Interviewed by: Sharmistha Dutta Gupta
Interview place: Kolkata
Interview Date: 22nd February 2012

Table of contents:
• Family Background; independence; Gandhi’s assassination.
• Working as a “viewer”; working for the library.
• Work at the Provident Fund office; “interesting experiences”.
• Librarianship, Public Library Movement.
• Working at the Ramakrishna Mission Library.
• Involvement in worker and student movement.
• Joining IIM through ad in the Statesman; Indira Suktankar.
• Interview with Ashok Mitra and Indira Suktankar; poetry with Ashok.
• Description of Library building; Ravindra Bharati; understanding management.
• Process of procuring library books; funding from IIE, Ford Foundation.
• Applicability of social sciences to management which “deals with society at a large”.
• Readers and reading culture at the Library.
• Student borrowing practices; collaborative procurement with faculty and booksellers.
• Problems with the institute, Library malpractice; arrests.
• Changes in Library leadership.
• Krishna Mohan; background of unions .
• Turmoil; lack of benefits and salary scale adjustments.
• Infighting—formation of unions—involvement in one union as secretary.
• Political milieu outside of campus; Naxalbari.
• Divided faculty with respect to union’s demands.
• Student involvement in politics; whether IIM-C has been effective in contributing to the growth & development of India.
• Using alumni as a way to measure the ways in which IIM-C has helped shape India.
• Holistic returns of elite institutions to the economy, society and country.
• Reason for leaving IIM-C.
• Barun De’s offer to join Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (CSSS); similarities to first days at IIM-C; growth and enrichment providing a deeper job satisfaction than any othe.
• Gratitude for life path and encounters with institutions like IIM-C.
     2012-02-22

     IIM Calcutta

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