Present Situation Has Given Us An Opportunity To Relook At Everything: Janat Shah, Director, IIM Udaipur

Business schools are known by the campuses they have, by the case study methods they have, the interaction between professors and students on-campus/off-campus, the hostel life and very importantly, the industry visiting the campus. That used to be the way B-Schools promote themselves. The locational advantage is a big advantage. Some schools are in the hub of industrial and business activity and they were benefitted with that but in COVID times, these factors are being reassessed and relooked.

To have a discussion on these lines, BW Education presented another episode of Wednesday Wisdom - "The Future of Business Schools - What it will be?” The panel incorporated high profile and power-packed speakers: Dr Pawan Kumar Singh, Director, MDI Gurgaon; Anju Sharma, IAS, Principal Secretary & Technical Education, Govt of Gujarat; Janat Shah, Director, IIM Udaipur; Ramesh B, Director, Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS); Dr Ranjan Banerjee, Dean, SP Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR). The panel was chaired by Dr Annurag Batra, Chairman & Editor-in-Chief, BW Businessworld and exchange4media.

“The present situation has given us an opportunity to relook at everything that we do. The answer we have got is that the campus will remain an important part. This has forced us to learn some new skills which will take advantage, but we are not looking at that as something that will dramatically change in the time to come, in the way we look at managerial education,” underlined Janat Shah, Director, IIM Udaipur. 

Dr Pawan Kumar Singh, Director, MDI Gurgaon, said, “B-Schools which were having programmes in conventional manner, for example – MDI, IIMs or any other B-School, suddenly there are some changes because, at one point of time, Prime Minister said that if you stay at home for 21 days, we will save 21 years and that time number of Corona patient in the country was 500. Now it going to touch 5 lakh very quickly and now we say – we have to go out. What is the difference? The difference is that we thought Corona will play havoc in the short-run, in 30 days it will smash the society, on 31st day it will be out of the scene. But now, we have understood that COVID-19 is going to stay and we are now geared up to adapt to a new situation.”

Talking about the changes in B-Schools curricula, the way they operate and the implications for each stakeholder – the Directors, the Professors and the students, Anju Sharma, IAS, Principal Secretary & Technical Education, Govt of Gujarat, remarked, “COVID has been really a great experience for all of us because it has brought into the picture, those things which we never imagined. The entire paradigm has been changed. We not only have to get adjusted to the new situation but we also have to respond adequately to the new situation that has emerged so that we develop ways that perfectly fit into that.