Arjun to IIMs: Fix your fee

The graded fee structure has been mooted by the ministry to ensure that its decision to roll back fees does not become a political tool in the hands of the Opposition and Joshi8217;s supporters. Students with a family income of Rs 1.5 lakh or less will be fully subsidised according to the ministry8217;s compromise formula.

Of course, Singh did not give any advice to the IIMs today. He left the fee decision entirely to the directors and so showed that he fully respected their autonomy. Bureaucrats said Singh told the directors he wanted them to run the institutions as before and for most of the meeting he heard them out.

Sources in IIM Ahmedabad said tonight that the institute was not opposed to the graded structure. Indeed, they said, what was now being suggested as the graded fee structure by the government was quite similar in spirit to a resolution IIM-A had adopted long ago on funding poorer students.

With the time-table decided on by Singh, the six IIMs will have to thrash out their individual problems and come to a consensus on the uniform countrywide fee by June 6. The directors, said sources, may have to work out an average of the varying fees now being charged by the different IIMs, decide on a fee that suited everybody and then plan how they could fund the poorer students.

On June 8, the directors will assemble in Delhi for a meeting with Secretary Higher Education S.C.Tripathi. They will then have the new fees ratified by their own Board of Governors and the decision finalised by June 25.

The IIMs will also have been pleased with Singh8217;s statement to the media today that that the day8217;s agenda had omitted the controversial Shunglu report, which had accused the IIMs of financial mismanagement. Some bureaucrats had been pressing the Minister to base the day8217;s discussion on the Shunglu report but Singh completely overruled that view. 8216;8216;Charcha ka vishay nahin tha,8217;8217; Singh said in response to a question on whether the Shunglu report was discussed today at all.

Singh was also dismissive of questions on whether the fee rollback could be allowed as the Supreme Court was adjudicating the issue. He said that the status of the case was such that a decision on fees could be taken by the IIMs. 8216;8216;The Supreme Court gave time to the IIMs,8217;8217; he pointed out.

While apologising to the student community for the inconvenience caused to them, he pointed out that the ministry8217;s earlier decision had been taken without prior consultations with the institutes. It was a thinly veiled criticism of the style of functioning of his predecessor Joshi.

Singh8217;s decision to have a uniform fee policy opens up the possibility of better cooperation among the IIMs. In the earlier dispensation, the bureaucrats preferred to divide and rule; the older IIMs were viewed with suspicion while the younger IIMs, more dependent on subsidy from the government, were simply ordered to fall in line.

There is, however, the alternative view, that close cooperation among the IIMs might not be the best of moves, given the fact that each of these IIMs had excelled all these years as individual entities not over-relied on each other for either fiscal or intellectual support.