Odisha HRD

Quotes from various stakeholders on the attractions and advantages of setting up higher education institutions in Bhubaneswar and Odisha: From a pagalguy.com article

The following quotes are from an article in pagalguy.com.

… a push from the state government, cheap land prices, a pool of students from the neighbouring states of Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal and the North East as well as investments by large corporate houses are slowly changing the eastern state’s identity. After Hyderabad, it is Odisha which is steadily becoming the focal point for educational institutes to set up their campuses.

… Ratnakar Rout, Joint Secretary, Department of Technical Education, Odisha. “We want to make Bhubaneshwar an educational hub,” he said. “The government wants institutes of international repute to start up so that students from the entire eastern belt can come here for education.” Rout added that many industrial houses, investors and institutes (including foreign universities) are also interested to start operating from Odisha. …

… Dr Somayajulu Garimella, director of IMI Bhubaneshwar, says that it is primarily the Odisha government’s proactive stance towards investment in the state that is paving the way for this migration. “The government is acting like a catalyst and there is fantastic support from them in terms of clearances,” said Garimella.

… According to Dr Harivansh Chaturvedi, director BIMTECH, the saturation of b-schools in other states, low living costs and burgeoning middle class population of urban Odisha are some other reasons for b-schools to choose to come to the state.

The Odisha government has been cooperative in terms of allotting land at cheaper prices, say educational administrators. “The government is friendly and we were alloted 30 acres of land at the cost of Rs 8 lakhs per acre,” said Chaturvedi. This was in stark contrast to the price of land in neighbouring states such as Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, where, according to Chaturvedi, land prices can go upto Rs 2 crores for an acre. “We should not invest too much on physical infrastructure like land, as it is expensive,” added Chaturvedi.

… Harivansh Chaturvedi has answers for some of these doubts. “Our target is not just the local students, but the aim is to tap the pan-India market,” he said. “Also, in terms of competition we are looking at the future and within five years there is a possibility that the government might allow foreign universities to set foot in this part of the country.” BIMTECH and IMI are also not very worried about the initial years in terms of placements as their Delhi campuses will mentor the ones in Bhubaneshwar until they can stand on their own feet.

… Sri Sri University, which does not enjoy the reputation that IMI or BIMTECH have as far as business education is concerned, has other ways of getting their graduates jobs. “The ‘Art of Living’ community boasts of one of the largest corporate following,” informed Malaya Malla, marketing manager of the university. “The university has received strong commitments from corporates for offering summer projects and final placements.”

3 comments October 3rd, 2011

Seat availability to study MBA and MCA in Odisha via Odisha JEE 2011

The following is extracted from the Odisha JEE 2011 brochure. Thanks to a post in rourkelacity.com for the pointer.

Note that one can study PG Diploma in Business Management and similar subjects (such as Rural Management) in several other institutions. Those are not listed above. Some of these institutions are: XIM Bhubaneswar, IMI Bhubaneswar, HDF Business School Bhubaneswar, IITTM Bhubaneswar, etc.

One can also pursue B.Sc (Hons) in Computer Science and M.Sc Computer Science in several institutions. SUIIT (Sambalpur University Institute of Information Technology) also offers courses in IT that are not listed above.

May 9th, 2011

Sri Sri University Institute of Management Studies own website unveiled; details of programs announced

(Thanks to a reader for the tip.)

The website of the Institute of Management Studies of Sri Sri University is http://ssuims.org/.

Their inaugural year will be 2011. For that year the programs offered are BBA and MBA. Following are excerpts from http://ssuims.org/introduction.html about their MBA program.

At Sri Sri University – Institute of Management Studies, we are looking for individuals who are eager to broaden their horizons and will make the Institute an inspiring place to learn. The following programs are being offered for the academic year 2011 – 2012:

1. Two Year Full Time Masters in Business Management – MBA General Management

2. Two Year Full Time Masters in Entrepreneurship Management – MBA Entrepreneurship

3. Two Year Full Time Masters in Agribusiness Management – MBA Agribusiness

… The size of the founding class will be 120 students for MBA General Management, 30 students for MBA Entrepreneurship and 30 students for MBA Agribusiness Management. The date of commencement of the programs will be 22nd July 2011.

They have assembled an excellent group of visiting faculty and corporate and academic mentors. One needs to wait and see the kind of permanent faculty they hire. That will really determine how good this institute and university will become.

" His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has envisioned establishing Sri Sri University under the aegis of Sri Sri Ravishankar Vidya Mandir Trust – the educational arm of the Art of Living – to revive the pre-eminence of India as the centre of world education. The Orissa Government has enacted the Sri Sri University act for establishing the University, which has been notified in the official gazette. The 185-acre sprawling campus is situated near the city of Cuttack in Orissa, overlooking the Kathjodi River. The campus is proposed to be self-sustaining, environment friendly, pollution-free and green. At optimum capacity the fully residential University campus will cater to over 7,500 students and around 2,000 teaching and support staff.

Sri Sri University is envisaged to become a multi-disciplinary single campus, covering every faculty of human endeavour from traditional Vedic Studies, Ayurveda, etc. to Modern Medicine, Management Studies, Engineering and Pure Science Research. The University will combine traditional wisdom and modern technology to bring about a synthesis of human and technological development. In a modern world where there is an ever-increasing gap between man and nature, Sri Sri University will become a centre of re-integration of man and nature. A unique feature of Sri Sri University will be its value integrated and interactive classroom delivery mechanisms, wherein the student develops a sense of social responsibility along with expertise in the subject. It will be interspersed with the proven Art of Living self-development programmes and yoga techniques to bring about total development in the physical, mental, intellectual and spiritual faculties of the students.

Sri Sri University – Institute of Management Studies aims to become “A Global Centre of Learning that creates exceptional Business Leaders of Character”. The education and culture will have a strong focus on ethical leadership, resulting in responsible leaders with a vision to serve the larger society while achieving personal goals. We aim to create leaders who are trustworthy, enthusiastic, highly aware and resilient. Students will be moulded to become intrinsically motivated managers, thus leading to the creation of a committed workforce. The Institute will commence in July 2011 with programmes in MBA General Management,, MBA AgriBusiness and MBA Entrepreneurship. "

December 4th, 2010

Business India on Centurion School of Management in Parlakhemundi

The article starts as follows:

The Harvard-educated home minister P. Chidambaram could learn some valuable lessons at this campus located in the heart of the Naxalinfested tribal district of Gajapati in Orissa, bordering Andhra Pradesh. Centurion School of Rural Enterprise Management (csrem) is run by two management professors – Mukthi Mishra and D.N. Rao – who quit their jobs at Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneswar (ximb) to set up their own B-school barely seven years ago. They have made a tremendous impact in this poor and restive region. “Over the past few years, we have managed to produce over 10,000 graduates in engineering and management, and vocational certificate holders in a range of trades from the region,” says Mishra, co-founder of csrem.

Following is a scan of the whole article.

4 comments November 13th, 2010

Innovative Gramin ITC by HDF (Human Development Foundation)

I became aware of this program from the following ad in Samaja. I was not aware of any such program before.

More details about the program is available in  the site http://www.hdf.org.in/graminITC/Introduction.

June 24th, 2010

Top Business School clusters in India; Bhubaneswar among top 10

Using the ranking of business schools given in a Businessworld article and adding a few well-known business school that were not part of that ranking, following is a clustering of those schools with respect to the metropolitan areas of India.

Based on the above clusters following are some remarks.

• The New Delhi metropolitan area has the maximum number of top business schools (25) followed by Mumbai (14). The population of these two areas explain why that is the case.
• The next tire is: Hyderabad (7), Pune (8), Kolkata (7) and Bangalore (6).
• Closely following them are: Bhubaneswar (5), Ahmedabad (4) and Chennai (4)

With regards to Bhubaneswar, besides the above ranked schools there are some other good schools that are in existence and some more are coming up. The one that exists are: HDF and IITTM; the ones that are coming up soon are: campus of IMI and campus of BIMTech; the ones that will come up further down the line are: Business schools of Sri Sri University and Vedanta University. One thing to note is that all the top ranked business schools in Bhubaneswar are private ones.

June 20th, 2010

IIPM Kansbahal to start M.Tech in Production Management; first such M. Tech in Odisha

Following is an excerpt from a report in Pioneer.

Indian Institute of Production Management (IIPM) located in Kansbahal, Sundergarh, has scored a first in the State by starting an MTech programme in Production Engineering. Classes are expected to start from July 10, 2010. The course will be conducted by the Wellteach University of Chennai and 25 students will be taken in through a Joint Entrance Examination to be conducted by the university in June. The course fee for the 2-year course has been pegged at Rs 2 lakh.

Announcing this to the media in a meeting organised here on Sunday, Director Prof MR Nayak emphasised that even though the institute does not have any BTech course on offer it has ventured to conduct the MTech course because of its close to three decades of experience in training and consulting activity in the field of production engineering which has seen over 30,000 trainees pass through its portals including 1,400 persons from abroad. Because of its uniqueness of expertise and experience it has been included as an approved training institute under the Colombo Plan and the international trainees are sent here for training after selection by the Ministry of External affairs of the Government of India.

Last year it created a school of management and started an MBA program.

May 18th, 2010

Making Rourkela a Tier II city of India – HRD and other development of Rourkela (work in progress)

Update: See also https://www.orissalinks.com/orissagrowth/archives/4308.

Rourkela is the second largest metropolitan area of Orissa with an official metropolitan population of 550,668 but perhaps much more (at least 700 K) if one takes into account nearby places like Biramitrapur and Rajgangpur. It is probably the most cosmopolitan area of Orissa. Because of its steel plant it has world-wide name recognition. It has a lot of young talents; I am told that Rourkela youngsters have done much better in entrance exams like IIT JEE than from other parts of Orissa. Rourkela and the Sundergarh district have produced many national hockey players (both male and female), some of whom have gone on to captain the Indian national side.

Being an important station in the Mumbai-Howrah line, Rourkela is very well connected to both. The National Institute of Technology at Rourkela is often ranked among the top 5 NITs of the country; in recent years it has done much better and is in the process of starting a business program. Rourkela also has two private engineering colleges and at least one more is in the works. Rourkela has at least two good magament schools: Rourkela Institute of Management Studies (sometimes ranked nationally) and Indian Institute of Production Management, Kansbahal.  

Overall, Rourkela has the potential to be a Tier II city of India at the level of Vizag, Chandigarh, etc. But unfortunately, that has not happened so far and active organized efforts need to  be made to achieve that.

So here I will list some of the things that should be pursued so that Rourkela becomes a Tier II city of India.

Knowledge and HRD aspects:

• Metropolitan University: Rourkela is perhaps the largest metropolitan area of the country, or may be the whole world which does not have a general university. This needs to be rectified at the earliest. IMHO, the best model to follow would be of Delhi University. So a Rourkela Metropolitan University should be established  with graduate programs as well as with a few constituent colleges spread (offering Bachelors as well as Masters degrees) across the metropolitan area, but with no affiliated colleges. The exisiting government colleges in Rourkela (Govt. College, Rourkela; SG Women’s, Rourkela and Rourkela College) would be made constituents of this university.
• Medical College: Although a WODC sponsored PPP-based medical college is in the works, we must continue pursuing an ESIC medical college here. SAIL, which is making a medical college in Bokaro, should also be pushed to establish a medical college here.
• BPUT: BPUT must become fully operational from Rourkela.It  needs to have real departments and centers and offer its own courses. It should be expanded to have programs in Science and Humanities.
• Research Centers: The state should pursue one of the central government departments such as CSIR, DAE, Sc & Tech, etc. to open a research center in Rourkela.
• Centrally funded University: At some point a centrally funded university should be pursued for Rourkela.
• More private institutions: Rourkela has the population base and the amenities that metropolitan areas offer to have more private institutions such as engineering colleges, management institutions etc. A multi-pronged apporoach should be taken.
  • Local big industries should be cajoled to participate in this. For example, SAIL is also planning an engineering college in Bokaro. They should be pushed to have one in Rourkela.
  • Local people should also open private institutions on their own.
  • Educational foundations inside and outside state that have developed good private institutions should be approached and invited to open institutions in Rourkela. Inside Orissa, institutions like Silicon and NIST should be approached. 
• STP: The STP at Rourkela should be expanded.
• IT/BPO: Because of the cosmopolitan nature of Rourkela, it would be a good place for BPO and call center operations. This should be pursued.
• Sports Institute/University: Sundergrah district is considered by many to be the Hockey cradle of India, both in men’s and women’s hockey. It has produced both Men’s and Women’s hockey team captains in Dilip Tirkey and Jyoti Sunita Kullu. Orissa government should pursue to establish a National Sports Institute (of the kind in Patiala) in Rourkela. It should include programs in physical training, coach training, official training etc. This would specially contribute  in the enhancing the employment opportunities for Adivasis who constitute 50.74% of Sundergarh’s population.

Connectivity Aspects:

• Rail Connectivity -Trains: While the connectivity to Mumbai and Kolkata is marvelous, connectivity to other places needs improvement. Dilip has a good list of new trains needed for Rourkela at http://rourkelarail.wetpaint.com/page/DEMANDS. This list is:
  • Rourkela-Bhubaneswar Intercity Express( Day Time)
  • Rourkela-Berhampur Gajapati Express
  • Rourkela-Secundarabad/Hyderabad Express
  • Trains to New Delhi from Bhubaneswar via Rourkela OR Rourkela-Nizamuddin/New Delhi Express (Any extension of Ranchi-Hatia or Tatanagar trains will also work)
  • Trains to Patna and Eastern U.P.
• Rail Connectivity-Others: The Talcher-Bimlagarh line must be fast-tracked.
• Roads: The 4-laning of the state highway 10 connecting Sambalpur and Rourkela must be expedited.
• Air Connectivity: Rourkela airport must be made functional with commercial flights at the earliest.

Metro area:

• A larger metropolitan area for Rourkela that includes Kansbahal and Rajgangpur in the west and Biramitrapur in the North must be formally established.
• The state government should pursue Rourkela to be included in JNNURM.

(The above is from Google Maps.)

(The above is from "sarini: Occasional papers, No. 4, Adivasis of Rourkela")

Work in Progress…

43 comments November 15th, 2009

PGDM in International Business at IITTM Bhubaneswar

August 19th, 2007

Management educational opportunities in Rourkela to increase in quality and quantity

Until last year Rourkela had two institutions that offered management (MBA or equivalent) programs. They are:

• Rourkela Institute of Management Studies, Institutional Area, Gopapabandhunagar, Chhend, Rourkela – 769 015 Dist: Sundargarh Rank: [52 in Business world 2004], [45 in Business world 2003]
• Asian Workers Development Institute, Bastia Smruti Sadan, Rourkela – 769 002 Dist: Sundargarh

This year IIPM Kansbahal (20 kms from Rourkela on the Rourkela-Sambalpur highway) will start an MBA program under the auspicies of BPUT. This program is approved by AICTE. This program is promoted by L & T and ICICI. Thus this is expected to be a good program.

Next year NIT Rourkela will start an MBA program. This should also be a very good program.

1 comment July 11th, 2007