Crisis hits home, IIM-Lucknow class waits for summer job offers

For perhaps the first time since it was established in 1984, there are not many takers for the MBA students of IIM-Lucknow—a grave reminder of the economic crisis gripping the world.

Two weeks after their summer placements exercise began on campus on November 7, about 55 students in the first year of the MBA programme at IIM-L are still waiting for an offer. Senior members of the faculty at this institution of excellence could not remember the last time this had happened—a few students were sometimes left behind after the first week of placements, but ultimately everyone got placed. Never was it so bad.

For 285 students last year, IIM-L got 424 summer placement offers. “This year, of the 325 students that we have, around 270 have been placed, the rest are left,” said Prof Prem Chandra Purwar, officiating director.

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A Bihar village plays incubator for a prized Virginia idea

A good news story from a Bihar village is now being celebr ated in a US university.

Mangi Sinha and Charles 'Chip' Ransler, students at University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, along with partner Gyanesh Pandey, started a project that provides low-cost electricity to two villages in Bettiah by burning the rice husk.

Last week, Sinha and Ransler received $50,000 and a big vote of confidence in their business plan when they won the Social Innovation Competition at the University of Texas. The University of Texas' RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service awarded the prize to their business, Husk Power Systems (huskpowersystems.com), which uses a proprietary technology to bum rice husk and generates electricity and waste ash that can be sold as an ingredient for cement, and ensures a reduction in carbon emissions.

So far, two rice husk generators are providing power to two villages but the business plan calls for a rapid expansion that will put the miniature power plants in hundreds o f villages within a few years, says Sinha, who along with his partners are scouting for investment to expand their project.

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