Indian Institute of Technology Madras
(IITM) has been one of the foremost institutes of technological and scientific
education and research in India for the last few decades. IITM was inaugurated
on July 31, 1959, and by an Act of Parliament in 1961, IITM was declared as an
Institute of National Importance in 1961. The Institute was backed by
collaboration with the German Government. The first batch of B Tech graduates,
a 5 year course at that time, passed out in 1964. There has been no looking
back for the Institute from then on, as it continued to expand and diversify in
its course offerings and student intake, establishing schools of excellence,
year over year. Most alumni from IITM have occupied and continue to occupy
leadership positions in their chosen specialities. Dr A Lakshmanaswamy was the first Chairman of
the Board of Governors while Dr B Sengupto was the first Director of the
Institute. Initial Directors brought exemplary guidance to the Institute which
successors tried to preserve and grow.
IITM was amongst the best among the
IITs for its picturesque campus with vast flora and fauna. It was also very
much a part of a growing city. Set adjacent to a vast reserve forest land, the
campus even today ranks as a deer-friendly nature park. The campus had its own
specialities from the central Gajendra Circle (GC) to the unique Open Air
Theatre (OAT). In fact, nothing symbolised the open and free spirit of IITM
more than the OAT which has been a host to movies every Saturday (even in
examination or vacation seasons) and to several special seasonal events such as
Mardi-Gras and Sarang. IITM’s hostels were notable for their simple single room
accommodation but exemplary food services. The common rooms of the hostels
provided the magazine and newspaper fodder for the avid reader while there was
nothing other than a humble canteen for a hangout even up to the 90s.
Course
architecture
Initially at the time of its
inception, IITM had just five technology streams: Mechanical, Civil, Chemical,
Metallurgy and Electrical. Each of the disciplines was endowed with dedicated
teaching blocks and impressive workshop infrastructure. IITM was a pioneer in
establishing humanities and social sciences (HSS) as an integral part of its
engineering curriculum from the very beginning. Over the years, HSS began
offering M Tech and Ph D programmes in Industrial Engineering and Industrial
Management from the late 1960s. Eventually, even as the technology and
scientific disciplines proliferated with more specialisations and
sub-specializations, a Department of Management Studies came into being in 2004
to offer specialized MBA equivalent programmes.
Without doubt, there has always been
a great and unmistakable technological ambience and culture at IITM. Yet, it
was somewhat intriguing to see such technology talent moving to the Indian
Institutes of Management (IIMs) to join management courses. The other aspect,
much discussed of course, has been the flight of talent for advanced courses in
technology and management abroad, especially the USA. The emergence of distinct
schools of management in the IITs, probably a naïve attempt to fight the two
trends (or a practical approach to respond to popular trend) took root first in
IIT Bombay and eventually all the IITs including IITM followed suit.
Unfortunately, unlike in some IITs there has been no major external
sponsorship of the management school in IITM. That makes the growth of the
management department at IITM even more impressive.
Pioneering
professors
Long before the management school
came on, a few professors were pioneering management education as part of the
humanities and social sciences department, from the 1960s. As a student of the
M Tech programme in Industrial Engineering of 1972-74 batch and the Ph D
programme in Industrial Management later on, it was my privilege to witness
some of the pioneering professors in management strive to be both
differentiated and integrated simultaneously in the amazing, and occasionally
overwhelming, technical ambience of IITM. Professors R K Gupta in Business
Policy and Strategy, Dr S Ramani in Industrial Engineering, Dr V Anantharaman
in Organizational Behaviour, Dr L V L N Sarma in Financial Management, M Durga
Prasada Rao in Management Accounting, Dr A Ravindran in Operations Research (visiting
faculty from Purdue University), M G Asthana in General Management, Dr A V
Krishna Rao in English, Dr Y Nagendra in Statistics and Dr Dipak Chaudhuri in
Reliability and Maintenance Management were the early pioneers. Micro-economics
was taught by Professor Ganesan from Vivekananda College with a great
quantitative flair while Macro-economics was the forte of Hamsaleelavathi. V Arumugam from College of Engineering was a
passionate advocate of Work Study.
It required conviction and passion on
the part of the founding professors and the other lecturers who supported them
to develop and institutionalize a stream of management education in IITM from
the 1960s, in a period of the Institute when such management education was seen
as a needless diversion by the technology deans of the Institute. Also, it is
to the credit of the professors that early on they laid the base for Ph D
programs in industrial management and industrial engineering, taking a step
ahead of the IIMs in that respect. But for their vision and persistence, the
school of management would not have seen the light of the day. Nor would the
next generation professors like Dr T T Narendran and Dr L S Ganesh (who became
the Head of the Department of Management Studies) have been moulded as
researchers of the first order. Unlike the IIMs, however, the professors were
inward oriented focusing less on industry interactions and consulting
assignments, which probably explained the low visibility of the IITM management
programmes to the industry.
Unique
pedagogy
The IITM management professors had
unique pedagogical approaches. Professor Gupta brought to bear day to day
simplicity to business policy and strategy, weaving finance and accounting concepts
in the study. He was a patient teacher and was always waiting for the class to
think on its feet and respond to his little intriguing but earthy questions. Dr
Ramani made the complex canvas of industrial engineering a fascinating
potpourri of supply chain management and management information systems,
peppering the traditional time and motion study. Dr Anantharaman was
unparalleled for his keen understanding of human behaviour and scintillating
sense of humour. He made the multiple organizational behaviour theories of
management gurus come live through his extempore presentations. His group
dynamics human laboratory exercises helped many of his students understand the
meanings of visible facade and invisible self that govern all of organizational
behaviour.
Dr L V L N Sarma exemplified the virtuous
approach to management studies. Powered by a keen intellect and a sharp wit, he
propagated many techniques and tools of modern financial management, from
dividend signalling to portfolio analysis and from discounted cash flow to
ratio analysis, long before they became fashionable. Professor M D P Rao made the dry but
critically important discipline of management accounting as simple as the
peeling of banana. Between the teasing of master accountant Guptaji and the
challenging of the financial strategist LVLN, MDPR’s genial approach provided
the much needed comfort to the engineers who tended to be at sea in the accounting
and finance oceans! No one who went through IITM management can forget the
rigour of statistics as taught by Dr Nagendra. He was such a master in
statistics that the ordinary failings of his students looked unforgivable to
him. So was Dr Dipak Chaudhuri in his exposition of quantitative rigour for
developing reliability and maintenance management paradigms befitting of
engineers. S G Asthana was an ever-smiling exponent of principles of general
management, taking care to move students along with him.
Dr A V Krishna Rao who headed the
English faculty as well as the department for several years taught the
linguistic and communication skills with an everlasting smile. Amongst the next
generation professors, Dr T T Narendran set out new vistas in systems
simulation while Dr L S Ganesh focused on operations research, forecasting,
decision sciences and public policy. Dr L S Ganesh was particularly focused on
matters of public policy as much as on the emotional wellbeing of the students.
Dr R N Anantharaman came on to fill the void left by Dr V Anantharaman with his
brand of classic psychology for management. The Industrial Engineering stream
continued to get enriched by Dr C Rajendran and others. As with any institutional
evolution, old guard yielded place to the new, but one cannot but recollect
with nostalgia and respect the contributions made by founding professors of
management, humanities and social sciences in an overwhelmingly technological
ambience. Credit also must be given to the fact that the technological depth of
IITM gave a rare edge to management students – who else other than Professor H
N Mahabala could have taught Computer Science and Engineering in such a
delectable manner in the overflowing hall of Central Lecture Theatre (CLT)?
Uniquely
different
It is to the credit of the management
professors at IITM that despite the overwhelming technology ambience they did
not succumb to style over substance. While they could have appeased by
christening their course as Technology Management to the appreciative nods of
the engineering faculty, they chose to name and position management for what it
is as a unique and integrative discipline. As compared to the IIMs, however,
they gave a strong quantitative bias to the management course, making the
graduates hone their analytical skills further. With certain specialized course
focused on aspects of inventory management, reliability management, statistical
quality control, operations research and management information systems, they
laid the foundation for the subsequent evolution of Operations Management
discipline. Dr A Ravindran added a masterly touch to the courses at IITM with
his inimitable teaching of Operations Research. One of the more complex yet
real time oriented branch of mathematics, Operations Research was followed by
the students with total absorption when Dr Ravindran taught the subject.
Amidst the quantitative orientation,
the perspectives and insights that were generated out of organizational
behaviour and financial management were unique and absorbing to the engineers
who made up the intake. It is to the credit of the professors, Dr Anantharaman
and Dr LVLN that they offered the mind-expanding disciples as serial
courses across semesters helping the engineers become better real world
managers. It is even more creditable that the professors encouraged full-fledged
MS and Ph D programmes in such core non-technical disciplines too, adding to
the multi-disciplinary nature of IITM. In fact, MS by research is a programme
unique to IITs, representing a bridge option for those students who are
research oriented but do not wish to spend several years on a deep research
topic. Many students in management found the MS option relevant and satisfying.
Blessed I
am
While God decides our intrinsic
capabilities and competencies through genetics handed down through parents and
grandparents, teachers and professors play a significant role in expanding our
horizons, deepening our knowledge, honing our competencies and developing our
capabilities. In a way, institutions such as the IITs and IIMs and their
dedicated professors, and the competitive but egregious student population help
us re-discover and re-position ourselves. It is my fortune that as a student of
the M Tech Programme, I was spotted, developed and appreciated by my learned founding-professors
of Industrial Management and Industrial Engineering. If the M Tech programme in
Industrial Engineering made me confident and capable as well as industry ready,
the Ph D programme helped me to drive attributes of perfection and diligence to
new highs, and more importantly embed in myself the fundamental tenet of robust
research - understand the available knowledge, hypothesise alternate constructs
and validate through empirical research a new paradigm that adds to the body of
knowledge.
My research journey in IITM, which
started with the guidance of Professor R K Gupta but was essentially guided and
concluded under the supervision of Dr L V L N Sarma was a journey from one pole
of knowledge (stimulatingly descriptive of Guptaji) to another (diligently
analytical of Dr LVLN). It taught me how to utilize data and information to
develop new hypotheses and validate them. It is this (positively!) bipolar
quest for knowledge that attracted me to the fascinatingly descriptive
Michael's Porter's works on Competitive Strategy and Competitive Advantage but
go on to develop a validated analytical construct to quantitatively and
statistically validate certain follow-on as well as original hypotheses of competitive
strategy. If my Ph D thesis "Strategy
and Structure of the Indian Automobile Industry: A Study of the Four-Wheeler
Sector" remains a path-breaking thesis to date that gave a unique quantitative
foundation to Porter’s descriptive theories, with several constituent papers
having been published in refereed journals, I have to express my gratitude to
the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, and its pioneering professors who
shaped my knowledge perspectives, notably Professor R K Gupta and Dr L V L N
Sarma.
Tailpiece
When I was in school, I was
fascinated by the stories penned by Sri Mopineni Durga Prasad Rao and Sri
Lellapalli Venkata Laksmi Narayana Sarma and published in Telugu weeklies
regularly. They were full of humorously incisive analyses of family and social
relationships, and the quirkiness of human relationships. My joy knew no bounds
when the very same famed writers of fiction happened to be my professors at
IITM!
Acknowledgements:
I must gratefully acknowledge the
role played by all the educational institutions, and the teachers of each
institution, in developing me; these being Sri Sai Baba National Higher
Secondary School, Anantapur, P R G C Higher Secondary School, Kakinada,
Government College of Engineering, Anantapur affiliated to Sri Venkateswara
University at that point of time, and finally the Indian Institute of
Technology Madras, Chennai.
Posted by Dr CB Rao on February 27,
2015
1 comment:
Thank you for sharing with us such a useful information!
Institution Building || Faculty Development Program || Educational Leadership
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