IIMA honours its first faculty member Kamla Chowdhry, starts communication hub

Chowdhry headed the institute as its first full-time director from 1964 to 65 and left it in 1972

The Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) on Monday announced the setting up of a communication hub in the name of professor Kamla Chowdhry, the first faculty member of the institute on the occasion of Teacher's Day.

"The Kamla Chowdhry Communications Hub will play a central role in consolidating IIMA's leadership in management education and research, as well as promoting the IIMA brand through a portfolio of communication and marketing engagements. The Hub will function as a unified unit serving the institute and all of its internal and external stakeholders' needs. One of its top priorities will be to significantly enhance the IIMA brand globally," a release said.

Born in 1920 and after early education at Shantiniketan in West Bengal, she moved to the US where she did a PhD in social psychology at Michigan University in 1949 and returned to India. She joined the newly set up Ahmedabad Textile Industries Research Association (ATIRA) as head of human relations before joining IIMA. ATIRA was founded by industrialist Kasturbhai Lalbhai and Vikram Sarabhai known as the "father of Indian space programme."

The IIMA's archives describe her as a "pioneering management educationist and institution builder", who after spending a year at Harvard Business School (HBS) as a visiting faculty worked with professor Harry Hansen of HBS in May-June 1962 to prepare academic plans and faculty recruitment for IIMA. Professor Hansen was the principal advisor to IIMA during its formative years between 1963 and 1965.

"She was the first member of the IIMA faculty when she joined as professor and Coordinator of Programmes in July 1962. She was a member of the IIMA Society and also the first faculty nominee to be appointed on the IIMA board in 1962. She effectively ran the institute from its bungalow office in Shahibaug, Ahmedabad, for three years, taking key administrative decisions, recruiting the first set of faculty and closely coordinating with the Harvard Business School and Ford Foundation," describes IIMA's archives on her contribution to the institute.

She also headed the institute as its first full-time director from 1964 to 65 and left it in 1972. She died in 2006.

Last month, IIMA started "Kamla", a cafe as a tribute to Chowdhry. The institute said that it was the latest in the "Kamla" series of cafes managed by the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), founded by Ela Bhatt. The archives state that SEWA started the cafe after Chowdhary as a tribute to mark her long association with Bhatt and the activities of SEWA.

"‘Kamla’ was designed around the principles of “clean air, a green environment, and food made from marginal crops such as Bajri, Jowar and Jav [pearl millet, sorghum and barley] that have sustained our civilization for centuries,” read the archives. It further quoted SEWA's principle as saying, “food and space offered allow one to reflect on the impact of our work on our life, our society and our planet. We call this Anubandh [meaning, in Gujarati, connectedness).”