NOW INSTITUTIONS ARE encouraging students to ‘drop out’! Well, just kidding; it is more like encouraging them to express their inner entrepreneur. Only yesterday I read that the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, will now allow students and faculty to take up to a year off to float their own startups. Apparently, BITS is not the first. Manipal Universal Technology Business Incubator, for example, gives the students seed support of up to 025 lakh based on the viability of their ideas. There are many other institutes (both management and technical) in that mould, I am told.

In my time, losing or skipping a year was considered bad form. And, quite often, you would have to explain that gap to the interview board at your first job. But then startups were not heard of, unless you mean the kind I did when I had to run with my Lambretta to get it going. A brisk trot, followed by a full twist of the accelerator. Yeah, so no startups, and unicorns lived on medicine wrappers from an old giant—Burroughs, Wellcome & Co. Unicorns moved to clouds much later, and by then the world and education, too, had moved on.

This issue of your favourite news magazine is the annual special on best b-schools in the country. As always, the story is supported by THE WEEK-Hansa Research Best B-Schools Survey 2022. The cover story by Principal Correspondent Abhinav Singh is accompanied by a guest column by Ranjan Banerjee, dean of BITS School of Management, Mumbai, and interviews with Prof Himanshu Rai, director of IIM Indore, and Sunil Alagh, former MD and CEO of Britannia Industries Ltd.

Abhinav discusses the Covid effect on management education, and how b-schools are now looking to train managers who are crisis-ready and can oversee multiple functions in their organisations. It is becoming increasingly difficult, he says, to attract the best students with the promise of hefty packages alone. The new generation wants to know more about their role and overall value proposition in the organisation. As I see it, they want to mean something to the organisation, to be someone beyond a designation. I think every generation wanted that, but this one can ask for it boldly, thanks to the choices available.

In his interview, Alagh speaks about how the management trainee has evolved. Earlier, management trainees would stay for an average of 10 years in the organisation that hired them. Today, they move on much faster, thanks to the many opportunities out there. As the world is becoming a smaller place, these opportunities transcend national borders and continents.

Another major story in this issue is about a fellow alumnus, the chief justice designate of India, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud. The headline, Robed in hope, aptly captures the nation’s feelings as he embarks on a two-year-long appointment to the highest judicial office in the country. The main article by Senior Assistant Editor Soni Mishra is accompanied by articles by from Justice Deepak Gupta, Justice Govind Mathur, Deepika Kinhal of Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, and Rahul Bajaj, a Rhodes scholar, attorney and former law clerk to Justice Chandrachud.

The main thread of all these articles is about how Justice Chandrachud humanises the judiciary. Justice Gupta mentions that Justice Chandrachud and his wife, Kalpana, are bringing up two differently-abled girls as their own. If that is not humanity in action, what is?