The Hindu Business Line : Ill-advised obstruction

MEDIA reports that the Government has blocked the enterprising outreach programme of IIM Bangalore to open a Research and Management Education Centre in Singapore are extremely disturbing.

In the liberalised era, when corporates handling crores of investors' money enjoy considerable freedom to enter into a variety of merger, acquisition and collaboration agreements, and list their shares on foreign stock exchanges, it is anachronistic that the Government should come in the way of an IIM bringing credit to India by establishing its campus abroad.

The reason adduced by the Ministry is that the IIM-B should first meet the internal demand for its courses before it steps out. This is nothing short of being ludicrous. There will never come a time when internal demand can be fully met even by all the IIMs taken together.

Second, opening overseas campuses need in no way vitiate the IIMs' efforts to expand their organisational capabilities to increase the intake.

Singapore is a veritable financial, commercial and business beehive of South Asia and it is no mean achievement for any IIM to have got a chance to become the hub of quality management education that could eventually implant its vision, mission, culture and calibre on the budding executives of that part of the world and play the catalyst in forging constructive alliances with countries such as China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand.

The proposal for the starting of the campus had also received an enthusiastic welcome from the Singapore Economic Development Board. The Singapore Government had been a consistent friend and well-wisher of India, and there was no reason for the Government to feel worried about any untoward consequences of the partnership.

Ostensibly, the Human Resources Development Ministry has chosen to obstruct the laudable initiative under its Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with the IIMs which vests it with the power of veto over the opening of overseas campuses. This is nothing but a myopic attempt at preventing the IIMs from becoming a world brand by harking back to the tactics of the licence-permit raj.

The MoA needs immediate revision so as to do away with any clauses that curtail the academic and operational freedom of the IIMs, limiting the Government's role to ensuring financial prudence and avoidance of activities prejudicial to national interest.

B. S. RAGHAVAN