By IANS
Lucknow : The Indian Institute of Management-Lucknow (IIM-L) Tuesday started a six-month special management programme for defence officers of India.
Sixty-five officers from the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force have been enrolled for the programme.
“We have condensed the regular two-year management programme into an intensive six-month course to enable officers of the defence services to get gainful employment in the industry after they step out of the uniformed service,” Prof. Sushil Kumar, coordinator of the programme, told IANS.
He said, “The purpose of the programme is to provide them (defence officers) with basic functional inputs – finance and accounting, human resource management, marketing, information technology and communication skills – and to familiarize them with requisite analytical tools and techniques and develop a hollistic perspective and a global mindset to understand issues of an enterprise.”
While two similar programmes were undertaken at the IIM-L in the past, this time it is more comprehensive and job-oriented. Even the number of seats has been raised from 45 to 65 this year.
According to Kumar, the resettlement directorate of the Indian Army was highly impressed by the success of the earlier programmes.
“Each of those who took the earlier courses received excellent offers from leading corporate houses,” he said.
“The exercise is bound to be mutually beneficial to both the officers undergoing this course as well as to the corporate houses where they take up employment as they already have rich experience in man management and logistics; all we are required to do at the IIM here is to equip them with certain management skills typical to the corporate sector,” he added.