Hands off

BS OPINION

The HRD ministry has many issues to worry about, since literacy levels are still pathetic, the quality of many government schools hopeless, and their results for every rupee of expenditure worse than for private schools.

But no, the ministry's priority is to spread its tentacles and enmesh the cream of India's business school system. The IIMs are being told to charge less and to cough up their financial reserves so that they become more dependent on the ministry, one absurd argument being that the IITs charge less.

Why engineering and management courses should be equated for their fees, any more than architectural and medical courses should be so equated, is not explained. Nor is there explanation as to why the financial and operational autonomy that is healthy for educational institutions across the world, should be bad for the IIMs.

The ministry is also trying to get control of the entrance exam system, in the name of uniformity for all B-schools, whereas it is common sense that the standard of education dished out in over 900 B-schools is so varied that it makes no sense to subject everyone to the same demanding entrance test.

The bottom half of the schools will be forced to then admit students who have not even scored pass scores. And while some 50 of the better B-schools are already part of the CAT system, some prefer to do their own admission, including (for instance) Delhi University's Faculty of Management Studies.

There is no reason why such autonomy should not be allowed. In the US, the College Board (not the government) runs the entrance tests, but universities are free to choose which test they will use, if any.

For all the arguments against the stance that it has taken, the ministry would still get some support in the name of standardisation if it had a good record. But the manner in which it has been running the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) tells its own story.

The Council has had no vice-chairman for over two years, after the last incumbent quit in a huff, apparently because of ministerial interference.

The secretary's post is vacant too. It is the same AICTE that has been busy certifying hundreds of B-schools that clearly should not have been certified; in years past, there have even been whispers about how some of the certificates were obtained.

That little act has been cleaned up, but if the ministry's general record is a guide, it is best to keep the B-schools autonomous. The nature of bureaucratic control is also well known: it wants to exercise power and go after the inconsequential detail, but offers little that is positive in return.

After all, it was an underling in the ministry who asked IIM-Ahmedabad (then chaired by none other than N.R.Narayana Murthy) to explain expenditure worth a few thousand rupees. In short, while the CAT leakage is tragic, if the fall-out is tighter ministerial control over the IIMs, it would have proved disastrous.