Students' suicide, dropouts: IIM Lucknow to de-stress campus

Prasad said the Institute is now taking steps to promote 'gross happiness index' so as to produce a happier and more valuable breed of future managers

Stirred by students’ dropout and a recent suicide of one of its students, the premier Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM-L) is now taking proactive steps to de-stress the campus for improving its ‘gross happiness index’.

IIM-L Director Ajit Prasad observed the high academic standards in IIM was not amenable to promoting happiness among students, who weathered undue stress of expectations and performance.

He referred to a suicide in the campus by one of its students and the dropout of 20 students of the graduating (2016-18) batch to buttress his point about the IIM system subjecting students to immense pressure, which he candidly conceded was not a healthy matrix.

Prasad said the Institute was now taking steps to promote ‘gross happiness index’ so as to produce a happier and more valuable breed of future managers. He said stress had presumably resulted in a suicide, dropout of 20 students and a couple of other ‘unfortunate’ accidents in the campus.

In November 2017, the body of a second year management student Soham Mukherjee of Kolkata was found hanging in his hostel room. Earlier in July 2017, another student, Subhadip Das, had gone missing from the campus and is still to be traced. In the past, the Institute had witnessed another suicide incident by one of its students.

Meanwhile, addressing the 32nd Convocation of IIM-L here last evening, Prasad announced the launch of a new module ‘Human Values and Responsible Citizenship’ for the students this year to imbibe humane virtues amongst them.

He announced plans of launching an off-shore campus at Kathmandu in Nepal after necessary approvals from the Centre, apart from launching an Executive Education Programme in the Gulf, including Dubai. IIM-L already has a satellite campus at Noida.

Meanwhile, IIM-L Board of Governors (BoG) chairman N Chandrasekaran, who is also Tata Sons chair, said the world was facing challenges on five fronts viz. employment due to automation, climate change, global terrorism, ageing population and massive disruption in terms of technology. He lamented instead of the international community tacking these challenges, it had spurred protectionism among the various countries.

At the convocation ceremony, 613 students were awarded diplomas, including 396 students from the 32nd  batch of Post Graduate Programme (PGP) in Management, 49 students from the 13th batch of PGP in Agri-business Management, 12 students from the Doctoral Programme, 3 students from EFPM Programme along with 75 students from PGP in Management for Working Executives (WMP), 59 students from International Programme in Management for Executives (IPMX) and 19 students from PGP in Sustainable Management (PGPSM).

During 2017-18, IIM-L had published 83 research papers, did 99 MDPs and trained 2500 managers. Besides, the Institute had joined hands with the World Bank to train on the Bank’s procurement process, which attracted participants from India, Myanmar and Afghanistan.