India's premier business school has achieved what many would consider an impossible feat. It is bringing together on the same platform two arch political opponents.
Representatives of the Indian National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party should hardly be the best of friends. But a prominent face of the party that leads the ruling coalition in New Delhi and an equally high-profile politician belonging to the country's principal opposition party -- Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi respectively -- will be sharing the same dais on the occasion of the forty-sixth convocation of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad.
It is not as if the two leaders will be present together at a meeting for the first time. In the past, the prime minister (as the chairman of the Planning Commission) has presided over meetings of the National Development Council comprising Union Cabinet ministers and chief ministers of all Indian states.
For instance, on July 24, 2010, at a meeting of the NDC -- said to be one of the highest policy-making bodies in the country -- to approve the Mid-Term Appraisal of the Eleventh Five Year Plan (for the five-year period ending March 31, 2012), Dr Singh and Modi were present at the same venue in New Delhi's Yojana Bhavan (where the Planning Commission is situated).
But such occasions can hardly be compared to the event that will take place on the last Saturday of March 2011 where the two will be present on the same platform.
As per the schedule of the event put out by the IIM-A and printed on invitation cards, the convocation address will be delivered at around 6 pm by the chief guest (in this case, the PM) to be followed immediately by an address by the chief minister of Gujarat.
It is not known if both will be present when group photographs are taken and medals and diplomas conferred on the students of the prestigious educational institution.
Dr Singh belongs to the Congress party which is bitterly opposed to the BJP in general and Modi in particular, who is frequently accused by his political opponents of not having done enough to contain and stop the 2002 communal carnage in Gujarat that resulted in the deaths of at least 1,000 people (mostly Muslims) within the span of a few months.
Supporters of Modi, the longest serving chief minister of Gujarat since October 2001, contend that he is an efficient administrator who has turned the state into an economic powerhouse.
