The Board of Governors at the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad today held a meet to review existing plans to make the institute more acceptable—globally.Infosys Chairman N R Narayana Murthy, RIL Chairman Anil Ambani, IIM-A Director Bakul Dholkia and other members of the board met for about three hours at the campus. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Chairman of the Board of Governors Narayana Murthy said, ‘‘Going global is a journey. Our aspiration is to become one of the top three management schools in the world in the next ten years.’’Murthy pointed out certain areas where the institute needed to improve. Comparing it with top insitutes of the world Murthy said, ‘‘Diversity of students and courses is much higher in top management institutes around the world. We need to improve on it, but the international competition will benefit us as we will strive harder to reach there.’’The new IIM-A campus on a 39-acre plot of land across the 132-feet-wide ring road adjacent to the existing campus was also inaugurated. Later in the evening, Murthy, Dholakia and Ambani planted saplings on the new campus.IIM-A Director Bakul Dholakia said, ‘‘For overseas programmes, we are concentrating on the South East Asia and Middle East countries at the moment.’’He added that several new programmes have also been planned, including the International Management Development Center (IMDC) IMDC which will house the one-year post-graduate programme (PGP-X) for executives with substantial work experience. The programme will be launched from April, 2006.Another post-graduate programme in Public Management and Policy (PGP-PMP) was announced. It will be launched in April, 2007. This one-year progamme, is for bright and motivated mid-career administrators, government officers and professionals of NGOs who intend to take up top level positions in public management and policy.Hasmukh Adhia, Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, Government of Gujarat and Member of the BOG said, ‘‘The PGP-PMP programme will be very helpful for officers and professionals wanting to learn standardised public policy making.’’Besides, the institute is constantly striving to increase its student intake. The number of students on the campus has now increased to around 650 and is expected to go up to about 800 over the next couple of years.For doctoral students in the institute’s fellowship programme, it has planned to construct 36 married students’ hostels in the new campus. The Institute is planning to construct a state-of-the-art sports complex on the new campus with three tennis courts, a volley ball court, a swimming pool, a club house, a gymnasium and facilities for several indoor games.
