Indian Institute of Management Calcutta - History

History

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 the University of California 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.

Indian Institute of Management Calcutta was the first of these IIMs, and was established on November 13, 1961 in collaboration with the MIT Sloan School of Management, the government of West Bengal, the Ford Foundation and the Indian industry. Its first Director was K. T. Chandy, the former Chairman of Hindustan Unilever Limited. During the initial years of IIM Calcutta, several renowned academics and visionaries formed part of its core team, including Paul Samuelson, Jagdish Sheth, J K Sengupta, Peter S King, and Thomas Hill.

In its initial years, IIM Calcutta operated from Emerald Bower, Barrackpur Trunk Road, Kolkata. The foundation stone of the current IIM-C campus in Joka, Kolkata, was laid by Morarji Desai, who was then the Deputy Prime Minister of India on Dec 15, 1968. The institute moved to the new campus in 1975.

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