Modi’s biggest impact has been in foreign policy: IIM-A chairman

“Last year when I was here (at IIMA), the world seemed to be in ‘Pause’ mode. The global economy was struggling to pull itself out of the stagnation and India was in an uncertain state with the government unable or unwilling to implement far-reaching economic reforms, while everyone waited for the national elections 2014. Today is very different. The Indian government has received an unequivocal vote for development and seems to taking steps towards fulfilling it’s mandate,” Naik told an audience comprising of largely of 512 students who graduated in various programmes including Post-Graduate Programme in Management, PGP-Agri-Business Management, PGPX and Fellow Programme in Management.

“I would say India is possibly the biggest opportunity today. When I say opportunity, I mean from the long term perspective of a business investment or a career-building opportunity. The world has set its sights on India and India is setting its sights on a 9-10 percent GDP growth,” Naik said adding that the country needed to follow up it’s aspirations with actions and turn sentiments into substance.

Ajay Banga, the President and CEO of Master Card who was the chief guest at the convocation function later told something similar to mediapersons, “If you look around the world there are very few economies that are growing at the kind rate at which the Indian economy is growing. I think, the impetus behind the Indian economy is a strong one.

Banga —an IIMA alumni from the 1981-batch — who was recently appointed as member of the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations by the US President Barack Obama also added, ”  What the Prime Minister has set out to do is to create jobs, improve lives of the people here, focussing on manufacturing and infrastructure and tourism. I think you have got a lot of momentum.”

In his speech at the convocation ceremony, Banga described his being at IIMA as a “homecoming of sorts”. “This school gave me a great education. It gave me a family. I met my wife (Ritu) here, who is in the audience tonight… So not only does IIMA rank among the world’s elite business schools, it also possesses the alchemy for matchmaking!,” Banga remarked.

The IIMA convocation ceremony also saw gold medals being given away for scholastic performance. Of the three students from the Post-Graduate Programme (PGP) who received this award was Rahul Satish Agarwal who is a resident of Ahmedabad. Rakshit U Agarwal and Abhinav Gupta were the other winners from PGP.

Sidharth Agarwal was the lone gold medal winner from PGP-ABM batch, while Anshul Srivastav from the PGPX batch also won a gold medal.