financial decisions by virtue of holding senior positions.Most of the process of financial decision-making was in optimal and causing firms and nation heavily. I decided to take the task of finance education through the existing academic infrastructure available in the country by convincing academia, industry and administrators about the need for finance education. My efforts got partial success and finance for non-finance executive course for a short duration of 3 to 5 days became popular. It did not satisfy me, as it was not enough. I discussed the issue with some of the finance professionals around the globe and they supported my idea. It was during this period that Finance as an element of Economics and Management received lot of boost as many Noble prizes were being given in this subject in the last two decades.

During the course of my teaching at SRCC and Delhi School of Economics during the seventies, I realized that Finance has not been given adequate attention in the courses like MBA, M.Com and M.A.Economics. Although Finance as an optional specialization was offered as part of MBA programmes as well as in M.Com, yet it was not sufficient. The focus of MBA was divided into different functional areas: Marketing, Production, Personnel Management (Human Resource Management), Organization Behavior, and Finance. Finance has never been included as a part of M.A.Economics throughout the country with the exception of Public Finance. Professional courses like CA, ICWA and CS have been designed primarily to develop and take care of function of audit, cost analysis & audit, secretarial functions respectively. Although most of the finance functions in the corporate sector, earlier, were being looked after by the professionals drawn from these disciplines.

I realized the need for a full-fledged course on finance and committed myself to the development of this discipline by founding Indian Institute of Finance in 1987. The focus is developing finance study through academic education, training, research and consulting. The mission is to be center of excellence globally. It was like jumping into an ocean with troubled waters. I faced enormous problems but have traveled a long way to achieve success. Indeed, it is an extremely painful process to develop an Institute of International repute from scratch starting from a room in my house in 1987 without any government aid and against all odds, including apprehensions from my own family member; and reached a level of reputation Internationally, become a symbol of quality education and research. Its quarterly journal - the Finance India is rated at third place worldwide by American Statistical Association. But I still feel there is a long way to go. We are prepared to meet successfully the challenges, which lie ahead. I would proudly claim that "Indian Institute of Finance is an Institute of not only today but also of tomorrow. India would one day be proud of it in the coming years'.

Finance is one of the scarcest resources particularly in developing factors in the growth and development of a country, firm, corporate and even individuals. My working abroad, traveling internationally, attending & addressing international gathering of American Finance Association and Financial Management Association, as well meeting with some of the leading finance professionals in Europe and United States. During the eighties, have increasingly led me to develop an Institute of Finance in India. I decided to return to India to serve my beloved country. Most of the spadework for setting up this Institute was done whilst I was working abroad.

Professor V.K.R.V. Rao's lectures on foundation day, i.e. 14th November every year has ben greatest motivation, whilst I was a student at Delhi School of Economics and later when I was teaching at Delhi University. My ideas of setting up an Institute of Finance got refined with experiences' at SRCC, Delhi School of Economics, IIT Delhi, London Business School, ABU Nigeria and ICFAI Hyderabad.

During course of my teaching at Center for Management Studies at IIT Delhi, in the early eighties, I have realized that engineers require the knowledge of finance, as they are involved in designing and implementing mega projects with mega budgets. During this period of early eighties I was also intensely involved in training of professionals - senior managers and administrators from the government, public sector and private enterprises, and recognize professionals holding position do not have adequate knowledge of finance. Most of them even did not have finance sense but were taking