Silver Jubilee Batch Of BIMTECH Starts With A Thundering Commencement Day

Online, June 26, 2012 (Newswire.com) - A Commencement Day is very special in most of the top-notch B-schools around the globe and iscelebrated with great ceremony, pageantry and rejoicing.This year, the day held even more significance at the Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH) since it was the Commencement Day of its Silver Jubilee batch.On the 16th of June 2012, the event was organised at the BIMTECH Campus in Greater Noida. Among others, the event was attended by 390 new students and their parents, drawn from 20 States, with multidisciplinary educational and cultural backgrounds.

In true BIMTECH tradition, the Commencement Daybegan with a power-packed panel discussion on 'Expectations of Corporates from Management Trainees- How to Prepare for Challenges Ahead'.The panelists comprised the 'who's who' of the corporate world in Mr. Rajeev Bhadauria, Group Director, HR, JSPL, Mr. Deepak Bharara, Director-HR Lanco andMr. C.S. Raju, Head ofPlant HR, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd.As the moderator,Professor R.J. Masilamani, Marketing and Strategy, BIMTECH, peppered the panel discussion with his trademark sagacity and wit.

The event began in a fairly straightforwardmanner, with Mr. Deepak Bharara being the first to share his thoughts. But it was the second speaker, Mr. C.S.Raju, who actually set the ball rolling for an ideological duel of sorts. Mr. Raju observed, based on his experience, that the 'young managers of today are among the most confused lot.'

The response to this was quite unexpected. Infact, Mr. Bhadauria, speaking without a script, dedicated a major portion of his talkto the finer points of 'confusion'. Speaking with great eloquence and insight, Mr Bhadauria went on to establish that 'the most experienced are the most confused, because they first have a lot of 'unlearning' to do; then relearn; and then use those learnings in their workplace.Therefore students of this generation are better off.'

What was supposed to be a panel discussion was turned gracefully into an interactive classroom by Mr Bhadauria.

"What began in 2008?" asked the Group Director, HR, JSPL.

"Global Recession," chorused the future managers.

"What caused the recession?"followed up Mr Bhadauria, to murmurs of 'sub-prime crisis' and 'Lehmann Brothers' from his audience.

"And who were the Lehmann Brothers? What did they represent?" asked the eminent panellist.

Numerous answered poured in.

Mr Bhadauria summed it up with, "Lehmann Brothers was the representative of the most modern management practices. In thepast, the practices that were followed in Lehmann Brothers werestudied in B-schools as a part of modern management education. So all of you should know that with all the management techniques, with all the corporate best practices.... we failed.Friends, I'm not here today to give you a prescription of what you should be doing, or what is expected;because, frankly speaking, today nobody knows what is exactly to be expected."

Elaborating further, Mr Bhadauria stated,"You are lucky to be entering a premium B-school like BIMTECH, with the crisis behind you. In Newtonian terms, you are in active inertia." He then put in perspective the global economic goingson of the last two decades for the new entrants to BIMTECH, hoping at the end that it would help them relate better to their classroom teaching in BIMTECH.

Mr Bhadauria's impromptu speech lasted well beyond his stipulated time, but the moderator, Professor Masilamani, from the Marketing and Strategy department of BIMTECH, realising its import, did not press him to conclude. At the end though,a thundering round of applause showed exactly what his audience thought of hisinsights. Professor Masilamani, in his characteristic style, drew curtains on one of the most memorable panel discussion ever held in BIMTECH by remarking, "Confusion is uniformly distributed. We all are confused."

With the very first session of their Commencement Day being acutely thought-provoking, it was not surprising to find youngsters of the silver jubilee batch, animatedly discussing the possibilities of even more exciting times ahead at BIMTECH, during the ensuing lemon break.