The All India Management Association (AIMA) recently celebrated its 62nd Foundation Day which is also observed as the National Management Day across the country and felicitated many business leaders and management experts for their excellence in management education and management writing.

Adi Godrej, chairman, Godrej Group, received the AIMA Life Time Award for Management. While delivering a lecture on leading family businesses in the age of disruption, Godrej said that typically family businesses underperform during economic expansion and they do better than the rest during economic contraction because they have leaner cost structures and they are quicker to react to threats and opportunities. “Trust lowers transaction cost,” he said.

Nandan Nilekani, non-executive chairman, Infosys and former Chairman of UIDAI, received the AIMA-JRD Tata Corporate Leadership Award presented by Rahul Bajaj, the chief guest of the event. Nilekani made the observations in response to a concern expressed by Rahul Bajaj, head of Bajaj Group of Companies, who feared that a rogue Government could make a citizen disappear by switching off one’s aadhaar-based legal existence and blocking the access to money, travel and public services.

“Aadhaar or any system of the type needs strong privacy and security laws and oversight. The possibility of tracking the citizens exists because of mobile phones also. An electronic consent infrastructure was underway that will allow the Government to share the citizen’s data with lenders. This would enable millions of small businesses to borrow, which will put the economy back on track. Credit at scale is the key,” he said adding that the same data-sharing infra can be used for healthcare, education and other services too.

The AIMA-Kewal Nohria Award for Leadership in Management Education went to Dr Bala V Balachandran, founder, dean & chairman, Great Lakes Institute of Management. The AIMA-Dr Ram Tarneja Award for Best Article in Indian Management was presented to Harish Bijoor, CEO, Harish Bijoor Consultants. AIMA presented the AIMA-Dr JS Juneja Award for Creativity and Innovation for MSMEs to Yantra Harvest Energy through its Managing Director, Ajit Ratanchand Shah.

AIMA President, Mohadas Pai said that today, the world faces the threat of a few large digital companies dominating the world and telling everybody what to do. “The changes we will see over the next few years will be cataclysmic and we need to lead the change and not become its victim,” he said.