IIMs: Time to act

Officials of the Union human resources development ministry who were present and spoke at the meeting of the Indian Institute of Management Society in Ahmedabad (IIM-A) are guilty of contempt of court. They have shown wanton disrespect to the Supreme Court by backtracking on the assurance given on their behalf by the legal representative of the government to the Court on preserving the autonomy of the IIMs. It was on the basis of this assurance that the learned judges had dismissed a public interest litigation on the matter pertaining to the reduction of tuition fee at IIM-A. After giving the apex court an assurance that the ministry will not hurt the guaranteed autonomy of these institutes of academic excellence, two senior officials of the ministry threatened the IIM society with dire action amounting to a virtual governmental takeover of the institution and dismissal of its director. Hopefully, the learned judges will now issue a suo moto notice of contempt of court to the minister and his officials and seek their apology.

It is tiring to continually engage in this game of one-upmanship between a premier academic institution, a wooden-headed bureaucracy and an arrogant and ideologically motivated minister. Some one must put a stop to this charade and only the prime minister can. The time has come for Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to rein in his HRD minister or dismiss him. Since neither is likely in the run up to an election, the least that Vajpayee can do is to constitute a one-man committee, comprising a person of high regard and national esteem who is aware of the issues involved. The committee should report back within three months on how to resolve this unedifying conflict between the HRD ministry and the IIMs. This person must inspire the confidence of the IIM faculty and students, of the wider stakeholders like the corporate and the financial sectors, of the media and of general public.

We can think of many persons who would fit that bill — who have sufficient knowledge of the functioning and role of the IIMs, of their commitment to society and the tax-payer, and so on. Consider, for example, the former chairman and director of IIM-A, I.G. Patel. A former governor of the Reserve Bank of India and a distinguished academic and policymaker. One can think of C. Rangarajan, chairman of the Finance Commission, former RBI governor and for many years a professor at IIM-A. It is a pity that one has to think of such options because there cannot be a better advocate of rationality in this context than IIM-A’s present chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy. Surely the prime minister will agree that any one of these gentlemen would take a fair view of the issues involved than some transferable joint secretary who today wants to browbeat the IIMs and tomorrow may well manage to become the director for weights and measures in some backward state of the Union!