World Education Congress Honours IMT-Ghaziabad's Prof. Narender L. Ahuja

Online, August 23, 2012 (Newswire.com) - From his performance in the classroom to his work abroad in Cameroon, many things led to Institute of Management Technology's Prof. Narender L. Ahuja being named "Best professor in financial management" at the World Education Congress, 2012.

According to Prof. Ahuja, the honour came as a complete surprise.

"I don't normally expect nor need awards for motivation," he said. "At the same time, when the Council of WEC graciously decided to confer this award on me, I was glad to accept the same and rededicated myself to academic work."

Asked what he thought led to the honour, Prof. Ahuja said, "the 'wow' factor is always attached to my classes", but he didn't think the award was only for his performance in teaching PGDM courses.

"I have also contributed to management education through executive training and consultancy, research publications, organising quality conferences and my work as a Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation (CFTC) expert. I have also won international case-writing competitions organised by the AV Birla Centre at the London Business School. All these would be contributing factors for this award."

During his CFTC assignment in Cameroon, he helped establish an Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (UK) learning centre at University of Buea and trained about 25 faculty members to deliver international-level finance courses.

"The centre was instrumental in reducing the shortage of qualified finance professionals in the country and also helped in saving precious foreign exchange," said Prof. Ahuja.

After teaching more than 30 years at a number of prestigious institutes, he said he was drawn to IMT mainly due to "the institute's commitment to high academic standards and its student/industry-oriented approach."

"At present, IMT is ranked number seven in the country and, bolstered by a dynamic leadership, is fast progressing towards a top-five ranking," he said. "It is a pleasure to be a part of IMT in this exciting phase."

Among Prof. Ahuja's research interests are banking and financial reforms -some of which he sees an immediate need for in India.

"In my view, an overhaul of public sector banks including privatisation of PSB's equity is overdue and should be expedited," he said. "Similarly, there are many other areas needing reforms to ensure a transparent fair-play system for domestic and international investors and to remove genuine bottlenecks to economic development in the country."

That said, he is still optimistic about India's future. "India is certainly progressing, though not rapidly enough to justify its potential," said Prof. Ahuja. "Forced by global and domestic factors which are well known, the progress on the reforms process has been slow and inadequate. However, economic cycles are a regular phenomenon in the world and we should be hopeful of faster progress on the reforms roadmap as well as economic development in the coming years."