He is the first IIM-A alumnus to head the institute as its director. This 56–year-old is an authority on capital markets, portfolio theory, international finance and operations research. Meet Samir K. Barua, the new director of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. In his first ever media interaction, the new IIM-A director, who has over 180 papers and articles as well as two books, 'Portfolio Management' and 'The Great Indian Scam: Story of the missing Rs 4000 crore' to his credit, shares his vision for the institute.
A faculty in IIM Ahmedabad since 1980 where he had completed his Fellow Programme in Management (Doctorate) from IIM-A the same year, Barua had acquired Master's degree in Technology in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from IIT Kanpur.
IIM-A has seen interference from the Centre in the last few years which has raised questions on its autonomy. What is your take on that? Also, will you undo anything done by your predecessor, Bakul Dholakia?
I am not really aware of any interference from the central government over the functioning of the institute ever since I have taken over and i do not see any such thing in the immediate horizon. I also disagree with the statement that we (IIM-A) have been at loggerheads with the ministry. We have had some disagreements but that's all there is to it. The interpretation that our autonomy is under attack is not correct. I don't think there is anything to undo what my predecessor has done!
Where does the fee and seat expansion issue with the ministry stand?
Although i have only taken over this week, i can say that there is no disagreement over fees with the ministry. As for expansion, even without any pressure, we as institutes need to expand since the number of applications keep growing every year. The institute is set to grow irrespective of any proposed expansion from the ministry.
What is your vision for IIM-A? What will be the focus areas during your tenure?
My vision is the institute's vision and irrespective of whoever the director is, that will not change. My focus areas will be ensuring availability of faculty, growth in infrastructure and funding to achieve the same.
How do you plan to tackle the faculty crunch at IIM-A?
Making available the right faculty is certainly a major challenge for the institute. We have 85 faculty members at present. We need 15 more members to be reasonably comfortable. Simply looking at current pay scales for faculty is not enough. The problem is we just don't have enough qualified candidates around. This is not something that can just be tackled immediately, a long term vision is needed for this.
In that sense, we are confident that we will be able to attract faculty from abroad. We have always attracted international faculty but now we expect it to be a larger. Around 5-10 years ago it was difficult to attract academicians to India but now that India has come into prominence it is easier.
Apparently, former Director of IIM-A, Bakul Dholakia, who has joined the Adani Group is trying to poach faculty from IIM-A. Will you also be looking at poaching faculty? How do you plan to bring in more faculty members?
(Laughs) That you will have to ask him. As for poaching, it's not that IIM-A does not attract academicians from India and abroad. We are quite hopeful of getting the required faculty members. In fact. we are looking at our doctoral students spending time taking classes with us at the institute. We have had doctoral students being selected for a faculty's post at IIM-A as soon as they finish their thesis as was the case with me, otherwise it's an unstated policy that the students can get experience from different places before opting to take up teaching jobs. The constraint here is that the number of doctoral students passing out of the IIMs is very small to cater to our requirements but we are looking at increasing the doctoral programme intake in the long run.
Are you working on any proposal to restructure the pay scales of faculty members to attract and retain them?
Faculty pay scales is something that is being worked out by the Sixth pay commission so it would be better to wait for their recommendations.
You have talked of growth of infrastructure and funding as part of your vision. What is your plan for the same?
We would like to grow as an institute and funding is an important aspect for that. While next year the intake will remain the same, we propose to double the number the number of students for the Post Graduate Programme in Management for Executives (PGPX) the year after that, making it into two sections. For expansion of the the two year PGP, we will await the Supreme Court decision.
We would like to continue with our current position where we do not have to ask for grants to fund our expansion. I am not saying that we are not ready to take financial assistance but we ought to be financially independent, that's our objective on all counts. We hope to achieve that partly from consultancy, partly from our IIM society and from our alumni who are based all over the world.
What are the initiatives you plan to take up in the near future?
While we talk about requirement of faculty members, we require quality non-teaching staff as well since their work is as important as the academicians. We have a number of quality non-academic staff in the retirement stage so that is something we are looking at. I am also looking at creation of knowledge as an important initiative for the institute.
Working on research papers, case studies, allotting more time and resources for the faculty members for knowledge creation, increasing contacts with the industry, are also important.
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