Seats of learning on a string of controversies

Even as the government considers a new Bill to make the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) answerable to the Parliament, it appears the IIMs "" considered home to some of the best brains in the country "" have shifted from being seats of learning to seats of controversies over the last few years.

Only four years ago (November 23, 2003), the Common Admission Test (CAT) was cancelled for the first time in the 42-year old history of the IIMs, after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) nabbed four touts leaking the question paper near New Delhi a few hours ahead of the examination.

IIM Ahmedabad "" the coordinating body for the exams, which came under fire for the leak "" maintained that under no circumstances could the papers have been leaked from the IIMs.

Officials of the institute pointed the needle of suspicion towards the printing press in Mumbai. Around 1.3 lakh students had to then re-appear for the exam in 2004.

Soon after the CAT paper leak, the then Union Minister for Human Resource Development (HRD), Murli Manohar Joshi, decided to drastically reduce the fees for the post-graduate programmes in the IIMs to Rs 30,000 per annum from around Rs 150,000 per annum, which was close to an 80 per cent cut.

The move, according to him, was aimed at letting "elitist" institutes like the IIMs benefit a larger number of students. This resulted in a rift between him and the IIMs, a tussle which reached the Supreme Court.

Then in late 2005, IIM Bangalore had sought permission from the HRD ministry to open a research and management education centre in Singapore.

HRD Minister Arjun Singh shot down the institute's proposal in January 2006 on grounds that the institute should look to cater to the growing demand in India before going abroad. While academics called the ministry's decision irrational, IIM-B was forced to scrap its plans. It is now planning to launch long-distance courses through a tie-up with a Singapore university.

The same institute then faced trouble after it revealed details of students who had bagged Rs 1 crore-plus salaries and the students blamed the institute for the breach of confidentiality. Following the incident, IIM-B decided not to reveal any salary figures whatsoever "" a trend which was followed in 2007 by IIM Lucknow.

In February 2006, HRD Minister Arjun Singh called a meeting of the IIMs in New Delhi and raked up a storm on 'issues of autonomy and measures needed to further strengthen them in the IIMs.' When the move threatened to turn ugly, the HRD ministry decided to fire another salvo.

Singh unleashed one of the biggest debates in India on whether institutes of higher education, including the IIMs and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), should reserve 27 per cent of seats for students from Other Backward Castes (OBCs).

Amidst the raging quota fire, CAT 2006 brought more embarrassment to the IIMs when it was found that at least four questions in different question paper series had errors.

In 2007, IIM Bangalore was back in the news for all the wrong reasons when one of the CAT applicants, Vaishnavi Kasturi, filed a complaint under the Right to Information Act against the institute.

With the Supreme Court giving the go-ahead to general admissions and the OBC quota to be decided on May 8, the IIMs are bracing themselves to face a new controversy "" the IIM Bill this time.

"It is a retrograde step. The IIMs have been performing very well with the little autonomy they had been given. The government's move to form an Institutes of Management Bill to make them answerable to Parliament will stifle their growth," said an IIM director who echoed the views of his counterparts who are getting ready to fight yet another battle with the HRD ministry.