IIM - Indian Institute of Management
Calcutta (Part I - the School)
Over the past
four decades, IIM Calcutta has blossomed into one of
Asia's finest Business Schools. The School emerges as an International
Center of Excellence in all facets of Management Education,
rooted in Indian ethos and societal values.
Here you see the Tata Hall, the Library, the lake and the Teaching Block.
Today, IIM Calcutta
attracts the best talent in India - a melting pot of
academia, industry and research. The best and brightest young men
and women pursue its academic programs.
I had the opportunity to live this in 2001.
Below, you see the exchange students. We were 13 in total.
upper
row (from the left): Benoit, Celine, Sebastien and Yvan (all from Belgium)
middle row: Rune (Denmark), Nacho (Spain), Newton (Brazil)
lower row: Mels (Netherlands), Akshaw (Norway), Jacob (Sweden) and
Runar (Norway).
Njäl (Norway) and Juan (Colombia) arrived some days later.
The School
Now I will show
a bit of the School. The image below shows
the entrance of the teaching block. We had classes in some
different rooms, some full equipped like the one above.
The next picture brings the road from the students
to the teaching block (about 600m around the lake).
There you can see the bird shit marks on the road.
Every day, at 6pm it "rained" bird shit because they live up in
the
trees around the road. Amazing!
Some people use to use an umbrella at this time!
We were about
500 guys and girls, separated in four student
residence blocks (one room per student).
I use to live in the block below, called as "the annex".
Here you can
see my room (the brown door on the right side of the picture)
This guy washed our clothes and ironed as well. I use to spend
around 80 rupees with him per month to wash all my clothes.
That is less than 2 euros !!!
This is the cafeteria. Here we had breakfast, lunch and dinner,
provided by the school and controlled by the students.
You can see Juan taking some fresh orange juice. In the next picture
you see Njal (in the queue) and Sebastien getting served.
This is the lake from the entrance road. The teaching block
was behind that trees in the left side.
A interest final comment about the IIM is the way it is organized.
It a real living community. Students organize themselves to have control
over the most
different aspects of campus life, so you had a food responsible,
accommodation responsible, sports responsible, bathroom responsible, etc.
They were elected by the students and they had the power to manage
school budgets and policies. Incredible.
Friends
Newton and Soni
at the table tennis room.
Mels, Yvan and Celine in one of our beer sessions.
We did that very often.
In the last day of classes. Rawat (External Relations secretary of IIMC),
Abhishek (the Exchange Students "boss"), Newton (me) and Akshaw.
This was the last meeting before we left.
Now you see in the first picture Nacho, one of the coordinators, Juan, Jacob,
Yvan, Akshaw and me. In the second picture you see Akshaw, me,
Runar, the Dean, Mels, a program coordinator and a professor.
Please, click on Next Friends (below)
to see more pictures in India...