Most of the new IIMs have, in fact, failed to meet even that reduced target. As a series of reports in this newspaper last week revealed, IIM-Sambalpur managed to attract only 48 students in the first year and 46 in the second. IIM-Bodhgaya managed 30 students in the first year and 54 in the second. The numbers managed by the others were no different.
The reason why some of India's brightest students are opting out of these IIMs is clear: The new ones still have no directors, no full-time faculty, operate out of small rented premises and depend entirely on professors of older IIMs, which have been given the task of mentoring them. The professors of the older IIMs take this as an imposition, as the additional work, which involves a lot of travelling, eats into their time for research work and involves almost endless travelling. For example, IIM-Kozhikode is mentoring IIM-Amritsar. So a professor of Kozhikode has to change three flights (Kozhikode-Mumbai, Mumbai-Delhi and Delhi-Amritsar) to cover the nearly 3,000 km distance.
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It's foolishness to expect Brand IIM to flourish if this is the state of affairs. Most of the new IIMs suffer from severe locational disadvantages as they are far removed from commercial hubs. Politics has obviously played a big role in selection of some of these locations. For example, the central government had originally chosen Bhubaneswar as the venue for the IIM in Odisha. But local politicians got into the fray and shifted the venue to Sambalpur on the ground that western Odisha has been neglected by successive central governments. A government-appointed committee did suggest to the human resource development ministry that top centrally funded institutions should be opened only in accessible locations with good infrastructure and connectivity. The committee obviously underestimated the power of local politicians.
Add to that the problem of temporary campuses with poor infrastructural facilities (some of these IIMs don't even have a library). The sad part is that there were enough lessons to be learnt from the seven new IIMs set up between 2008 and 2011, all of which are still struggling for permanent campuses, quality of teaching and research. Take IIM Kashipur, for example. The town has poor air connectivity (the nearest airport, New Delhi, is 270 km or six hours away by road) and has no good schools, restaurants or even a shopping complex. Under the circumstances, it's impossible to attract and retain high-quality faculty.
Then there are simmering differences between the new IIMs and the more established ones, with the former claiming that their older counterparts are not treating them as equals in resource and faculty sharing. The new IIMs feel some of the older institutes choose to play elitist and refrain from sharing the best faculty and help improve the productivity of all IIMs, jeopardising the IIM brand - a suggestion that is promptly dismissed by the older IIMs, which say the mentoring plan was forced on them even though they had rejected it way back in 2008, citing limited faculty and resources.
When the central government announced its decision to open seven more IIMs in 2008, it set rolling an ambitious plan, without paying much heed to critics. With only one in every 100 applicants making it into an IIM - the ratio is 1:10 in an American Ivy League school - the government went with the view that quantity wouldn't mar quality.
Many professors at the older IIMs say the government decided to put the cart before the horse by ignoring their advice on three things: Set up these institutes in areas with easy accessibility, build infrastructure facilities, appoint at least the directors and some full-time faculty before starting the admission process. Also, ideally, the older IIMs should have incubated the new ones on their main campus in the initial years, so that the ambiance and campus culture is created in the new institutions. That's the reason why an expert committee set up by the HRD ministry in 2008 had disagreed with the rather "aggressive" 10-year-long expansion plan proposed for new IIMs, and had instead called for a more tempered approach. IIMs should not be viewed as institutes for mass production but as institutes that provide a benchmark in education, the committee had said. And a better idea would be to use initiatives such as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) creatively so that the quality of some of India's premier institutes has an impact on the ecosystem of management education in India, raising overall quality standards.
Many, however, live on hope and say the new IIMs are only facing teething problems that would be sorted out soon. For example, they say no great institution anywhere in the world has been built in a day and cite the example of IIM Ahmedabad, which began in Vikram Sarabhai's garage in the early 1960s. Will history repeat itself?