The grass is green for Karan Bajaj

The IIM graduate’s debut novel, which is about drug culture, has become a hit; now, director Kunal Kohli is keen on buying the film rights of the book

Karan Bajaj, an IIM Bangalore graduate, is a happy man. His debut novel Keep Off The Grass has sold more than 10,000 copies in India within a month of its release making it one of the bestsellers. Now, it success has attracted production houses and directors who are interested in buying the film rights of the book.

PwC and IIM-C join hand to offer IFRS training

Auditing firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Indian Institute of Management – Calcutta on Tuesday signed an agreement to launch dedicated executive programmes on International Financial Reporting Standards which will be adopted by India by 2011.

“PwC and IIM-C will also develop the concept and position papers on various IFRS-related technical matters and industry related issues, beside delivering training,” PwC Partner and National Leader on IFRS Kaushik Dutta said during the media announcement.

“IIM-C will run a executive programme on IFRS jointly with PwC in order to update finance and accounts executives on new set of reporting,” IIM-C Dean Prof Saibal Chattopadhayay said.

IIM Ahmedabad to launch carbon finance course

After the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIML), it is now the turn of IIM Ahmedabad to launch a programme on environmental management strategies with special focus on carbon markets, a market in which India is now the second largest seller in the world.

The Indian Institute of Management (IIM)-Ahmedabad will introduce the carbon finance course this academic year.

“The course is aimed at providing conceptual and practical understanding of the anthropogenic forces causing climate change, the global legal and institutional framework and mechanism to deal with it, and the dynamics underlying carbon finance,” P.R. Shukla, one of the course instructors, told IANS.

IIM-A grads to work with CPI-M leader

Indian Institute of Management graduates are often accused of ignoring politics and public affairs in pursuit of high-flying careers. However, students are beginning to reach out to the wider world by opting for summer internship with political parties.

In a unique initiative, students from IIM-Ahmedabad will work with Communist Party of India – Marxist politburo member Sitaram Yechury and help in planning for the Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme this year. They will be involved in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.

Provisions of the Right to Information Act will be analysed. Students will assess funds spent by the constituency and create a monitoring system for the performance of the NGOs and local bodies. Talks are on with other politicians for a similar project.

IIM-Shillong ties up with NGOs to help masses

THE Indian Institute of Management (IIM)-Shillong has joined hands with the local non-governmental organisation (NGOs) of Meghalaya in its bid to reach out to the most underprivileged people in the state.

In its effort to inch in closer to the grassroot and the rural masses, IIM-Shillong has exposed its students to the different strata of the society. India’s seventh IIM, the Rajiv Gandhi Indian Institute of Management (RGIIM) has tied up with the grassroot level NGOs operating in Meghalaya to sensitise the students to lend a helping hand to assist the under privileged people of the state through the different NGOs.

IIM-Shillong has made it mandatory for the students to provide voluntary service to various NGOs of the state in various projects.

IIMs relax cut-offs to admit OBC students

Unlike the IIT that admitted OBC students on merit , the IIM were forced to relax entry norms for OBC candidates . While the relaxation of cut-offs was insignificant in some cases, some other B-campuses had to compromise on merit to allow these students in.

For instance, if the cut-off for the general category students after the common admission test (CAT) stood at 38% at IIM-Calcutta , it stood at 35 for OBC students. This, despite the fact that the B-school , which has a total student intake of 318, merely admitted 3% OBC candidates (see box). Again scores dipped further for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, which stood at 21% and 19.32% respectively. Worse, despite these relaxed cut-offs , the institute could not fill all the seats reserved for SC and ST students. Reservation for SC candidates stands at 15% and 7.5% seats need to be filled with ST students.

IIM-C revamps its PGP curriculum

IIM Calcutta has revised its curriculum for the two-year Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP) from year 2008.

The revision comes after a detail review of the changing business environment and the expectations from management graduates. Sources spoke to Dr Prashant Mishra, Chairman, Post Graduate Program (PGP) in Management at IIM-C, to understand the changes and the rationale behind the same.