Chairperson's Message - Knowledge partnership between Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) and Capacity Building Commission, Government of India (CBC)

It is my privilege to share with you about the knowledge partnership between Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) and Capacity Building Commission, Government of India (CBC). This is indeed a strong step in the direction of “atma-nirbhar Bharat”. My congratulations to Prof. Uttam Kumar Sarkar, Director IIMC and Shri Hemang Jani, Secretary, CBC, for having signed a ‘Statement of Intent’ on 17th February 2022 at New Delhi. The Government of India constituted the CBC through a notification in the Gazette of India in April 2021. The vision of CBC is to enhance the execution capacity of the Indian states by radically improving the government’s human resource management practices and significantly augmenting the capacity of India’s 25 million civil servants. As the custodian of the civil services capacity building ecosystem, CBC’s mandate is to ensure and enable lifelong learning for all. It aims to create optimal learning opportunities for each civil servant with the objective to build an agile and future ready public service force. As a knowledge partner to CBC, IIMC (as the first IIM to have signed an agreement with CBC) has a momentous opportunity to leverage its knowledge capital and expertise towards this important national endeavour. Within this framework of understanding, IIMC may do the following:

1. Customise leadership training programmes and deliver them through face to face and/or virtual mode of instruction.
2. Create instructional content in a wide range of activity areas which fall under the purview of the CBC.
3. Conduct evaluation impact studies.
4. Provide knowledge support to CBC in terms of case writing and case teaching.

It gives me a deep sense of reassurance and a feeling of happiness that IIM Calcutta will have a role (atma-nirbhar Bharat) in significantly contributing to the governance practices at different levels. This partnership will be yet another occasion for IIMC to demonstrate its collective (its family of teachers and alumni) expertise in leadership training and other areas of management for the benefit of the nation. As the first IIM in India, IIMC is once again the first in stepping forward for such an important national initiative, thus reinforcing its standing as an eminent public institution of management education in the country.