IIM-A resembles battlezone

The Management Development Centre (MDC) building inside the campus of Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), which is otherwise used for organising acedemic programmes, was the hub of discussions on the fee cut issue last Friday and Saturday.

While lensmen of various print media houses were found camping outside MDC since early Saturday to photograph the who's who coming to attend the meeting of the Board of Governors of the Institute, Outdoor Broadcast (OB) vans of five national news channels were parked within few metres of the Centre, technicians checking instruments for the last minute.

Anil Bakeri, Chairman of the Bakeri Engineers reached here driving his blue Mercedes and even before he could alight from the car, he was surrounded by the media throwing questions about what to be happened in the Board meeting.

Chairman of FMCG major Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL), M S Banga, meanwhile managed to enter inside the Centre even before anyone could identify him being busy with Bakeri while N R Narayana Murthy, Chairman of the Board and Chairman of Infosys, cooly walked down the lawn before MDC from his accomodation next to the MDC.

Passed out graduates of IIM-A who are also here but for another reason, to attend convocation in the evening, were found busy in showing their parents the lush green campus of their School.

Another bunch of students were, however, found occupied with clicking their photographs as their last souvenir or momentous as since Sunday morning, this Institute will only remain in one of the leaves in their books.

While speculations were at the peak among the over two dozens of journos standing outside MDC on whether the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) representatives, V S Pandey and V Piparsania would be attending the vital Board meeting as they were surprinsgly absent in the IIM-A Society meeting held at the same venue on Friday afternoon, a chauffer-driven car brings in Arvind Lalbhai, the textile-baron of the country here at MDC while Shrenik Lalbhai, one of the founding members of the Arvind Group starts walking towards the Centre as his car was parked little away.

While all these were happening at this portion of IIM-A, at the Louis Kahn Plaza, the venue for the convocation ceremony, last minute work was being done to complete the dias and putting up lights for the evening.

Anil Ambani, one of the Board members did not turn up finally as Mukesh Ambani, the Reliance Chairman missed the Society meeting a day before but Hrishikesh Mafatlal was there finding out sometime for the Institute.

Suresh Neotia, Chairman of Gujarat Ambuja had to reschedule his programme to attend the Board meeting while Ela Bhatt, Chairperson of SEWA, Ahmedabad-based NGO also was here on Saturday as a member of the Board.

Director of the Institute, Bakul Dholakia and Consultant of IIM-A, Rama Bijapurkar were found running from one place to another to make sure that the visiting Board members can reach the venue without any hassle and they were taken care of.

"Though it was my off day but I had to be here today because of topshots are coming for the meeting. But can you tell me what exactly the reason for this meeting," asked one of the drivers of IIM-A, who had to pick up few guests from the airport and bring them at MDC.

Banga, the HLL Chairman who had to rush for attending some urgent meeting elsewhere was the first person to come out from MDC at around 12 noon and before the media could catch him, Banga left on his car while in sometime, other Board members also started coming out, sweating it out inside.