Rourkela offers the best option to the people of Odisha to locate their new IIM. The reasons follow.
1. Proximity to existing and future industry
Industry, engineering and management have a natural symbiosis, and constitute the triangle of prosperity for a geographical region.
If we take a look at the tri-State area of Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhatisgarh, the region is uniquely gifted with mineral wealth, water, forestry and people. It is already industry-rich, producing vast quantities of steel, aluminum, coal and power.
But management education is conspicuous by its inadequacy in the region. Barring XlRI Jamshedpur, the new IIM at Ranchi a small department at NIT Rourkela, a couple of private institutes at Raipur, there is little to show.
Most of these institutes are located away from the centre of tri-State area and students and faculty look outward. The region certainly needs a couple of major management institutes in the central region that integrates with most of the industry located in the region.
Superior institutes deliver much more, class room education being only one of them. The essential service provided by an institute of higher learning also includes: Consultancy services to industry, continuing education with or without degrees for professionals employed in industry, research on new techniques and approaches, distributed through books and journals that serve both industry and academia, and creation of an industry friendly scholastic environment shared by both industrial and academic communities.
All these require physical proximity to industry. These services, as well as class room education, get enriched in volume and quality through vacation training (summer, winter and week-ends) of students, lectures by industry personnel, adjunct faculty and social interaction. Seen from this perspective, the industrial belt of Rourkela – Jharsuguda offers the only desirable location for an institute of management in Odisha.
2. The unique selling point: Management of heavy industry, infrastructure, operation, HR and marketing
IIM Odisha cannot win over its counterparts in other parts of the country in management of stock market (finance), health care, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, electronics, IT, food or cosmetics. The State offers no locational uniqueness in these fields.
The coastal regions only enjoy limited advantage in areas of tourism, hospitality and IT management.
In contrast, western Odisha (along with the surrounding regions of Jharkhand and Chhatisgarh) enjoys unique locational advantage in relation to management of heavy industry (coal, power, steel, aluminium), management of infrastructure (heavy construction and transportation), HR, marketing operations and management of ecology and environment. Exploited properly, this locational uniqueness may, some day, help IIM Odisha be counted among the best management institutes of India, fulfilling a specific need of the nation.
3. Odisha needs a second education hub
Education thrives in concentration of educators and students. For education to be effective and of quality, students, teachers and scholars of many disciplines must live together and discuss in and off the class rooms, so that their minds never wander off the world of knowledge.
To achieve this, colleges and universities must be set up as clusters, in a few cities, instead of being distributed thinly across the State.
Today our home State offers only one such educational hub that is the Cuttack – Bhubaneswar region. There are general universities, engineering, medical, agriculture and arts colleges with over one lakh students.
Two observations are pertinent here: (a) One education hub is too few for a State of the size of Odisha, and (b) The Bhubaneswar hub is populated beyond its capacity at the current state of development.
It is important that a second education hub is allowed to grow in the State. After another 5 years, time will be ripe for a third one, and so on. As on today, I feel Rourkela city with NIT and half a dozen general and diploma colleges is the best candidate for the second education hub of Odisha.
4. Creating right attitude among IIM students to serve Indian industry: Proponents of setting up IIMs in metropolitan cities often argue that students of those institutes get selected by foreign financial institutions offering astronomical salaries.
I agree with the observation and the inference. While Indian nationals holding responsible positions in multinational companies is very desirable, we also need, even more critically, brilliant managers for large domestic industries.
Our State’s domestic industries, particularly of the blue collar variety that cover huge natural wealth and large population offer both opportunities and challenges that potential managers need to be sensitised to. An IIM located in the heart of an industrial belt and continuously interacting with these industries will create those managers who will love to work for these companies.
5. Communicating with the rest of the world: Good communication, particularly air, rail and road links are essential for a good institute. Several stations in Odisha have decent road and rail links, including Rourkela.
But western Odisha is yet to get its first airport, although the Minister of Civil Aviation has recently announced the Government’s plan to set up one at Jharsuguda.
An institute is made for a thousand years. An airport will be created within two years, even before the first batch is ready to graduate. Temporary absence of an air connection does not stop top industrialists and top managers from investing thousands of crores in the industrial infrastructure; they will certainly not hesitate to travel to IIM for lecture, interactions or recruitment.
6. Operations of IIM during the early years: Although not a critical point, easy operation of IIM in its early days is an important convenience.
NIT Rourkela, another Government of India institution, has adequate capacity of class rooms, hostels, faculty housing, library, computers, sports fields and scholastic climate to sustain a nascent IIM, thus giving it a head start.
7. Regional Aspirations: Geographical distribution of opportunities — industry, Government offices and educational institutions satisfies many people and inspires them to work towards a unified political entity.
A new central institute where more exists creates many more loyal citizens than one added to an existing cluster. It binds people of the State together. From that angle western Odisha offers a more desirable location for a new IIM.
8. Miscellaneous considerations: Proponents of educational institute only in large cities often refer to secondary but sensitive issues that add value to institutes and their people.
They include such issues as employment for spouses and schooling of children of employees, medical facilities, shopping and entertainment. Needless to say, such facilities at Rourkela or any tier-2 city is only moderate.
But then, converting tier-2 cities to tier-1 is a social mandate of the Government. Presence of an education hub will accelerate that process, a truly desirable phenomenon.
(The writer is Director, NIT Rourkela)