The functionary from Rashtrapati Bhawan’s Office bent close to the President’s ear and sotto voce, in almost a stage whisper, said, “Sir, three groups of visitors are waiting. It has been 38 minutes now”. The allotted ten minutes long gone, I was sitting in front of the President of India, with our Advisor Corporate Affairs, Partha Dasgupta. The President with an affable smile said, “Professor Sinha, I promise to come to the first Convocation of IIM Kashipur, unless there is pressing matter which outweighs it”. Thus, ended my meeting with the first citizen of the Republic of India and the date was 7th February 2013!
12th
May, 2012 I had taken over as Director, IIM Kashipur, against all sane advice
of the better half and all well-wishers.
She even called it my ‘Vanvas’,
but this being the Kaliyuga, Sita chose not to share the travails of living in the
boondocks for the five year! The ensuing months seemed endless toil with
seemingly no results to show. Most of what was to be done depended on the
continued munificence of the Uttarakhand government. All my letters to the top
bureaucrats with earnest entreaties seemed have landed in the dead letter box.
The stony silence from the state government was deafening. It seemed that their
political agenda had been met with creation of an IIM in Uttarakhand, and the
marginal benefits to be had from nurturing that infant IIM were indeed marginal,
and hence not worth the effort.
Luckily for
me, 12 years on the shop-floor of a steel plant teaches one may things, and perseverance
is one of them! Somewhere in October 2012, I had appointed Partha Dasgupta as
Advisor Corporate Affairs, IIM Kashipur. Partha was to help the institute to
connect with corporates, mainly for internships and placements and in the
branding. He was exactly the same age as me, a seasoned corporate veteran in HR
and had worked in the senior positions in India and abroad. He now wanted a more
meaningful, if less hectic engagement. One karmic thread that bound us was that
he was a SAIL-brat, having been brought up in Rourkela Steel Plant. The bonds
were of steel, figuratively speaking, and very soon a friendship of equals
developed, transcending the official hierarchy!
Among the
myriad problems that confronted me, getting the legal possession of the
allotted land and additional buildings for hostels from the Uttarakhand government were the ones which loomed
large. All this required active attention, if not indulgence, of the powers
that be in Dehradun. Only an event of tectonic proportions was going to get
their attention. I believe it was Einstein who said, “In the middle of difficulty
lies opportunity”. In one of the evening
confabulation sessions with Partha, usually facilitated by peated spirits, on
how to be heard and acted upon by the state government, he dropped a bombshell.
His old college mate Pradyut Guha, from his graduation days at Kolkata, was
currently the Personal Secretary to Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, the President of
India. That was a Eureka moment! If we could have the Prez as the chief guest
in our first convocation, in March 2013, the rumblings would travel to Dehradun
and that would wake even the dead in the Uttarakhand bureaucracy!
Partha talked to his old friend Mr Guha and explained our reasons for wanting to meet the President. We had his nod and immediately sent a formal letter to Rashtrapati Bhawan requesting an audience for the purpose of inviting the President to grace the first convocation of our fledgling IIM. Flurry of mails and here we were, Partha and I, traveling to Delhi. In my haste, I had a forgotten to bring a tie and Partha had packed an extra tie which I used. The entry to Rashtrapati Bhawan followed the searches and scans and mercifully the security allowed us the IIM Kashipur brochures to be carried to the meeting. Next, we sat in the ante room waiting for our turn. A functionary from the office informed us that every visitor had a strict 10-minute slot and asked us ‘Not to touch his feet’. A cup of tea came with assorted goodies. The sheer load of anticipation caused the cup to rattle on the saucer, and I avoided the goodies lest I make fool of myself by spilling something on my clothes. Soon we entered the chamber of the President of India. Shri Pranab Mukherjee rose from his chair to shake my hand, and that moment was captured by the photographer. This was the zenith of my 60 years on planet Earth, a boy from Yarpur, Patna shaking hands with the First Citizen of India in Rashtrapati Bhawan!
Mr Pranab
Mukherjee asked for the brochure, and for the next ten minutes read through the
pages with rapt attention. Then came the barrage of questions over the next
fifteen minutes or more- How many students do you have now? How many faculty?
How are you recruiting faculty? Is it difficult to get faculty? What are your
plans for next year? What about placements so far? How do you plan to get
companies to your campus, given the remote location? What help have you
received and what more do you need from the Uttarakhand Government? Luckily, I
had all the answers well-rehearsed. I explained my precarious situation
vis-à-vis the state government and what all help we desperately needed to be
able to survive. His curiosity about the institute quenched, the conversation
veered to me and my antecedents. A quick view of my academic antecedents and meandering
career through SAIL, IIT Kharagpur, LBSIM etc, I said that his elder son Abhijit
was four years my junior as Management Trainee in SAIL. That somehow brought a
personal connect and the conversation then onward happened in Bengali! He
seemed happy that I had pursued academics and went on to say how he had started
his career as a lecturer in his home district of Birbhum, West Bengal. He
shared that there were many in his family linked to academics, including his
aunt who had been a teacher, an uncle a librarian. In the end he gave us
invaluable advice on how to plan for the next 5 years and ensure the help from
state bureaucracy. Few minutes in to the meeting, I became completely oblivious
of the fact that I was sitting in front of the President of India, such was his
magnanimity and force of personality to be able to put an ordinary mango person (aam aadmi!) so completely
at ease. In the end, he asked where would be the nearest airbase or airport,
and then laughed and said, “I’ll leave the Airforce to sort it out”. Then came
a shake of hands, a gentle smile and parting assurance and promise that he
would be there, ‘unless there was a national crisis’! Thus ended the meeting
with Pranab Mukherjee, the 13th President of India! I parted with a
desperate entreaty, that if he did not come, IIM Kashipur would wither away due
to lack of support.
At the
prompting of the majordomo, the meeting ended and Partha and I sort of walked
on a cloud, quite above the ground, almost a surrealist experience- meeting the
President of India, pleading our case and getting an assurance, if not promise!
The next month went at a dizzying speed. A quick trip to Dehradun, to inform
the Governor as per protocol and invite him, the Chief Minister, the Education
Minister, the Chief Secretary and so on. The tectonic upheavals had indeed
travelled to the capital! Every office had its functionaries looking at me in
askance, how could this guy get the President to come to the boondocks? If
rumours are to be believed, this would be the first visit of a President to
this state since its formation in November 2000! Did I see surprise, if not
grudging respect in the eyes of the bureaucrats? But certainly they were quite
ready to share their mobile numbers and disposed to take my calls.
Many sleepless nights and days of going over endless details, came the appointed day. First came the helicopters of the Governor, Mr Aziz Qureshi, and then that of the Justice Vijay Bahuguna, Chief Minister. Three M-17 helicopters of IAF flying the tricolors roared over the wheat and sugarcane fields of Kashipur and landed at the helipad of India Glycols Ltd (IGL), our neighbours. Soon the Presidential cavalcade entered IIM Kashipur. As he alighted from his car, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee’s first words to me were, “Professor Sinha, I have kept my word”, that too in Bengali! The Presidential speech was short, rich in content and no platitudes or pithy political statements either. He politely reminded the Chief Minister that the state of Uttarakhand now had an IIM, and should nurture it and derive benefits as Gujarat had through IIM Ahmedabad. The medal winners from the first batch of IIM Kashipur would proudly remember lifelong that they had the President of India putting medals around their necks! Soon the 1st Convocation of IIM Kashipur was over, the helicopter departed, but the parting presidential advice had struck home, and the Chief Minister, Mr Bahuguna stayed back. We had a lunch elongated by IIM Kashipur explaining what was needed, why and when and the Chief questioning the specifics. In the end he was convinced of our needs and asked to meet him at Dehradun, one month thence on April 17, 2013.
IIM Kashipur
received all the support and more from the Uttarakhand Government, and I cannot
think of something more significant than those 38 minutes that set off the
chain of events. It is with great pride that I remember that the President of
India was actually interested about a new IIM and willing to spend one entire
day to this problem, something seemingly infinitesimally small from his
perspective!
Mr. Pranab
Mukherjee has departed for his heavenly abode, and on behalf of IIM Kashipur
and on my personal behalf, I salute the magnanimity of this great leader who
adorned the highest chair as its 13th President, lucky for India!
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