Total 554 students conferred with the diplomas at the 52nd Convocation

The Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad (IIMA) board of governors on Saturday approved a 7.7-per cent fee hike for its flagship 2-year programmes, Post Graduate Programme (PGP) in Management and PGP Food & Agribusiness Management (PGP-FABM) from Rs 19.5 lakh to Rs 21 lakh.

"We have revised the fees for the PGP courses to Rs 21 lakh for two years with Rs 10.5 lakh each year. There will be no seat increase for the course, while we have gone for two sections for our PGPX programme," said Ashish Nanda, Director, IIM-A on the sidelines of the 52nd annual convocation of the institute.

Last year around same time, the institute had increased the fees for its flagship PGP programmes from Rs 18.5 lakh to Rs 19.5 lakh for two years.

However, Nanda further mentioned that the financial aid to the deserving students will continue as before. "The number of such students is about 1/3rd of our class."

The institute had invited private sector lender Axis Bank MD & CEO Shikha Sharma, who is also an alumnus of the institute from the 1980 batch of PGP.

In her convocation address, Sharma suggested the graduating batch of the première management institute to not lean for an expedient way at the time of a moral dilemma in their corporate role, rather make a more principled choice that would add to the character building.

"When faced with the minor moral dilemmas of everyday.. you can do the expedient thing..take the short cut. Or you can be led by what you believe to be the right thing to do. Every time you decide to take the harder but more principled path, you add one more brick to the foundation of your character."

The 52nd convocation held at the Louis Kahn Plaza at the IIM-A campus here, saw total 554 students being conferred with the diplomas of which 401 students from Post Graduate Diploma (2015-17 batch), 45 from PGP Food and Agribusiness Management Programme (PGP-FABM), 90 from one-year PGPX (batch 2016-17) and 18 students from Fellow Programme in Management (FPM). Three students from the 2015-17 batch of PGP were awarded Gold medals.

"We live in extraordinary times. In the 1990s, the US Army War College coined a term to describe the world order that emerged after the cold war. They called it the VUCA world - Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous world. It has increasingly become a part of the modern day business vocabulary. How do you thrive in such a VUCA world? The answer is with learning agility," Sharma said.

Addressing the graduating students, the Chairman of the Board of Governors, Kumar Mangalam Birla asked students to be ready for a 'ferocious change' happening in the present day world and gave them the 'Teamwork Mantra'. "Teamwork is the ultimate mantra. Individualism is essential to bring in the diversity of thoughts, but teamwork ensures organizational effectiveness," he said adding that progressive business leaders should welcome constructive dissent.