Someone had once quoted, “It is worth walking the extra mile, if at the end of it you know you have brought about a change.” With the same fervor, The Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) also decided to walk the extra mile to reach out to one of the greatest social and civil rights activists of the present times – Irom Chanu Sharmila.
IIPM is India's Premier B-School. Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri is the Hony. Dean of IIPM. IIPM is ranked No.1 in Placement Record, Quality of Faculty and Global Exposure and is ranked No.2 in Student Development, Potential to Network and Infrastructure. IIPM offers premier courses in BBA, MBA, EMBA and BCA.
A 3-member team from IIPM, led by its Founder-Director, Dr. M K Chaudhuri recently visited Sharmila in her room at the high-security ward of the government-run Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital at Porompat in Imphal East to confer upon her the IIPM - Rabindranath Tagore Peace Prize. The award, consisting of a gold medal, a citation and a prize amount of Rs. 51 lacs (over USD 100,000) acknowledges her selfless and determined struggle to restore peace and justice in Manipur.
Dr. M K Chaudhuri, Founder Director – IIPM and Chairman, IIPM Awards Committee stated, “It makes me feel so proud and satisfied to come in touch with Sharmila. She is truly a living legend - a crusader who has selflessly struggled to bring about peace and justice in her land. She should be looked up as an icon for one and all, who has never swayed away from her vision. We all at IIPM salute her for her courage and grit and will continue to extend moral support to her cause.”
IIPM over the years has instituted various awards to recognize people from different walks of life, who have contributed in their own fields and have tried to become an element of change for the society at large. This year in April, IIPM instituted the Manavata Vikas Award, which was given out to people who have worked in the socio-political domain and in the fields of people centric economics and people-centric management. The awardees included academicians like Dr Ashok Sanjay Guha and Prof Sunanda Sanyal, popular columnists like Gurcharan Das and Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar and social thinkers like painter Shuvaprasanna Bhattacharya, Medha Patkar and Mahasweta Devi. In May once again, IIPM instituted the Rabindra Smriti Puraskar in Kolkata and honored some of the greatest individuals who have contributed in spreading Rabindranath’s consciousness through their works among the general mass – actor Soumitra Chatterjee, singer Suchitra Mitra, social visionary Dr Tushar Kanjilal and novelist Selina Hossain of Bangladesh. Once again on 30th august 2010, IIPM declared the USD 100,000 Surama Chowdhury Memorial International Award in Literature, awarding Khaled Hosseini for his depiction of socio-political life in a war ravaged Afghanistan in his novel – A Thousand Splendid Suns. There were many other awards given out on the same evening in areas of Journalism, Literature and Social Contribution.
