As I had written in the previous post, we proceeded to IIM Ahmedabad late August for our training in Finance. This was a pretty exciting attachment for me because I had always nurtured this dream of being able to study in IIM-A. Because my civil service dream was more firm, I refrained from pursuing the CAT examination.
A week before the course began itself, our course co-ordinator, Prof. Sebastian Morris, and programme co-ordinator Ms. Madhavi Patak, got in touch with us. They had sent us the course reading materials and also the case studies that we were supposed to go through. We took the academy bus to Chandigarh and boarded the flight to Ahmedabad. This would be my first Gujarat visit. However, since the programme was supposed to be vigorous, I was aware that I wouldn’t be able to explore much of the city during the 2 weeks we would be there.
The executive courses of IIM-A is held in very high stead in the industry and for good reason. The course that was planned for us was custom made keeping in mind the requirements that we as Auditors had. The executive courses take place in the new campus which is separated from the old campus through an underground tunnel. We reached Ahmedabad by evening and as I reached the institute there was slight drizzle. I was amazed and curious seeing the new campus block. We were provided accommodation within the campus in the executive block itself.
The new campus, if I understand correctly, was designed by HCP Design, Planning and Management group. The old campus which was conceived by Louis Kahn, an american architect had an exposed brick design. The new campus also built with concrete as the medium in exposed form. May be the architects were trying to project the exposure that the students would be getting in the institute. Sprawling an area of around 39 acres, I loved the place.
As for the facilities, I found some things lacking. The gym in the new campus, and for that matter the old campus both were pretty poor and outdated. There was no swimming pool and the sports facilities were not in keeping with what such an elite institute should be having. Mind you, I am not telling that they are sub par but not in keeping with the facilities one expects out of such an institute. Our academies (NAAA, iCISA, iCED) have better facilities if a per capita comparison is undertaken.
The food and the mess was top notch. I believe that IIM-A has outsourced the hospitality to some hotel which is doing a good job.
The first day involved a campus walk to introduce us to the whole IIM campus. We were taken to both the new and the old campus and shown all the facilities and also told of the history. An interesting fact that piqued my interest is the story of the logo of IIM-A which was inspired by the jail of the Sidhi Syed mosque in Ahmedabad. It represents the Tree of Life. Post this, we were ushered in to our classes, where Prof. Sebastian Morris, our course co-ordinator gave us an introduction and explained the objectives of the course to us. We were thoroughly impressed by his class.
The good thing about a batch that has cleared the Civil Service is that their understanding of various topics are higher than an average crowd because of the rigorous studies one undertakes for the Civil Service Exam. In addition to this we were introduced to a wide variety of concepts spanning Economics, Accounting, Finance and Public Finance etc. during the course of our training. Thus the professors could directly get into the intricacies of the subject rather than going through the basics. We had lectures by Prof. Morris, Neerav Nagar, Jayant Varma, Mr. Pandey etc. all of him had very interesting insights and knowledge to share with us. The case study approach was fantastic, thereby making the course more enjoyable. I have always despised rote theoretical teaching. Sprayed with real life examples, IIM faculty really served their purpose.
We were fully occupied during the two weeks in IIM-A with a lot of reading and activities to occupy ourself. One of the evenings I managed to catch up with my friends from Indian Corporate Law Service who are posted in Ahmedabad. Another Sunday my colleague and I managed to squeezed a small road trip to Udaipur.
We moved on to our own International Centre for Environment Audit and Sustainable Development, Jaipur post the 2 week IIM-A attachment which was also a very interesting experience. I shall reserve it for the next post.