Winston Churchill saying “We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.”IIMC Joka you make me feel so privileged & proud to have been a part of your legacy forming such an important part of my Journey.