The Hindu Business Line : `Attempts by HRD Ministry to gain operational control over IIMs'

THE white paper brought out by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad faculty on the twin issue of fee cut and autonomy were made public on Monday.

The paper has termed some of the recent developments as clear attempts by the Ministry of Human Resources development to gain operational control over IIMs. The present notification by the Ministry regarding the fees to be charged by the IIMs does not seem to be a step in the right direction, it says.

"It subsidises richer students who can easily afford the current fee. The (fee cut) order has not to be seen in isolation but in the larger context of many other decisions taken by the Ministry that threaten the autonomy of the institute."

"We stress the need to protect the autonomy of the institute in all aspects: academic, administrative, institutional and financial," the paper says.

Titled `Sustaining academic excellence - A position paper', it derides the Ministry's attempts to run the IIMs as extensions of the office of the Ministry. Terming the turn of events as matters of grave concern for the faculty, it calls upon the authorities for an "enabling environment to meet challenges and succeed in its mission".

According to the faculty paper, the success of IIMA has been mainly on account of sustained support of its stakeholders and the supportive approach of the Government. While all the stakeholders have recognised the importance of autonomy to enable the institute to accomplish its mission and goals, the faculty tried to meet the expectations of the stakeholders.

"A series of developments in recent months have dented this process and raised serious apprehensions about the institute's autonomy being threatened. This included the changes in the procedure of appointment of directors, cancellation of CAT examinations unilaterally, attempt to reduce the corpus and impose a highly restrictive MoU, unilateral reduction of fees and threats to dismiss the Director and dissolve the IIMA Society if they dared exercise their constitutional right of seeking legal redress of their grievances."

It seems ironical that when the Government is opening up various sectors of the economy and liberalising their functioning, it should attempt to assume greater control of the IIMs, despite their creditable performance over decades.

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