Indian Institute of Management
The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are a group of 20 public, autonomous institutes of management education and research in India. They primarily offer postgraduate, doctoral and executive education programmes. The establishment of IIMs was initiated by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, based on the recommendation of the Planning Commission. IIMs are registered as societies under the Indian Societies Registration Act. Each IIM is autonomous and exercises independent control over its day-to-day operations. However, the administration of all IIMs and the overall strategy of IIMs is overseen by the IIM Council. The IIM Council is headed by India’s Minister of Human Resource Development and consists of the chairpersons and directors of all IIMs and senior officials from the Ministry of Human Resource Development of the Government of India. The two-year Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP), offering the Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM), is the flagship programme across all IIMs. These post-graduate diploma programmes are considered the equivalent of regular MBA programmes. Some IIMs also offer a one-year post-graduate diploma programme for graduates with more work experience. Some IIMs offer the Fellow Programme in Management (FPM), a doctoral programme. The fellowship is considered to be equivalent to a PhD globally. Most IIMs also offer short-term executive education/EMBA courses and part-time programmes. Some IIMs also offer unique programs, like IIM Indore’s Five Year Integrated Programme in Management and IIM Lucknow’s Working Managers’ Programme of three years.
After India became independent in 1947, the Planning Commission was entrusted to oversee and direct the development of the nation. India grew rapidly in the 1950s, and in the late 1950s the Commission started facing difficulties in finding suitable managers for the large number of public sector enterprises that were being established in India as a part of its industrial policy. To solve this problem, the Planning Commission in 1959 invited Professor George Robbins of UCLA to help in setting up an All India Institute of Management Studies. Based on his recommendations, the Indian government decided to set up two elite management institutes, named Indian Institutes of Management. Calcutta and Ahmedabad were chosen as the locations for the two new institutes.
The institute at Calcutta was established first, on 13 November 1961, and was named Indian Institute of Management Calcutta or IIM Calcutta. It was set up in collaboration with the MIT Sloan School of Management, the government of West Bengal, the Ford Foundation, and Indian industry. The institute at Ahmedabad was established in the following month and was named the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. Like MIT Sloan in the case of IIM Calcutta, Harvard Business School played an important role in the initial stages of IIM Ahmedabad.
In 1972, a committee headed by Ravi J. Matthai took note of the success of the two established IIMs and recommended the setting up of two more IIMs. Based on the committee’s recommendation, a new IIM, originally intended to cater exclusively to the needs of public sector enterprises, was established in Bangalore (IIM Bangalore) the next year. In 1981, the first IIM Review Committee was convened to examine the progress of the three existing IIMs and to make recommendations. The committee noted that the three IIMs were producing around 400 PGP graduates every year and that they had reached their optimum capacity. It proposed the opening of two more IIMs to meet the rising demand for management professionals. It also recommended expanding the Fellowship programmes, similar to PhD programmes, to meet the growing demand for faculty in management schools in India. The fourth IIM, IIM Lucknow, was established in 1984 based on the committee’s recommendation.
Two more IIMs, the fifth and sixth, were established at Kozhikode and Indore in 1996. IIM Shillong was the seventh IIM to be established, following a 2005 decision by the Government of India; its foundation stone was laid on 1 December 2007; and its first academic session was 2008–09. Since 2007, fourteen new IIMs have been set up, bringing the total number of IIMs to 20, IIM-Jammu being the latest one, starting in 2016.