Faculty travels 3,000 km to teach at IIM-Amritsar

In the third and concluding part of the series on new IIMs, Business Standard gives you a glimpse of the Amritsar campus

Around 150 postgraduate students hop into buses every morning and travel 20 km to arrive at this newly opened campus of Indian Institute of Management (IIM) at Amritsar. The campus here, however, does not share the ambience of Brand IIM. It functions from all of seven classrooms and a hall taken on lease from the Punjab Institute of Technology, next to the sprawling Guru Nanak Dev University.

Just like the other new IIMs that started functioning last year, this Amritsar institute doesn’t have anything to show off as its own — except students. The faculty is sourced from IIM-Kozhikode, some 3,000 km away. Reason: IIM-Kozhikode has been tasked with mentoring IIM-Amritsar. While five lecturers come from Kozhikode, three guest lecturers are from other institutes. At any given time, not more than two or three faculty members are present at the campus.

The permanent faculty can only be appointed once the director takes charge and the board is established at IIM-Amritsar, an official familiar with the processes said. There is no movement yet on getting a permanent director here.

The institute is learnt to have taken possession of a 60-acre land for establishing its own campus on the Amritsar-Jalandhar highway, but construction will take at least a year to start. Add to that some more years for construction to complete.

Assistant Professor Manish Kumar, a visiting faculty from IIM-Kozhikode, says IIM-Amritsar is still better than IIM-Bodh Gaya (Bihar), IIM-Sambalpur (Odisha) and IIM-Sirmaur (Himachal Pradesh), as it has been able to attract students.

The number of students doubled in one year. “Unlike the other three, IIM-Amritsar is close to the airport (13 km) and a railway station (5 km),” says Kumar, who teaches organisation behaviour and human resources.

IIM-Amritsar, however, loses out to IIM-Nagpur (Maharashtra) and IIM-Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), as both are better connected and industry hubs.

Setting up of IIMs in Nagpur, Visakhapatnam, Amritsar, Bodh Gaya, Sambalpur and Sirmaur were announced during the 2014 Budget speech, with an aim to match the growing demand of professionals in the country. It is estimated that India would need more managerial experts, as it moves towards eight per cent gross domestic product growth. The Union government decided it was prudent to start third-generation IIMs with bare minimum infrastructure and resources, which can be built and arranged over the years.

The students also concede the institute is not established like the leading IIMs in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru or Lucknow. There’s a library, though, unlike in the case of IIM-Bodh Gaya. Classrooms have audio and video facilities, too. Apart from no permanent faculty, the biggest problem is distance. “We travel 15-20 km everyday on buses provided by the institute from our hostel,” says Aman Kumar Gupta, a second-year student from New Delhi.

The first batch of 45 students was housed near the campus when the course began. But, before the second batch of 105 students arrived at the campus, the institute had already finalised 55 flats in a vacant housing society, some 20 km from the campus. Currently, four students share a two-bedroom flat. The institute is learnt to have taken some measures after a student died and another got seriously injured, while returning from a late-night party on a motorbike.

A first-year student laments it is a big loss that teachers were not around to solve their queries. Indeed, it is difficult for the visiting faculty from IIM-Kozhikode to divide their time between the two institutes and travel to IIM-Amritsar. Kumar says he visits the Amritsar campus once a month but has to change three flights – Kozhikode-Mumbai, Mumbai-Delhi and Delhi-Amritsar. That hardly leaves him with any time for research.

And, the real test is still ahead when the first batch of IIM-Amritsar goes for placement by the end of this year.
READY RECKONER

Year of establishment: 2015

Campus: 60 acres have been transferred to the institute, but construction is yet to begin

Faculty: Three guest lecturers and five visiting faculty from IIM-Kozhikode

Students: First batch has 45 students; second batch 105

Year of passing out of the first batch: 2017

Placement: Placements yet to begin. All students from first batch received summer internship with average monthly stipend of Rs 31,000