Alumni seek deemed varsity status for IISWBM

Kolkata: The alumni association of the Indian Institute Of Social Welfare And Business Management (IISWBM), on Tuesday demanded their alma mater, the country's oldest B-school, be granted university or deemed university status soon. 

IISWBM senior faculty and key alumni member Jhumoor Biswas said, “Getting the deemed university status will help the IISWBM get adequate central funds to carry on research in different fields where our researchers had been undertaking important works in past several decades. 

As the alumni, we are concerned that the IISWBM has still not been granted university or deemed university status which will allow our brightest students and alumni to research on globally important disciplines. 

This is crucial for the present and future generations,” one of the alumni association members and top executive of a corporate group, Koushik Paul said at a press conference here. 

The institute has done major works in Transportation and Logistics Management, Supply Chain Management and other fields of Public Systems Management like Energy Management, Environment Management, Energy and Healthcare and Hospital Management, another faculty member said. 

Stating that a bill to accord university status to the IISWBM is yet to be passed by the West Bengal assembly, Paul said such a status would have benefited all stakeholders and improve the industrial scenario of the state. 

The alumni body said the IISWBM is the first B-School in the country and in Asia, which had been started by Prime Minister J L Nehru and then state chief minister B C Roy. 

The IISWBM had been established in 1953. While several other premier B schools, set up later in the country, were granted deemed university status, there was no such move to grant university/deemed university status to the IISWBM which would have facilitated more industry- education interface and give more scopes in research in globally important disciplines, Biswas said. 

West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee, who is the President of Board of Governors of IISWBM, had said in December, “We have had a detailed discussion in the Board of Directors' meeting. All the members have agreed that IISWBM should have the status of a university.” 

The West Bengal government had allocated a 3-acre land to the institute for setting up its second campus at Rajarhat after the oldest one at College Street. 

The alumni body was interacting with the media about the upcoming annual alumni and corporate fest 'Fiera Fiesta' to be held on the institute campus on February 1 and 2, and attended by top corporate executives of different groups. 

The institute had celebrated its Golden Jubilee in 2003 and the Government of India had released a commemorative stamp of IISWBM for the event.