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We don’t need a pan-IIM board: V Raghunathan

Feb 15, 2013, 05.00AM IST
(The reasons against a pan-IIM…)

By, V Raghunathan

Over decades, the government did well to set up IITs and IIMs and gave them support and autonomy, enabling them to grow into vibrant, strong and successful institutions. Unfortunately, the government does not always seem to know when the institutions promoted by it are functioning optimally. When the R C Bhargava committee submitted its report in 2008, the idea of a supra-IIM board was the most significant and far-reaching of its recommendations.

This author had said then that the idea was unpalatable (Supra-IIM board: A retrograde idea, ET, January 31, 2009), and the idea remains unpalatable even today.

According to the report, "To assist the government in playing its role, it is proposed to create a pan-IIM board... This board should not be involved in any day-to-day management matters of an IIM but would approve vision-and-mission statements, give guidelines for framing policy, and approve two-year business plans...." The role envisaged for this pan-IIM board was "to bring about coordination between all the IIMs in all areas where this would be beneficial.

The establishment of the six new IIMs (today, the number is 21) should be coordinated by the board. This board should also help in raising private funds for the IIMs." The report added that the board will "have full powers" for "raising funds, determining fees for all courses, creating or abolishing posts, and determining conditions of service of all those appointed on a contract basis."

Perhaps the government has dusted the Bhargava committee report and retrieved the old suggestion for implementation all over again, the underlying reasons remains the same as before.

So, let us put this idea under the scanner. How is "not being involved with day-to-day activity" consistent with "full powers for raising funds, determining fees for all courses, creating and abolishing posts and determining service conditions" et al? What will then be the role of the individual boards? Why will high-profile professionals agree to be on the individual boards, when even the posts, service conditions and fee levels are to be handed out by a supra-board, reducing the IIMs' own boards to a common minimum denominator?

Interestingly, the Bhargava committee had noted that "IIMs have emerged as great teaching institutions and their products are in high demand in India and abroad" even though their research record, the committee had lamented rightly, was far from international standards. But how will the pan-IIM board help enhance fund mobilisation and what criteria will it employ to distribute the funds across IIMs? Isn't it better for the IIMs to mobilise funds for themselves, based on their respective work, strengths and expertise?

  One more tier between the government and the IIMs is hardly likely to "assist the government" either. The government, in fact, will never get to hear the views of the different IIMs first hand, being limited to the sanitised singular version of the pan-IIM board. Besides, why should the number of posts and service conditions be identical across IIMs? The productivity, manpower and skill levels across Gujarat and Karnataka and West Bengal, for example, are hardly alike, and any standardisation is bound to force unnatural organisational arrangements upon the institutions, making the arrangement necessarily suboptimal.

In short, the idea of a supra-IIM board is retrograde and not consistent with betterment of IIMs. The boards of old and new IIMs are bound to have very different concerns and it is best that they be allowed to function their own ways. Large systems in India have hardly ever worked. Trying to bind all the IIMs into a single huge system is entirely unnecessary, if not altogether dysfunctional. In fact, such a board is bound to inhibit competition across the different IIMs.

As we know, consulting houses are known to recommend diversification when one is focused on core competence and vice versa if only to justify their fancy fees. One had thought at the time that the Bhargava committee had been driven by a similar underlying motive, because to say that the status quo is fine and needs no change does not appear to be a recommendation "worth the money" and effort.

If so, it is only a matter of time before the next such committee recommends disbanding of the pan-IIM board. We have seen such phenomenon regularly adopted by various committees with respect to Air India and Indian Airlines. So the reason why the government trying to fix something that ain't broke is beyond comprehension. True, the established IIMs must handhold the new IIMs; but this hardly needs a pan-IIM board. The Bhargava committee had noted, "The brand image of IIMs would be tarnished if these [new] IIMs do not attain the same degree of excellence as the existing IIMs."

If one accepts this logic, it might have been much better for the government to have allowed IIMs to expand their footprint outside their original locations — which, in fact, the government had actively discouraged — rather than allow a rapid rise in the number of IIMs with a severe paucity of quality faculty available to man these new IIMs.

It is difficult to see why an IIM-Ahmedabad campus in Mumbai or an IIM-Lucknow campus in Delhi will tarnish the IIM brand any more than starting new IIMs.

Doesn't the government have enough on its plate to improve basic education in the country? Why fritter away energy on areas that are doing fine?