Managing the IIMs

The Bhargava Committee report on governance of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) has thrown up many controversial issues which need to be carefully debated among the faculty of the IIMs, and the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) should not be in a hurry to implement any of them without debate and discussion (“Governance of IIMs: A Critique of the Bhargava Committee Report” by Amit Gupta and Ganesh N Prabhu, 23 April 2011). The products of IIM emerge at great social cost and the nation demands that the institutes are run on the best management principles like fi nancial autonomy, freedom in faculty recruitment and staff, promote excellence in teaching, research and consulting – the three streams of any good management institute– and be a leader in knowledge generation and dissemination.

Initially, these IIMs needed a lot of government support in terms of land and infrastructure and interdepartmental coordination that is very much required for any institution building. The boards of these IIMs are not functional boards and are called non-profit ones and unlike the profi t ones these boards provide only vision and a broad guidance to the directors. Most of the members are nominated by the MHRD and very few take an interest in the actual problems of the institute. The Bhargava Committee has not examined how these institutes can mobilise funds from the market instead of inviting corporate honchos to become the members of the IIM societies and thus make these societies places for the corporate rich to influence the integrity of the institutes and make these societies their fiefdoms. There are now very few corporate leaders of integrity and ethics like Kasturbhai Lalbhai who refused to be even a member of the board of the IIMA despite his big donation to the institute.