IIMs: younger ILK cash-strapped so they sing HRD tune

The controls spelt out in the MOU fly in the face of Joshi’s protestations that he had no intention to interfere with the autonomy of the IIMs.

The MOU, for instance, stipulates that the institute ‘‘shall not create a post, upgrade or re-designate a post, change the pay-scale or allowance of a post.’’

It also binds the institute ‘‘to abide by economy instructions issued from time to time by the Government of India.’’

Worse, the MOU goes to the extent of saying that the institute will not have the freedom to ‘‘take any step, without prior consulation with the HRD Ministry, that may lead to enhanced financial burden on the Government of India than agreed to by the latter.’’

Today, IIM Indore joined IIM Lucknow in passing a resolution which supported the ministry’s fee slash. A meeting of the board of governors adopted a resolution accepting that the government had the prerogative to make policy decisions on fees in fully funded Central institutes. IIM Lucknow has already passed a resolution along the same lines.

At its board meeting held on February 29, the Lucknow IIM admitted that it did not have enough of a corpus of funds to sustain itself and would expect the ministry to make up for the shortfall because it would lose a lot of money by reducing the fees from Rs 1.5 lakh per annum to Rs 30,000 per annum.

That Indore would do the same was also apparent when one of its Board members, Ramesh Baheti, said that the three younger IIMs had not yet been able to ‘‘develop a brand equity’’ and would find it difficult to survive if the ministry did not bail them out. Today, the board meeting presided by IIM Indore chairman B N Kalyani passed a resolution which was music to the ministry’s ears.

In fact, though the Kozhikode board which met on February 15 refrained from adopting a resolution, its director, A H Kalro has said quite openly that the ‘‘government has the prerogative to take certain decisions including changes in the structure of fees.’’ It has been calculated that following the drastic fee cut, Kozhikode would suffer an annual shortfall of Rs 1.7 crore and there is fear that if the Centre does not provide adequate money, it will not have money to work on ‘‘bigger research projects.’’ But the ministry is keeping its fingers crossed because the more crucial board meetings are coming up four days now. The ministry is also showing off an anonymous letter, which according to them has been written by an IIM Ahmedabad faculty member, in which several old accusations against the Ahmedabad management have been restated. For example, it has been alleged that director Bakul Dholakia is spending more time preparing a brief for the media than concentrating on academic affairs.