Bangalore: The increasing conflict amongst faculty at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) to proposed governance reforms no longer remains a private affair. As per sources, the two faculty members from IIM-Bangalore publicly criticized the Human Resources Development (HRD) ministry-appointed committee report.
Professors Amit Gupta and Ganesh N Prabhu have said the R C Bharvaga Committee report on the new governance structure of IIMs is a blatantly self-serving report by directors who seek to centralize power and destroy the decentralized governance structure of IIMs. In addition, in the April 23 issue of Economic & Political Weekly, they have questioned the constitution of the committee, saying two of three directors on it had little experience in heading established national public institutes. Directors of IIMs at Bangalore, Kozhikode and Calcutta were part of the five-member committee.
Furthermore, the duo criticized the recommendation of receiving substantial donation ranging between Rs 3 crore and Rs 20 crore -- as a condition for becoming members of IIM society. They also said that it is not very clear how payment of `substantial amount' will result in a person becoming an enlightened owner with motivation and commitment. In fact this is a backdoor entry to privatize where people with money will take over the IIMs.
Besides, the Bhargava committee's observation that 50% faculty spend up to 50% of their time on conducting management and executive development programmes has been rejected as an over-emphasis without adequate data. Quoting IIM-B figures they have said that median executive programme sessions in a year were only 17 per faculty, and typically only about 9% of the revenue generated went as payment to faculty. These figures come in response to the view that IIM faculty were spending lesser hours on teaching regular post-graduate programmes and devoting limited time for doing research.
