Younger IIMs sore over Bhargava report

Even as the dust slowly settles down on the recommendations made by the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) review committee headed by Maruti India Chairman RC Bhargava, a couple of younger IIMs are unhappy with that fact that the committee members did not meet them in person to sort their views before writing the report.

This is despite the fact that in Appendix 3, page 46 of the report, titled, ‘Methodology adopted by IIM Review Committee for formulating the Report’, the committee says it met on its own 16 times and visited the IIMs at Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Indore and Kozhikode on April 24, February 2, April 4 and May 3 respectively. However, a source close to the development said the committee did not visit the IIM Indore campus either.

“The committee members haven’t visited all the campuses. As far as our knowledge goes, we don’t think they came to IIM Lucknow. They might have visited other campuses like Ahmedabad and Bangalore, and later generalised their recommendations,” said an IIM-L insider. “I don’t recall the committee members visiting our campus or interacting with any of the incumbents. As part of a research, it is very important to make a personal visit to the subject,” concurred a highly-placed IIM Indore source.

When contacted, RC Bhargava, head of the Bhargava committee, countered: “We have covered all the IIMs in our report. We did not have to visit all the IIMs for that. We have visited the IIMs at Ahmedabad, Bangalore and partly Kozhikode.”

However, the general consensus among the IIMs is that the committee should have met each one of them before it framed the recommendations. They note that this lacuna on the part of the IIM Review Committee has led to many oversights on its part. For instance, notes an IIM faculty member: “Despite sharing the IIM brandname, each IIM is different from each other. Studying a few of them may not be a proper representation of all the IIMs. Since IIM Indore is mentioned as one of the campuses visited in the report, we assume that it could be an oversight of some kind.”

Ever since the IIM review report was released, faculty and office bearers of the IIMs have had their differences with its recommendations on issues like autonomy, finance, student intake, fee, admission process and role of functionaries. In their internal meetings over the report, directors and faculty members have questioned the methodology followed by the committee.