IIM Jammu @10 : From Regional Aspiration to Global Engagement

Prof. Shyam Narayan Lal

Some institutions inherit their distinction from history; others must earn it - quietly, year by year, through vision and sustained effort. The Indian Institute of Management Jammu belongs to this latter tradition. Ten years ago, when it took its first breath, there was no permanent campus to call its own - only a temporary transit campus of borrowed rooms on Canal Road, no reputation to open doors, no legacy to lean on. There was only a small batch of 47 students, and the quiet courage of a few who believed in what was yet to come.

To look back at that modest start from where the Institute stands today - with more than 1,400 students, a permanent campus it can finally call its own, and a steadily growing national and international presence - is like turning the pages of an old family album. The early photographs are simple, a little faded at the edges, and yet they hold a warmth and a story that no later achievement can quite replace. They bring back the first classrooms, the first batch of students still finding their feet, the first shared aspirations - and the many hands that, without fanfare, nurtured an institution that was still searching for its name and its place in the world.

Those who were part of the early years still recall the transit campus as a temporary home that carried the weight of a permanent ambition. Then came the defining moments on 20 February 2024, when the Prime Minister Narendra Modi dedicated IIM Jammu's permanent campus to the nation. Spread across nearly 200 acres at Jagti, beneath the lower Himalayas, the campus gave the Institute more than buildings - it gave it a settled sense of identity, a place from which to look forward without forgetting where it started.

That founding memory matters, because it explains the character of everything that has followed. IIM Jammu did not simply grow larger; it grew more layered, more interconnected, more willing to reach beyond the conventional boundaries of a business school. Alongside its flagship MBA, the Institute now offers the Integrated Programme in Management, an Executive MBA, and Ph.D. programmes for both full-time scholars and working professionals. What ties these together is a conviction that today's problems rarely respect the neat lines drawn between disciplines. This is most visible in the MBA in Hospital Administration and Healthcare Management, run jointly with AIIMS Jammu and IIT Jammu, which brings medicine, management and technology into a single conversation. The B.Tech.-MBA dual-degree programme with IIT Jammu follows the same instinct, preparing engineers who can also lead. More recently, a dual-degree collaboration with the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, in Artificial Intelligence and Business Analytics, and the eBBA Honours programme, have carried this interdisciplinary spirit into the world of data and digital management.

Reputations built slowly tend to be sturdier, and IIM Jammu's recent recognitions reflect years of unglamorous groundwork finally being noticed. In 2025, it secured Institutional Accreditation from the Business Graduates Association and EFMD Programme Accreditation for its MBA - making it one of only a few IIMs, and the only second- or third-generation IIM, to hold both. These recognitions followed external evaluations of its curriculum, governance, learning outcomes, research, industry engagement and societal contribution. National rankings tell a similar story of steady climbing rather than sudden arrival. In the National Institutional Ranking Framework 2025, IIM Jammu secured the 35th position among management institutions in India, an improvement from 41st in 2023, with particularly strong performance in graduation outcomes and outreach and inclusivity. It moved from 22nd to 19th in the IIRF Government B-School Rankings between 2025 and 2026 and found further recognition in assessments by Business Today-MDRA, Businessworld and India Today - rankings that, taken together, describe an institution still on its way up rather than one that has plateaued.

What has always distinguished IIM Jammu, though, is less about where it stands in a table and more about who it stands for. From early on, the Institute chose to see itself not as a self-contained academic island but as a partner in the life of the region around it - a rare and deliberate choice for a business school still finding its own footing. The Centre for Innovation and Transformation in Governance works with the Government of Jammu and Kashmir on public-private partnerships, investment, electric mobility and urban development, translating management theory into policy practice. Alongside it, the Centre for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Skill Development, the Technology Business Incubator and the Centre for Small Business Development have quietly supported entrepreneurs who might otherwise never have had access to formal mentoring or training.

Mission YUVA, undertaken with the Government of Jammu and Kashmir, is perhaps the boldest expression of this outward orientation - an attempt to help young people move from seeking jobs to creating them. Small Business Development Units placed across Jammu and Kashmir extend this same support to towns far from any campus, while the MSME Health Clinic helps small businesses diagnose their own operational and financial troubles. The Centre for Diversity and Inclusion, inaugurated by former President Shri Ram Nath Kovind, adds a further dimension - a reminder that growth means little if it does not reach the communities that have historically been left out of it.

If there is one initiative that captures IIM Jammu's concern for the holistic development of its students, it is ?nandam - The Centre for Happiness. In a discipline often reduced to spreadsheets and quarterly targets, ?nandam insists on something equally essential - mindfulness, emotional intelligence, yoga, self-awareness - drawing on Indian traditions of thought as much as on contemporary research. It reflects the Institute's conviction that leadership is not built on technical competence alone, but on self-awareness, emotional balance and empathy for others.

The same instinct runs through the Institute's engagement with the arts. The Performing Arts course and the Rang Tarang initiative. The International Painters Symposium 2026 and the Basohli Painting Exhibition brought Jammu's artistic heritage into direct conversation with a contemporary academic setting - further proof that a management institute can also be a custodian of culture.

Faculty research has grown alongside these softer, more human initiatives. Recognition of some of the faculties among the world's top two per cent of scientists reflects a research culture that has matured considerably since the Institute's early years.

In July 2026, IIM Jammu hosted the 13th AIM-AMA Sheth Foundation Doctoral Consortium and International Marketing Conference, guided by Padma Bhushan Prof. Jagdish N. Sheth - a gathering that would have seemed a distant ambition a decade earlier. Executive education has connected the Institute to the world of practice: leadership programmes for the Steel Authority of India, communication training for Hindustan Aeronautics, and management programmes for NHPC, among others. Under the Ministry of Education's Malaviya Mission Teacher Training Programme, IIM Jammu had, by 2026, completed nineteen batches of its Nurturing Future Leadership Programme - a scale of continuity few would have predicted. Its international partnerships, with the University of Sheffield, Deakin University, IE University, SolBridge International School of Business and others, sit alongside deep domestic collaborations with IIT Jammu, the University of Jammu, the University of Ladakh, AIIMS Jammu, and NIT Srinagar - a web of relationships that has grown organically rather than by design.

The Jagti campus itself now carries the marks of a settled institution - the Nalanda Library, technology-enabled classrooms, the Mandapam Auditorium and the Tejas Sports Complex - spaces that give shape to the more intangible parts of student life: clubs, debates, consulting projects, sport, and theatre. As IIM Jammu completes ten years, it does so with the particular pride of an institution that remembers its own beginnings clearly enough to measure how far it has come. Much of this progress owes itself to the collective effort of its Board of Governors, faculty, staff, students and alumni, and in no small part to the vision of Prof. B. S. Sahay, whose energy helped carry the Institute from a transit campus to a genuinely recognised centre of management education.

As India looks toward Viksit Bharat 2047, institutions like IIM Jammu will be asked to be more than degree-granting bodies - to generate knowledge, nurture enterprise, and shape leaders who carry both competence and conscience. If its first decade is any indication, IIM Jammu has already begun to answer that call. Some institutions inherit their history; this one has spent ten years quietly writing its own - and its next chapter looks likely to be its most interesting yet.

(The author is Chairperson, Anandam - The Centre for Happiness, IIM Jammu)