IGIDR , My New Home

Let me take you to my institute, where I am currently pursuing my Masters in Economics from. The place is called Indira gandhi Institute of Development Research. This institute was established by the Reserve Bank of India in 1987 for purely research purposes. Over the years this place has produced an outstanding number of PhDs and MPhils. The MSc program is only four years old now and the second batch passed out this year with an average placement of 7.3 lacs.Yes, same as many IIMs. These facts surprised me as much as it did you. That makes it better than DSE will be the next question. I am not making any comparisons here as DSE has its own place among people who know what Masters in Economics and Research is all about. But what’s most surprising is that during our grads we knew nothing about IGIDR. Does it have something to do with the fact that during our grads we only think in terms of IIMs and other corporate placements , and DSE also fits in this agenda as its Placement is just too good.I think that the fact that our teachers and seniors never encourage us towards reserach and higher studies in economics has something to do with it. IGIDR takes only 17 people every year for its masters program and all from diverse backgrounds. We have students who’ve done Physics, B.Tech, an IIM graduate, an IITian, from Environmental Science and what not ,apart from Economics students of DU and CU. IGIDR provides its students with the kind of Infrastructure one can’t imagine. I was myself surprised to see what all they have in store for us. The fact that RBI spends 4 lacs on each one of us per annum may help explain that. We have one of India’s best library http://www.igidr.ac.in/lib/library.htm (mind you, its not a tall claim) which, for example, has regular subscription to more than 500 journals from all over the world. We had a two hour orientation here to teach us how to use the library effectively. It basically has everything in economics under the Sun. Two hours is a long time. then we have this Computer Centre 24*7 which has all the big things in computing http://kamadhenu.igidr.ac.in . I won’t explain much here as I was sleeping during the three hours orientation of how to use the IT resources. Plus the hostel and other accomodation facilities are better than most of the institutes in India. The best thing about the institute is its research activity. The faculty here is amazing in terms of their experience and also the teaching method such that a 90 minutes class never seems banal. Also our classroom is too good, they say it was built for around 3 crores. I can believe that. Its damn good. In the first week of our stay here we had the good luck of attending a lecture by noted Economist from Yale Univerrsity, Dr. T N Srinivasan and they say its a common feature here. I remember bunking my classes in DU to listen to Kasushik Basu, Stiglitz, Sen etc. and running around the campus for that. Its no big deal here. This place boasts of outstanding corporate placements and its alumni are all very highly placed. IGIDR in say another 5 years is sure to be a big name. I’m lucky to be here and be a part of this change. I personally feel that more and more students should try and come to this place to do their masters and not be stuck with only two choices of DSE and JNU.