Professor G R Kulkarni: The silent mentor of IIM, Ahmedabad

Individuals like Professor Kulkarni, who passed away yesterday, do not beat their own drum. They go on happily with their lives, but we are the losers

Professor Gajanan Raghunath Kulkarni, who passed away in Bengaluru on October 13 at the age of 94, was among the pioneers of professional management education in India. He came to the then just starting Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), being directly recruited by its first honorary director, Dr Vikram Sarabhai, along with a select few: Dr Kamala Chowdhry, Dr Samuel Paul, Professor Bharat Dalal, Professor Hrishikesh Pathak, among others. Ahmedabad was then not quite prominent on the academic map of India. Dr Sarabhai made it his mission to rectify that situation and succeeded spectacularly by founding or nurturing institutions