A day ahead of the IIM Bangalore board meeting, the faculty at the Indian Institute of Management (IIMA), Ahmedabad, have set out in black and white their opposition to the HRD Ministry’s proposed 80 per cent fee cut.‘‘The notification by Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) regarding the fees cut is not a step in the right direction and it hampers the autonomy of the institution,’’ says a white paper prepared by an internal taskforce and adopted unanimously today by a faculty meeting attended by 45 of the 75 teachers at the institute.Generally, no more than 30 teachers turn up for such meetings, sources said, adding that the paper had been circulated to all teachers two days in advance so that all of them had time to deliberate on the issue.The 10-page white paper — which touches upon fees, autonomy, and questions of interference from the time of the CAT question-paper leak — was prepared by a taskforce of five faculty members appointed by IIMA director Bakul Dholakia.It will now be presented to the IIMA Board and also to the President, the Prime Minister, and the HRD Ministry.Some of the salient points in the paper, reproduced verbatim are: • ‘‘The faculty of IIMA feels that in the process followed by MHRD for issuing the order on fee reduction, the time-honoued procedures were not followed. The Board’s role as the body entrusted with the responsibility of running IIMs was not recognised and the MHRD has treated the board as non-existent and irrelevant. This is direct interference in autonomy.’’ (The procedure referred to is that whenever the ministry proposed a fee hike in the past, it put the idea to the board, which took the final decision after discussion. But on the fee cut, the ministry ordered the board to do as told.)• ‘‘The faculty views the fee cut order not in isolation but in the larger context of many other decisions by the ministry like the changes in the procedures for appointment of directors, cancellation of CAT examination unilaterally, and threatening to dismiss the director and the society of IIMA, if they dared to exercise their constitutional right of legal redressal of grievances.’’• ‘‘Thirdly, the faculty feels that it is not likely that MHRD will achieve its stated objective of making management education more affordable to the less well-to-do sections of society. Even in the seventies and eighties, when management education was virtually free, the profile of students was no different. It was not a elitist group by wealth but elitist in the sense of brightest students, who are admitted by virtue of a fair and transparent system.’’The paper also states that IIMA faculty have taken it upon themselves to ensure that no selected candidate loses his seat for want of money to pay fees.Friday’s faculty meeting was chaired by Dholakia, who, declined to comment.
