Birla Institute of Management Technology celebrated its 31st Foundation Day on October 2, on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri.
The event was graced by the Director, Dr H Chaturvedi, the Deputy Director, Dr Anupam Verma, other faculty members and students from all branches in the institute. The Chief Guest for the foundation day was Arun Maira, former member of the Planning Commission of India and former chairman of Boston Consulting Group, India. The guest of honour for the event was Ram Mohan Mishra. The event was also graced by BIMTECH alumni, Koyaljeet Kaur, country head at Multi-Level Marketing Inc., Anirdam Lahiri (1993-95 batch), General Manager of Human Resources in Samsung India, and Alok Gupta (1989-91), founder and CEO of Pyramid Cyber Security America.
Responsible business
Director Chaturvedi welcomed the guests and shared his thoughts about the legacy of the institute and the connection that the founders had with Gandhiji. He conveyed how the institute is following the Mahatma teachings, giving an example of its welcoming foreign exchange students as the institute’s belief in vasudhaiva kutumbakam which means ‘the world is one family’. He introduced the guest of honor, Arun Maira, a regular columnist in The Economist and Mint, who coined the term ‘Responsible Business’, which later became a subject taught at the institute.
Arun Maira, who spoke next, stressed on sustainable development goals and how “a handful of people at the top have more wealth than the rest of the people.” He expressed his thoughts on inequality of income, and the unemployment and underemployment problem in our country, and also highlighted environment issues and depleting groundwater levels. His solutions to the problems involved designing institutions that combine sustainable and economically viable systems.
Sustainable capitalism
He explained the term “inclusive and sustainable capitalism” where the focus would not only be on being successful but on the well-being of the entire society. An institute too should be for the people, of the people and by the people, he said, adding that Gandhiji emphasised producing and consuming our own country’s goods so that money keeps circulating in our own economy.
The Director, Deputy Director and the Guests of Honors further felicitated the faculty who had completed 10 years and 25 years of service with BIMTECH. The Best Researcher award was given to Dr Harpreet Kaur, who received a memento and a cash prize of ₹1 lakh from the institute. Also, the people who help run the BIMTECH Library at various jails in the city, such as Ghaziabad and Jamnagar, were felicitated.
After the ceremony, the chief guest released the Annual Report of BIMTECH for the year 2017-18.
The chief guest, director and other esteemed faculty later unveiled the statue of Mahatma Gandhi which was sculpted by Padamshri Sudarshan Sahu.