Digital archive to trace journey of nation's oldest IIM through docus, pics & videos

Abstract

During the golden jubilee celebrations, oral historian Indira Chowdhury initiated the process of preservation of official correspondence and photographs by digitizing them. “It was during the diamond jubilee celebrations in 2021 that the idea of the archive was floated and we started collecting material,” said N C Ghosh, librarian of BC Roy Memorial Library of IIM-C. A correspondence between the first director of IIM-Calcutta, K T Chandy, and the Ford Foundation, requesting financial assistance to buy land for a permanent campus in 1963, an official document revealing there were only two women out of 259 students enrolled at the institute during 1965 and 1966, and rare photographs of the first convocation of the institute in 1966, the Emerald Bower campus on BT Road, professor Ashok Mitra delivering a lecture, Jyoti Basu sharing a moment with Chandy, and Manmohan Singh at the 16th convocation in 1981 feature among history nuggets in IIM-Calcutta’s digital archive.

The archive will be inaugurated on Tuesday, 14 Nov 2023, the institute’s Foundation Day.