By Raj Varadarajan, 1966 BTech

The alumni association of IITM was initiated by the then Director Prof Sengupto when the first batch graduated in 1964. The lifetime subscription was Rs 25/-. It was decided to collect this subscription with the annual fee.

The first President of the alumni association was Prof D Venkateswaralu. It will be worthwhile to get a write-up from him right away, to capture his memories of association at that time. He is located in Bangalore. The list of successive presidents was available at the association and should find a place in the website. The link can be given to this article for anyone who wants to see this.

The association even published a yearly magazine Pradeep. A copy is available in our Heritage Centre. 

I moved to the USA in 1971 and was not aware of the activities after that. However, in 1980, when I was in Houston, the first meeting of the alumni in that area was initiated and I believe Bhamy Shenoy of 1965 batch became the first president of this chapter. It did not have any bye-laws or formal structure but continued to function. The first donation by the chapter was organized some time in 1985 and we collected about $ 20,000 for buying PCs to be distributed to the hostels. IITM was not geared up to receive any donations at that time and the customs clearance took almost a year. By the time this was cleared and given to the hostels, it was 1987. It happened after I returned to India.

I was drafted into the EC by the then President Prof L N Ramamurthy. The secretary was Prof Mathews of 1969 batch. At the time, EC meetings were being organized on a "need" basis and the AGM hardly had the quorum. The EC encouraged the residents of Chennai city to take active part at this time. 

In the 1989 period, when Prof M A Parameswaran was president, he encouraged the formation of the Chennai chapter. The first President of the Chennai chapter was K V Rangaswamy of 1965 batch with Rajamani of the 1966 batch as the secretary.

In 1991, the first ever Silver Reunion was encouraged by the association and the 64, 65 batches also were included as they did not have the numbers to make this on their own. Another reason was that there was a lot of affinity between the first three batches as there were only 300 of us when we came into the campus. We were housed in the Cauvery and Krishna hostels during our stay. There were perhaps 300 professors at that time.

The Silver Reunion became a regular feature after this. When the 1968 batch organized their Silver Reunion in 1993 they felt the need for a full-time office for the association and agreed to raise the funds to support this. Prof N V Sastry, the then Director, facilitated this even before the donation by assigning a place in the HSB building for this purpose. Prof Sastry even initiated a trust with 9 members - 5 alumni and 4 from the Insititute - in 1994 to receive funds from the alumni. The founder trustees' names and the bye-laws were in the website.

So, in 1994, Prof A Venkatesh, the then President, hired a full-time executive to run the office. He was given the title of Executive Secretary which was mistaken by the alumni to think that he was also an alumnus. Captain Subramaniam was the first ES.

Prof O Prabhakaran of 1965 batch, when he became the President, found the necessity for an alumni directory. Prof Santhakumar took the initiative to develop a wonderful directory and this was released in 1998. I think D Chandrasekaran was the Secretary at this time, having organized a very successful Silver Reunion of his 1970 batch. He drafted the MOU and registered the association under the Tamil Nadu Societies Registration Act. At that time, the existing President had already resigned and a new President was not appointed, so Prof V Kalyanaraman signed the registration document as the President with others present as initial members of the Society.

It became a practice that the secretaries for the association were from the group that celebrated the reunion as they were most active at that time. Thus the 1967, 70, 72, 73, 74 and 75 batches found more and more place in the EC.

The advent of the internet and Yahoo Groups, introduced by H R Mohan of 1976 batch, was instrumental in introducing the concept to the association in 1999

The then Director, Prof Natarajan, felt the need to network the alumni. He went on a tour of USA guided by Sri Gopalakrishnan with the funds donated by Desh. The office of Alumni Affairs was established in August 2000 with the idea of networking the alumni and soliciting funds for the Trust. Any cause supported by the alumni would be distributed by the Trustees subject only to the condition that it satisfied the cause for which the Trust was established. I became the Executive Officer of the Office of Alumni Affairs for 2 years. We had Prof T Sundararajan of 1978 batch as the Advisor.

When the next Director Prof. Ananth came on board, he felt the necessity to integrate the alumni affairs and the Association and made Prof G Sundararajan the Advisor as well as the President of the Association. However it was discovered that the bye-laws of the Association did not permit nomination for any post and only election was permitted. So a new set of bye-laws came about in 2004. All positions were thrown open to the alumni and V Srinivasan of 1985 became the first president elected by the alumni.

The Association however received representations from alumni around the world and decided to open all the positions of office bearers to alumni across the globe. There was a discussion on new bye-laws which were approved in an Extra-ordinary General Body meeting in 2006. This now governs the operation of the Association.